Who will be the first to go?

[dimreepr]

Given Trump's history I think it's a nailed on certainty that his cabinet will be different by the midterms.

My bet would be Musk, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they fall out before the inauguration.

Who are the other runner's? 

 

Edited Wednesday at 02:01 PM by dimreepr

[swansont]

Musk isn’t going to be in his cabinet, because the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual department. Congress can create new departments, but the president can’t. Musk and Ramaswamy will be advisors, and not government employees.

[exchemist]

44 minutes ago, swansont said:

Musk isn’t going to be in his cabinet, because the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual department. Congress can create new departments, but the president can’t. Musk and Ramaswamy will be advisors, and not government employees.

Who will put Musk’s recommendations into effect, then?  Trump himself? 

[dimreepr]

44 minutes ago, swansont said:

Musk isn’t going to be in his cabinet, because the so-called Department of Government Efficiency is not an actual department. Congress can create new departments, but the president can’t. Musk and Ramaswamy will be advisors, and not government employees.

Oh come on, pedantry apart, you know exactly what I mean...

[swansont]

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Oh come on, pedantry apart, you know exactly what I mean...

No, actually, I don’t. If you didn’t mean cabinet, you shouldn’t have said cabinet. Your imprecise wording not anybody else’s fault. Stop trying to blame others for not understanding.

[dimreepr]

1 minute ago, swansont said:

No, actually, I don’t. If you didn’t mean cabinet, you shouldn’t have said cabinet. Your imprecise wording not anybody else’s fault. Stop trying to blame others for not understanding.

I said "pedantry apart", but OK, I amend my topic title too, who will he fire first???

[swansont]

7 minutes ago, exchemist said:

Who will put Musk’s recommendations into effect, then?  Trump himself? 

I think that there’s going to be a lot of noise and not much action for a while. It’s not so easy to fire federal employees. I think the first attempts will result in some lawsuits and probably an injunction and blaming of the “deep state” because baby didn’t get his binky.

Eventually various organizations will be able to re-do their org charts to reduce billets, but I’ve seen efforts to do this take more than a year before implementation. And other than the political appointees, few are going to be willing to reduce headcount unless there’s also a reduction in expected results, but that’s not an improvement in efficiency. 

Budget cuts will also affect this, but that, too will take time to bubble through. And representatives won’t like losing money coming into their districts. People don’t always realize that a lot of federal employees work outside of DC.

Another tactic might be to shift even more work to contractors, even though that doesn’t really make anything cheaper or more efficient. They’ve been doing this for years. (the number of federal employees hasn’t changed all that much for the last ~50 years, even though the population has almost doubled) But it does give money to businesses.

 

16 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

I said "pedantry apart", but OK, I amend my topic title too, who will he fire first???

My bet is he’s going to try and fire any Biden administration holdovers before any of his own people.

[dimreepr]

7 minutes ago, swansont said:

My bet is he’s going to try and fire any Biden administration holdovers before any of his own people.

I have no doubt, but can we please just go with the spirit of the question; bc I was just wondering...

I guess I deserved that neg, for some reason...

[exchemist]

21 minutes ago, swansont said:

I think that there’s going to be a lot of noise and not much action for a while. It’s not so easy to fire federal employees. I think the first attempts will result in some lawsuits and probably an injunction and blaming of the “deep state” because baby didn’t get his binky.

Eventually various organizations will be able to re-do their org charts to reduce billets, but I’ve seen efforts to do this take more than a year before implementation. And other than the political appointees, few are going to be willing to reduce headcount unless there’s also a reduction in expected results, but that’s not an improvement in efficiency. 

Budget cuts will also affect this, but that, too will take time to bubble through. And representatives won’t like losing money coming into their districts. People don’t always realize that a lot of federal employees work outside of DC.

Another tactic might be to shift even more work to contractors, even though that doesn’t really make anything cheaper or more efficient. They’ve been doing this for years. (the number of federal employees hasn’t changed all that much for the last ~50 years, even though the population has almost doubled) But it does give money to businesses.

 

My bet is he’s going to try and fire any Biden administration holdovers before any of his own people.

That sounds about right.
 

Meanwhile Musk, famous for his impatience, will become more and more frustrated and angry. And then a fuse will blow and he’ll storm out. Probably. 

[Trurl]

6 hours ago, dimreepr said:

My bet would be Musk, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they fall out before the inauguration.

