John Cochrane: How Will DOGE 'Disrupt' the Government?

Just Asking Questions

Will President Donald Trump and Elon Musk actually cut the government down to size and pull us back from the fiscal cliff? Just asking questions.

John Cochrane is joining Just Asking Questions today to talk about what it would actually take to get government spending under control permanently and discuss a few of the staggering number of government reforms either underway or being floated. He is an economist at the Hoover Institution and a professor of economics and finance at Stanford Graduate School of Business. He publishes his thoughts at The Grumpy Economist.

Sources Referenced:

• About 20,000 federal workers accept Trump's buyout offer, official says
• John Cochrane: The cost of regulation
• The Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034
• John Cochrane: tax expenditures comparable to discretionary spending
• John Cochrane: 2021-24 inflation (debt, CPI, Fed funds interest rate)
• Elon Musk addresses the Cato Institute in Argentina
• The full Trump speech where he floats replacing the income tax with tariffs

Chapters:

• 00:00 Coming up…
• 00:30 DOGE is buying out bureaucrats
• 5:37 Government spending disrespects taxpayers
• 7:23 Trump is winning the culture war
• 11:09 Hypocritical support for DOGE?
• 15:08 Should we give up on Congress?
• 19:40 Reacting to Musk's opinion of regulations
• 36:55 Trump thinks outside of the box
• 39:04 The emperor has no clothes
• 41:03 The election was cultural, and not about the economy
• 43:52 The government needs to get out of the way
• 45:55 Some pessimism about DOGE
• 53:34 Trump wants to end the income tax?
• 57:58 Can tax reform be made a populist issue?
• 1:02:24 How bad are tariffs in reality?
• 1:09:02 How can we keep growth going?

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

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