Summary
Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, leading Trump’s new DOGE, plan to cut $2 trillion in federal spending by ending remote work for federal employees and monitoring their productivity.
GOP Senator Joni Ernst supports the plan, citing remote work as wasteful, though federal data shows most eligible roles still require significant on-site work.
Critics argue the initiative overstates the issue and lacks enforcement power, as DOGE is an advisory body with no direct authority over government operations.
The Party of Small Government has created a second government, to govern the first government. I wonder if they even appreciate the irony.
Conservatives don’t get irony.
The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.
Yes, and that was the plan all along
yeah like they have functioning brains
“Literally thousands of empty buildings, not just in America, but around the world, paid for with your tax dollars!” Musk wrote in a follow-up X post.
Before Covid there was a big push to work from home so they could rotate desks. Giving them a lower footprint so they could save on office space.
Then Covid forced full work for home for the vast majority.
Agencies rarely own their own buildings, they lease floor space from GSA. Who own and maintain damn near everything.
Ironically going full telework would save every single agency (except GSA) literally tens (maybe 100s) of millions of dollars.
And I know it’s two idiots in charge of it, but I think at some point they may realize the cheapest option is full telework and renting to private companies. Or second most economical, just mothball the buildings.
Take everything out, prep for long term storage, and have a skeleton crew of security and maintenance
But last time the unions bitched out of fighting return to office because it was Biden. They’ll fight it now even if agencies don’t.
You’re assuming that Musk is actually going to make a good faith effort to improve efficiency. This is about paralysing the government so they can’t do any oversight on Musk and friends, while outsourcing as much as possible to private companies run by those same billionaires.
This guy s 100% accurate. When I was a contractor for the NWS in the mid 2010s they were working aggressively to get their HQ staff setup to telework at least some of the time to save on office leases. They built out a large fix work space in their silver spring building and when it went live they were able to vacate an entire floor, saving something like a million dollars in month in lease, utilities, etc costs.
This mindset of return to office to force attrition also seems less likely to work for federal employees that often need to work in the office at least part time anyways, and often have very strong union protections that will cost a ton for the government to fight through.
On top of that, the costs to return employees to offices will be astronomical both in fitting out those office spaces again and in terms of supporting infrastructure like transit costs. A lot of those additional costs get borne by state governments and often passed on to the federal government through grants and chargebacks for various services.
What about cheap housing for the homeless? We can’t have that!
No, fuck that. We need free housing for everyone.
I’ve got news for him. A large percentage of federal employees do fuckall when they’re in the office. The remote part has little to do with it.
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And then the companies are staffed by people who do fuck-all in the office, especially middle managers and c-suite people. But now their jobs are shittier and pay less money (except for upper management, who now probably makes more). So the middle class shrinks.
And now it’s on the customers’ dime. Which is cheap for rich people, but more expensive for middle class people and unaffordable for poor people.
Then Musk and Trump and their friends get even more rich, and life gets harder for most Americans.
In other words: “The American Way™”
Yep. DOGE is a scheme to externalize. With a different president shame would stop it, but I guess we are past that.
You’ll get a free Tesla from based Elon and he’ll make every American pay for it with taxes.
“Remote work is wasteful.”
Instead of hiring employees you trust to do their job, let’s pay for building rent, utilities, cleaning services, transportation and whatever else.
If you really want to cut waste and care about the environment, lean into remote and pull your head out of your ass, Elon.
What the fuck. Why did you think he cares about waste and the environment?!? Have you not been paying attention?
Remote workers took advantage of the companies they worked for and most definitely did less. I base that opinion on being an essential worker that had to pick up the slack from all the ‘work’ from home people.
I think you’re underestimating the amount of bureaucracy and lack of incentives to perform.
My opinion, also insignificant, is that those who can’t work remote rarely work when in the office. If somebody doesn’t work, management has to intervene, whether they are in person or remote doesn’t matter.
Anecdotes are not important
“What I don’t understand is that you’ve been working since I think what, about six this morning, yet such a small pile of hinges.”
omg I so want a federal job now. I will so technically blow out whatever metrics.
