00:00:00
I think the easiest thing for them to
00:00:01
get done with doge is the naming the
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shaming the auditing the transparency of
00:00:07
what we're actually spending because so
00:00:09
many of the audits Jam are just not
00:00:12
completed people don't know what's being
00:00:13
spent and if you show Americans a
00:00:16
$112,000 hammer or people with job
00:00:19
titles not coming into the office or
00:00:20
coming into the office one day a week
00:00:23
one day a month that's going to
00:00:25
infuriate taxpayers and I think there's
00:00:26
a very easy way to navigate all this you
00:00:28
just create the leaderboard and you not
00:00:30
only shame people who are wasting our
00:00:32
tax dollars you celebrate the people who
00:00:35
are heroes Who start showing frugality
00:00:38
and cost saving and they're going to do
00:00:40
this with a leaderboard of the heroes
00:00:41
and the goats this could be the unifying
00:00:44
not just the Republican party as as sax
00:00:46
is pointing out shath I think this could
00:00:48
unify the whole country is there anybody
00:00:50
paying taxes that wants to see money
00:00:52
wasted that wants to see us pay people
00:00:54
high salaries to not come to work shath
00:00:57
what's your take on the sequence of
00:00:59
events here
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what are easy layups that they could
00:01:02
actually get done and then where is the
00:01:04
machine going to fight and try to stop
00:01:06
this thing I think you are highlighting
00:01:11
something that they can do right away
00:01:12
which I think is very powerful which is
00:01:14
just using these distribution channels
00:01:16
that Elon has now to create a massive
00:01:20
layer of
00:01:21
accountability I do think that Sunshine
00:01:24
is a really incredible disinfectant I
00:01:27
think the best way that they could start
00:01:29
if possible is to stop paying their
00:01:33
vendors until you actually have some
00:01:35
amount of accounting to figure out as
00:01:37
you said how many $600 soap dispensers
00:01:40
are actually being bought and sold now
00:01:43
that kind of whatever you want to call
00:01:45
that corruption or grift it's not going
00:01:47
to account for hundreds of billions or
00:01:50
trillions of dollars but I do think that
00:01:53
it is a very moral and symbolic win that
00:01:56
says we're going we're going to start to
00:01:58
get much more rational and it starts to
00:02:02
allow the average American to actually
00:02:04
feel like they have a little bit of
00:02:06
control and they have a more vested
00:02:08
interest in how the government spends
00:02:11
money but I want to I actually want to
00:02:13
take a step back for a second and before
00:02:15
I talk about what Doge can do I just
00:02:17
want to highlight something that's been
00:02:19
going on in California because I think
00:02:21
it it explains a lot in California and
00:02:24
I'm just going to read this that because
00:02:25
it's
00:02:26
incredible the regulatory burden in Cali
00:02:30
as a state from 1997 to 2015 this is
00:02:34
when the data is available that I found
00:02:36
has increased by almost
00:02:39
50% as of May of
00:02:42
2022 there are almost
00:02:46
61,000 individual regulations in the
00:02:50
state of California so what does that
00:02:52
mean and where does it come from and
00:02:55
Nick if you can just put out the tweet
00:02:56
it has happened over a period of time
00:03:00
in which the government has been the
00:03:04
absolute singular source of employment
00:03:08
in the
00:03:09
state and we talked about this before
00:03:12
where this is also a problem at the
00:03:14
federal level when you look at GDP and
00:03:16
job growth because it looks like a lot
00:03:18
of these jobs are actually fake
00:03:20
manufactured government type jobs so why
00:03:22
is this a problem you've seen in
00:03:24
California the issue that we have is
00:03:26
that if you
00:03:27
have a growth in the number of employees
00:03:30
in this case in California all the job
00:03:32
growth in recent memory has been state
00:03:35
employees what is the byproduct
00:03:37
regulations go up what is the byproduct
00:03:40
of that there are actually no private
00:03:42
sector jobs and more to the point the
00:03:44
private sector flees so now let's bubble
00:03:47
that up and look at the federal
00:03:48
government Nick if you want to just show
00:03:49
that chart that I that I sent you what
00:03:52
is incredible jcal is that the more
00:03:55
people are hired by the
00:03:57
government lo and behold what do you see
00:03:59
