Tesla CEO Elon Musk, appointed by the President-elect to lead the new Department of Public Works, spoke at the America First Policy Institute in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Thursday, Nov. 14, 2024.
Elon Musk and billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy are looking at which parts of the government can be cut as they team up to lead President-elect Donald Trump’s Department of Government Operations (DOGE). A Tesla executive on Wednesday echoed the views of renowned economist Milton Friedman decades ago about the way government has become complacent.
“Milton Friedman was the best,” Musk wrote on the X site, sharing an interview given to the late Nobel laureate, in which he went through a list of all the federal agencies that should not have been created in the first place, and those that were. that he felt they were important.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk speaks at an American PAC town hall on Oct. 26, 2024, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. (Samuel Corum/Getty Images)
In the interview, Friedman was asked to give a thumbs up or thumbs down on whether certain institutions should be preserved or abolished.
Friedman said the Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Department of Commerce should both “go,” immediately, but said the US should keep the Department of Defense.
RAMASWAMY SAYS SOME GOVERNMENT ORGANIZATIONS WILL BE ‘CLICKED OUT’ BY DOGE WITH ‘NOISE REDUCTION’ BY ACTION.
He said the Ministry of Education must be abolished, as well as the Ministry of Energy, except for the parts dealing with nuclear weapons, which must be moved under the Ministry of Defence.
When asked about the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Friedman said “there is a place for public health services to prevent infection,” but said that part of the agency should be eliminated.
The economist, who died in 2006, also said the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) should also go, saying “it has done a lot of damage.”
RAMAWAMY’S MUSK AND DOGE OPENS HIRE AT X
Friedman went on to say that the Department of the Interior could sit until the federal government sells all the land it owns — except where its buildings sit — and then it would have to be dismantled.
Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman poses with his portrait in 1986. (Photos by George Rose/Getty Images)
The Justice Department must sit, Friedman said in the interview, along with the State and Treasury Departments, to collect taxes. But the Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Transport are both unnecessary, he said.
GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE
Friedman said it is important to pay the salaries of those who have served in the military, but the Department of Veterans Affairs does not have to be there to make that happen.
In his view, Friedman said, the federal government should be stripped of its basic duties, which he said “keep the peace, protect the country, [and] provide a means by which people can adjudicate their disputes.”
Source link