IMHO, I think Musk is here to stay. Trump and Musk need each other. It is business over friendship.

I listen to This Week in Tech and Elon’s Satellites and rocket 🚀 payloads are critical for defense.

On TWIT they are critical of Elon. But all things considered, he gets things done.

I think both Trump and Elon share the same billionaire personality traits and like personalities tend to fight. But this is business.

[Phi for All]

1 hour ago, Trurl said:

I think both Trump and Elon share the same billionaire personality traits and like personalities tend to fight. But this is business.

Billionaire personality traits like paying people less than they're worth so the billionaire can have more? If you look at how productivity in the US continues to grow while wages haven't kept up since Nixon, you can see how billionaires get richer while getting more work from the rest of us for less overall pay. Their profit is basically our struggle. The more they profit, the more the rest of us have to struggle. Billionaire personality trait #1? Pretend your resources are worth 600 times what the labor to turn them into a product is worth, and pay workers as little as possible. Make them struggle.

[CharonY]

Another billionaire trait is to leverage wealth to alter the rules rather than play the game better (or god forbid, ensure fairness in the game).

Creating dependency on private organizations for national security is such a step, for example.

[iNow]

6 hours ago, Trurl said:

Elon’s Satellites and rocket 🚀 payloads are critical for defense.

 

He’s also in charge of building out what will likely be the largest AI in the world, one that will eclipse openAI and Microsoft and potentially even Meta and Google… and on that foundation he’s well perched to gets a fat government contract where it becomes law that US government can ONLY use xAI for their work (or some similarly lucrative terms). 

Edited yesterday at 02:30 AM by iNow

[swansont]

10 hours ago, exchemist said:

Meanwhile Musk, famous for his impatience, will become more and more frustrated and angry. And then a fuse will blow and he’ll storm out. Probably. 

I think he stays to make sure investigations into his companies get derailed and the gravy train keeps flowing to him.

[exchemist]

6 hours ago, swansont said:

I think he stays to make sure investigations into his companies get derailed and the gravy train keeps flowing to him.

Hmm, could be. From what I read about him in the Financial Times, Musk is a hardcore free-market tech bro, thinking that most functions of the state should be outsourced to private enterprise IT companies to obtain efficiencies. The full "Robocop" scenario, in fact!  

To me - as to the makers of "Robocop" - this is a vision of a dystopian hell, with the populace fed a diet of comforting lies and cheap consumerism ("I'll buy that for a dollar"), while IT corporations make decisions about society based solely on profit-driven self-interest. 

[Sensei]

13 hours ago, Phi for All said:

Billionaire personality traits like paying people less than they're worth so the billionaire can have more? If you look at how productivity in the US continues to grow while wages haven't kept up since Nixon, you can see how billionaires get richer while getting more work from the rest of us for less overall pay. Their profit is basically our struggle. The more they profit, the more the rest of us have to struggle. Billionaire personality trait #1? Pretend your resources are worth 600 times what the labor to turn them into a product is worth, and pay workers as little as possible. Make them struggle.

This only applies to McDonald's etc, retail, farming etc, i.e. in jobs that anyone can do, without any education, they can easily be replaced by others willing to do so.

In IT or other hi-tech, a programmer earns more than the president of the country. This year Tesco (a British retail company) employed programmers here. They offered 30% more than salary of the president of the country for a junior, and 60% more for a senior engineers.

If you pay workers less than what it is worth in the marketplace, workers will leave their jobs for a company that pays more. But they have to have education. To be an attractive employee for a future employer.

Billionaires are getting richer because their stocks are rising. Why they are rising? Because other millionaires, billionaires buy shares directly or indirectly through holding companies and financial institutions. They prefer financial investment over what we call "groundwork" i.e. making a fresh new company. Such investment in stocks give a chance to exit at any time of investment. There are many people willing to buy shares, their price increases, and thus the rich become even richer.

Tesla Stock Growth Chart:

Last month:

Last year:

Did Tesla produce 2.6 times as many cars in November 2024 as it did in May 2024, so the share price rose from $138 to a maximum of $362? No. It was the shareholders who bought more shares..

Twitter shareholders saw the reduction in costs by laying off Twitter moderators as a sign to buy shares, causing their price to soar.