the number of regulations issued by
00:04:01
federal agencies has just continued
00:04:04
unabated year in year out you cannot run
00:04:08
a country like
00:04:10
this so because these these accumulate
00:04:13
right Congress is doing less and less of
00:04:16
a job actually trying to frame how the
00:04:18
country should work that white space is
00:04:21
filled in as freeberg said by these
00:04:23
federal agencies it compounds and
00:04:26
accumulates this is not replacing laws
00:04:28
none of these regulations have expiry
00:04:30
dates and so as a result I think what
00:04:33
you probably have is an incredible
00:04:36
restraint on the US economy I think that
00:04:38
the US economy could be growing at four
00:04:42
or
00:04:43
5% but the reason that it doesn't grow
00:04:45
at 45% is in that one single chart it is
00:04:49
impossible to be able to live up to your
00:04:51
economic potential when you have this
00:04:54
burden on your neck so I think the real
00:04:57
opportunity for doge is to basically do
00:05:00
whatever it needs to do using the law to
00:05:04
wipe as many of these regulations off
00:05:06
the books we are better cutting them all
00:05:10
to zero and then finding the ones we
00:05:12
really need and then repassing those
00:05:15
then we are going at this peace meal and
00:05:18
there's some incred there's some
00:05:19
incredible ideas by the way that this
00:05:21
creates Nick I don't know if you can
00:05:23
find this tweet but Doge asked what
00:05:25
people think of the
00:05:27
IRS and there was an enous amount of
00:05:30
activity that essentially said give us a
00:05:33
flat tax and wipe out the tax
00:05:35
code and people were very flexible in
00:05:38
the amount of tax that they were willing
00:05:40
to pay but could you imagine the
00:05:42
simplification in the tax code and the
00:05:44
implications of that I was in Singapore
00:05:46
by the way 10 days ago when I started my
00:05:48
trip Nick beep out the name of the
00:05:50
person I'm about to say but I had a long
00:05:52
meeting with who you know is there and I
00:05:56
was asking him the
00:05:58
complexity of dealing with taxes he's
00:06:01
like what do you mean we don't we pay a
00:06:03
very simple tax system there's no
00:06:05
capital gains in Singapore and so as a
00:06:06
result our filing requirements are di
00:06:09
Minimus small but as a result people
00:06:12
like him meaning great entrepreneurs can
00:06:14
spend all their time thinking about what
00:06:16
to build not how not tax optimization
00:06:19
exactly or how to account for it so
00:06:22
could you imagine if these guys
00:06:23
basically use Doge as a mechanism to
00:06:26
shrink the tax code create a flat tax
00:06:29
potentially I know that that has to be
00:06:30
passed by Congress I understand that but
00:06:34
the idea of just cutting this all the
00:06:37
way down and then finding through that
00:06:39
process what you actually need I think
00:06:42
can find America 100 20000 basis points
00:06:46
of GDP growth it could be an economic
00:06:48
Renaissance I mean just to build on that
00:06:50
cutting all the regulations to zero you
00:06:52
might have throw out some babies in the
00:06:55
bath water so why not put a clock on
00:06:57
them and just say whenever this was
00:06:58
enacted plus 5 years and then it rolls
00:07:02
off or plus two years whatever number of
00:07:04
months and then you could have them chth
00:07:06
rolling off every month I think a good
00:07:08
idea but it has to I think that's a good
00:07:11
idea but jcal I think you first have to
00:07:13
cancel all these regulations and then
00:07:15
say whatever we need we will reenact to
00:07:18
your point on a five-year shock clock
00:07:20
that then has to be renewed in a new
00:07:22
Congressional period And I think that
00:07:24
that's extremely healthy well because
00:07:26
you know what people die paradigms shift
00:07:29
and then nobody even remembers these
00:07:30
regulations you have to do archaeology
00:07:32
to figure out who created this what was
00:07:34
the intent and you would never do that
00:07:36
you would never live sacks with all of
00:07:38
these rules forever just one last
00:07:41
comment In fairness to these government
00:07:43
employees the one thing is that it's not
00:07:45
their fault right meaning in the sense
00:07:47
that they were hired into a regime where
00:07:50
the incentive was to regulate so that
00:07:53
you had things to oversee and so they
00:07:56
did their job in fact I would say they
00:07:58
did their job incredibly well but the
00:08:00
point is that now we need to Pivot for
00:08:02
them to do a totally different job
