Musk said “compensation is zero” for the “revolutionaries” who will advise on cuts to the federal budget.

Summary

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy’s new “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE) began recruiting “high-IQ small-government revolutionaries” willing to work 80+ hours per week with no pay to help slash federal spending.

Appointed by President-elect Donald Trump, the panel is tasked with recommending spending cuts, regulatory rollbacks, and agency restructuring by July 4, 2026.

Musk and Ramaswamy advocate for drastic measures, including cutting grants to nonprofits and potential mass layoffs.

  • bstix@feddit.dk
    28·
    4 hours ago

    Ok, get this. You elect politicians to “help slash federal spending”.

    What the hell is Musk even doing and why is he outsourcing this job to unpaid idiots, when politicians already get paid to do this?

    Okay, I’ll do a few suggestions for free:

    • Stop subsidizing companies. All of them.
    • Tax the rich to boost the federal income.
    • Legalize all immigrants so they can be tax paying citizens.
    • Crack down on employers using illegal underpaid illegal immigrants.
    • Provide universal health care. Sick people don’t work.
    • Cut down on police force spending.
    • Cut down on car infrastructure spending.
    • Cut down “defense” spending in artificial oil wars.
    • Help Ukraine to defeat Russia, so Russia will have to surrender and disarm their nukes, so that USA can also cut down on cost for maintenance of nukes.
    • Expand renewable energy. It’s free energy yo, and it creates jobs for tax paying citizens.
    • Stop mining fossil fuels. It will cost more to clean that shit up than is earned.
    • KinglyWeevil@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      32 minutes ago

      I just wanted to add some context for one of these bullets.

      The US is upping the amount it spends on nuclear weapons maintenance and production because China has reentered the game as a major player. They’d been stable at 300-350 warheads for decades but is expected to ramp up to producing 100+ per year by 2030.

      So one major adversary has just been replaced by another. Everything old is new again, including the cold war arms race.

      • ✺roguetrick✺@lemmy.world
        1·
        9 minutes ago

        How are they making them? Just fuel reprocessing? You can make them pretty cheap as a side effect at scale of you want to. US can’t though.

    • sibachian@lemmy.mlEnglish
      5·
      3 hours ago

      my bingo card is almost full, just missing universal basic income - people with money, spend money, supporting businesses and thus “the economy”.

    • wildcardology@lemmy.world
      9·
      4 hours ago

      Undocumented immigrants paid $96 billion in 2023, they don’t benefit from them but imagine if all of them get to pay taxes.