Liberals suggesting cutting government waste will be bad for the economy?

No lie... this is the new buzz on social media. Musk and gang will harm the economy by cutting out fat and inefficiency.

There is no question that in the short term that massive government spending can be used to stimulate the economy. Generally our stimulus packages include new Government spending (mostly temporary) and/or tax cuts. So it could be argued that cutting government spending could be some sort of anti-stimulate to the economic, at least in the short term.

I would suggest that there are two sides to this argument. One would be that any government spending (even wasteful spending) helps the economy and cutting back on this will cause a problem. The other, would be that cutting wasteful spending would be helpful to the US Dollar, to our credit rating, and most importantly to our consumer confidence and direction of the county numbers. This piggybacks onto the idea that our debt is staggering and eventually there will be a huge economic price to pay. Even if there may be some short term pain, cutting our spending will have long term benefits.

To be fair, much of this would be "how" we are cutting spending. At this point, Musk and gang are looking at cutting back on the bureaucracy, looking at duplication of government services, looking at the age old idea of the $700 toilet seat, and things of that nature. Elon Musk was able to take over Twitter, cut 70% of the staff, and still has a working social media site that is in many way superior to the platform that existed when he took over. It is possible (especially in 2024) for companies to almost embrace the idea of waste and inefficiency. People getting paid a 40/week salary while likely working only a small fraction of that time. People expecting that free food, break pods, work from home, flex time, and other perks, as if people are due a salary regardless of what they actually bring to the company. When Twitter employees learned of the takeover, they demanded that the old management should guarantee them their same benefits, same salaries, and same jobs post-takeover as if it was up to them to tell the buyer (Musk) what he could do.

Obviously, if this happens in the free market, then we all know it is happening in the Government. That is not just a cliche, but a well known truism. Do I expect Elon Musk to come in and cut 70% of the Federal Government workforce and run it just as effectively, like he did with Twitter/X? Probably not. But I think everyone knows and understands that there is simple waste and simple duplication that can be addressed. The question will be to what degree does the Trump administration and Musk/Ramaswamy have the ultimate authority to change things?