Edited 16 hours ago by Sensei

[iNow]

5 hours ago, exchemist said:

I read about him in the Financial Times, Musk is a hardcore free-market tech bro

Free market capitalism for everyone else, crony capitalism funded by tax payer dollars via massive government contracts for him and his various companies. 

3 hours ago, Sensei said:

Did Tesla produce 2.6 times as many cars in November 2024 as it did in May 2024, so the share price rose from $138 to a maximum of $362? No. It was the shareholders who bought more shares

You notice the jump in stock prices there immediately after the election of Trump. The shareholders agree Musk is going to get special treatment and that he’ll have help from the US DOJ when attacking competitor companies in court and filing nuisance lawsuits. 

[Phi for All]

4 hours ago, Sensei said:

This only applies to McDonald's etc, retail, farming etc, i.e. in jobs that anyone can do, without any education, they can easily be replaced by others willing to do so.

You're only comparing salaries. The fact is, even "highly paid" tech workers are being underpaid compared to the profit they bring to the companies. Even a senior engineer salary at Apple is smaller than it should be compared to the US$391B in annual revenue they earned this year. It's been this way in the US for quite some time.

It's pretty easy to see the trend. In the 50s, a household only needed one worker to afford a home, a couple of cars, and even college tuition for a couple of kids. After Nixon, it's been getting steadily worse here, until now most families have two workers and still struggle to maintain a home and vehicles. 

[swansont]

1 hour ago, iNow said:

You notice the jump in stock prices there immediately after the election of Trump. The shareholders agree Musk is going to get special treatment and that he’ll have help from the US DOJ when attacking competitor companies in court and filing nuisance lawsuits. 

Right.

Stock prices generally reflect expectation of future earnings, so it’s not November sales that matter, it’s next year’s, and the year after. And tariffs on Canadian goods would bump oil prices up, so if gas is more expensive, EV sales should continue to be robust.

[iNow]

12 minutes ago, swansont said:

tariffs on Canadian goods would bump oil prices up, so if gas is more expensive, EV sales should continue to be robust.

Trumps also planning to revoke the $7,500 EV tax credit, a program which among other things helps more manufacturers get a foothold in the EV vehicle market. Knocking down upstarts in this way also benefits Tesla sales as an established player. 

[Sensei]

6 hours ago, iNow said:

Free market capitalism for everyone else, crony capitalism funded by tax payer dollars via massive government contracts for him and his various companies. 

You wanted it to be this way. You voted and elected your representatives in the elections. Did not you? Now you have a government that will 1) contract with a private company to build buildings 2) contract with a private company for highways 3) contract with a private company for prisons and now 4) contract with a private company for space rockets *) repeat for any other things which are contracted with private sector..

If you wanted government to create government companies who will do this stuff for government (without contracts with private business), you should vote for politicians who had it in their program.

I almost "forgot". You only have two political parties.. so basically no choice.. And no responsibility for what they have in their promises..

Musk is simply the person who filled the gap. It was going to be this way since at least 15-20 years. The last shuttle flight was in 2011 without anything to replace it.

Now you "wake up" and complain. This is a problem from 20 years ago..

 

Our government ~15-20 years ago destroyed/screwed up the private sector - it contracted to build facilities and highways for the government, but cement and concrete price and wages rose (due to these contracts in a large quantity) from the time they won the contract with the lowest bid until they were paid, and a significant percentage of the sector simply went bankrupt.

 

Edited 6 hours ago by Sensei

[swansont]

49 minutes ago, Sensei said:

You wanted it to be this way. You voted and elected your representatives in the elections. Did not you?

Who is “you” in this?

Do you understand how elections work? 

[iNow]

1 hour ago, Sensei said:

If you wanted government to create government companies who will do this stuff for government (without contracts with private business), you should vote for politicians who had it in their program.

 

Check. Done and dusted.

I was outvoted by the other side. What pray tell do you recommend I do next?

I’ve already delivered on your previous recommendations yet here we are with the same problem still intact. Did you have a plan B?

[Sensei]

Over the last 20 years, there have been 12 years of Democrats in the White House and 8 years of Republicans. Apparently they both want to outsource the space program to a private company (like everything else)..

[iNow]

2 hours ago, Sensei said:

Apparently they both want to outsource the space program to a private company (like everything else).

They’re trying to get more returns on smaller investments. It costs less to pay the billionaires for access to their various rocket programs than it costs to fund government programs like NASA.