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DOGE's Opportunity: Unleash American Growth by Cutting Regulations

November 26, 2024 / 08:04

This episode discusses government spending transparency, regulatory burdens, and tax reform ideas, featuring insights from various guests.

The conversation begins with a focus on the need for accountability in government spending, highlighting the absurdity of wasteful expenditures like a $112,000 hammer. The guests propose creating a leaderboard to shame wasteful spending while celebrating frugality.

Shath emphasizes the importance of using distribution channels to promote accountability, suggesting that stopping payments to vendors until proper accounting is established could be a significant first step.

The discussion shifts to California's regulatory environment, which has seen a dramatic increase in regulations, leading to a lack of private sector job growth. The guests argue that this regulatory burden restrains economic potential.

Finally, the episode explores the idea of simplifying the tax code and potentially implementing a flat tax, drawing comparisons with Singapore's efficient tax system. The guests advocate for a radical reduction of regulations to stimulate economic growth.

TLDR

Guests discuss government spending transparency, regulatory burdens, and tax reform ideas to stimulate economic growth.

Episode

8:04
00:00:00
I think the easiest thing for them to get done with doge is the naming the shaming the auditing the transparency of
00:00:07
what we're actually spending because so many of the audits Jam are just not completed people don't know what's being
00:00:13
spent and if you show Americans a $112,000 hammer or people with job titles not coming into the office or
00:00:20
coming into the office one day a week one day a month that's going to infuriate taxpayers and I think there's
00:00:26
a very easy way to navigate all this you just create the leaderboard and you not
00:00:30
only shame people who are wasting our tax dollars you celebrate the people who are heroes Who start showing frugality
00:00:38
and cost saving and they're going to do this with a leaderboard of the heroes and the goats this could be the unifying
00:00:44
not just the Republican party as as sax is pointing out shath I think this could
00:00:48
unify the whole country is there anybody paying taxes that wants to see money wasted that wants to see us pay people
00:00:54
high salaries to not come to work shath what's your take on the sequence of events here
00:01:00
what are easy layups that they could actually get done and then where is the machine going to fight and try to stop
00:01:06
this thing I think you are highlighting something that they can do right away which I think is very powerful which is
00:01:14
just using these distribution channels that Elon has now to create a massive layer of
00:01:21
accountability I do think that Sunshine is a really incredible disinfectant I think the best way that they could start
00:01:29
if possible is to stop paying their vendors until you actually have some amount of accounting to figure out as
00:01:37
you said how many $600 soap dispensers are actually being bought and sold now that kind of whatever you want to call
00:01:45
that corruption or grift it's not going to account for hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars but I do think that
00:01:53
it is a very moral and symbolic win that says we're going we're going to start to
00:01:58
get much more rational and it starts to allow the average American to actually feel like they have a little bit of
00:02:06
control and they have a more vested interest in how the government spends money but I want to I actually want to
00:02:13
take a step back for a second and before I talk about what Doge can do I just want to highlight something that's been
00:02:19
going on in California because I think it it explains a lot in California and I'm just going to read this that because
00:02:25
it's incredible the regulatory burden in Cali as a state from 1997 to 2015 this is
00:02:34
when the data is available that I found has increased by almost 50% as of May of
00:02:42
2022 there are almost 61,000 individual regulations in the state of California so what does that
00:02:52
mean and where does it come from and Nick if you can just put out the tweet it has happened over a period of time
00:03:00
in which the government has been the absolute singular source of employment in the
00:03:09
state and we talked about this before where this is also a problem at the federal level when you look at GDP and
00:03:16
job growth because it looks like a lot of these jobs are actually fake manufactured government type jobs so why
00:03:22
is this a problem you've seen in California the issue that we have is that if you
00:03:27
have a growth in the number of employees in this case in California all the job growth in recent memory has been state
00:03:35
employees what is the byproduct regulations go up what is the byproduct of that there are actually no private
00:03:42
sector jobs and more to the point the private sector flees so now let's bubble that up and look at the federal
00:03:48
government Nick if you want to just show that chart that I that I sent you what is incredible jcal is that the more
