Elon Musk’s Doge would not have worked even if he had worked

It is easy to forget that individual savings does not shrink consumption. Without the placement of money saved in a coffee container, to save it is to shift the consumer capacity to someone else.

What applies to individual savings is true to save the government. No act of phenomenon shrinks the size of the government. That is why Elon Musk’s government efficiency department (Doge) would not have worked even if it had worked.

Without the savings placed in a much larger coffee, government spending cuts born of efficiency, staff reduction, reduction in order, or all three would have just released money for the Congress to spend in new ways. In the government, as with the individual, what is not spent is shifting to other existing priorities or much worse, all the news.

They are the new spending initiatives that are the most dangerous. Most start small, and this includes Medicare. It is so easy to forget that it started as a $ 3 billion program in the 1960s, but is expected to have $ 1 trillion in the coming years.

Talking about the risk of spending cuts. Talk about the “uncertainty of the regime”. Unfortunately, the economy-which separates as long as government spending is today, the good news is that it is known.

In other words, the myriad ways in which Congress politicizes the distribution of valuable resources have already been priced or calculated in our daily existence. This is not the case with new initiatives. Who knows what Congress will dream of and who knows how to dream of Congress? To see the danger of this, ask yourself if Congress would have the votes to pass Medicare if it was known that sixty years later it would be an annual program of nearly $ 1 trillion today.

That is why without justifying most federal spending for even a second, when it comes to the government, the devil you know is better than the unknown. That is why it is best to let Congress fight for what is well known and honored, as opposed to its release to design all new programs and initiatives from proverbial nails. Could end up much greater than they are today. Logically.

In which some will answer that what has been written has not, or would not have applied to Doge, as any savings will not free money, as savings will reduce government lending. More realistically, the Treasury will liberate to borrow $ 2 trillion more in the future. With our federal government, no lending is deducted from lending.

It is worth remembering as conservatives, in particular, mourning the failure of the last charming, but certainly a quixotic attempt to shrink the size and cost of the government. These initiatives never work simply because in government as with individuals, money saved is never money spent.