00:03:55
people are hired by the government lo and behold what do you see the number of regulations issued by
00:04:01
federal agencies has just continued unabated year in year out you cannot run a country like
00:04:10
this so because these these accumulate right Congress is doing less and less of a job actually trying to frame how the
00:04:18
country should work that white space is filled in as freeberg said by these federal agencies it compounds and
00:04:26
accumulates this is not replacing laws none of these regulations have expiry dates and so as a result I think what
00:04:33
you probably have is an incredible restraint on the US economy I think that the US economy could be growing at four
00:04:42
or 5% but the reason that it doesn't grow at 45% is in that one single chart it is
00:04:49
impossible to be able to live up to your economic potential when you have this burden on your neck so I think the real
00:04:57
opportunity for doge is to basically do whatever it needs to do using the law to
00:05:04
wipe as many of these regulations off the books we are better cutting them all to zero and then finding the ones we
00:05:12
really need and then repassing those then we are going at this peace meal and there's some incred there's some
00:05:19
incredible ideas by the way that this creates Nick I don't know if you can find this tweet but Doge asked what
00:05:25
people think of the IRS and there was an enous amount of activity that essentially said give us a
00:05:33
flat tax and wipe out the tax code and people were very flexible in the amount of tax that they were willing
00:05:40
to pay but could you imagine the simplification in the tax code and the implications of that I was in Singapore
00:05:46
by the way 10 days ago when I started my trip Nick beep out the name of the person I'm about to say but I had a long
00:05:52
meeting with who you know is there and I was asking him the complexity of dealing with taxes he's
00:06:01
like what do you mean we don't we pay a very simple tax system there's no capital gains in Singapore and so as a
00:06:06
result our filing requirements are di Minimus small but as a result people like him meaning great entrepreneurs can
00:06:14
spend all their time thinking about what to build not how not tax optimization exactly or how to account for it so
00:06:22
could you imagine if these guys basically use Doge as a mechanism to shrink the tax code create a flat tax
00:06:29
potentially I know that that has to be passed by Congress I understand that but the idea of just cutting this all the
00:06:37
way down and then finding through that process what you actually need I think can find America 100 20000 basis points
00:06:46
of GDP growth it could be an economic Renaissance I mean just to build on that cutting all the regulations to zero you
00:06:52
might have throw out some babies in the bath water so why not put a clock on them and just say whenever this was
00:06:58
enacted plus 5 years and then it rolls off or plus two years whatever number of months and then you could have them chth
00:07:06
rolling off every month I think a good idea but it has to I think that's a good idea but jcal I think you first have to
00:07:13
cancel all these regulations and then say whatever we need we will reenact to your point on a five-year shock clock
00:07:20
that then has to be renewed in a new Congressional period And I think that that's extremely healthy well because
00:07:26
you know what people die paradigms shift and then nobody even remembers these regulations you have to do archaeology
00:07:32
to figure out who created this what was the intent and you would never do that you would never live sacks with all of
00:07:38
these rules forever just one last comment In fairness to these government employees the one thing is that it's not
00:07:45
their fault right meaning in the sense that they were hired into a regime where the incentive was to regulate so that
00:07:53
you had things to oversee and so they did their job in fact I would say they did their job incredibly well but the
00:08:00
point is that now we need to Pivot for them to do a totally different job

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    Best concept / idea

Episode Highlights

  • The Burden of Regulations
    California's regulatory burden has increased by almost 50% from 1997 to 2015.
    “As of May 2022, there are almost 61,000 individual regulations in California.”
    @ 02m 46s
    November 26, 2024
  • Opportunity for Change with Doge
    Doge could potentially simplify the tax code and create a flat tax system.
    “Imagine if these guys use Doge to shrink the tax code!”
    @ 06m 26s
    November 26, 2024

Episode Quotes

  • Sunshine is a really incredible disinfectant.
    DOGE's Opportunity: Unleash American Growth by Cutting Regulations
  • What does that mean and where does it come from?
    DOGE's Opportunity: Unleash American Growth by Cutting Regulations
  • Could you imagine the simplification in the tax code?
    DOGE's Opportunity: Unleash American Growth by Cutting Regulations

Key Moments

  • Taxpayer Infuriation00:25
  • Regulatory Burden02:30
  • Economic Renaissance06:48

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