Edit: Added an update suggested by a reader, and will add any other suggestions that I like to the bottom as well!
Milei has been famously taking a chainsaw to the Argentinian bureaucracies, both eliminating headcount where possible and where not possible he's making drastic reorganizations to break up existing power structures.
This will be much harder in the US. US government bureaucrats are very secure in their union jobs and are protected by all sorts of legislation. So if you can't just fire them, what can you do?
Make them miserable!
I am not a labor lawyer and I'm not sure about the legality of these measures, but I think they're worth investigating and pursuing:
1) Create a new Federal Department of Counting Holes in Acoustical Ceiling Tiles. Or something to that effect. Transfer everybody you can there. Same title, same position, horrible, pointless, meaningless job. Make them take counting those holes seriously. Hardcore performance reviews. Penalties for failure. If you can't fire people, take the pointlessness and banality of their jobs and crank the level to over 9,000.
2) They currently have DEI struggle sessions. That's far too kind. We need anti-bureaucrat struggle sessions. In the same way they made white males condemn themselves, make them attend endless seminars on innocent people's lives being pointlessly destroyed by capricious government bureaucrats. Make them discuss how evil their jobs or their previous jobs were, and how awful they are as human beings for holding them. Make them call out and condemn their co-workers and their deeds. Remind them on a regular basis that they are the scum of the Earth, and that their very existence is an affront to all human decency.
3) Reward misery. Promote those leaders who have the most unhappy employees.
4) Encourage backstabbing. Allow employees and managers to improve their status by narcing on their co-workers for even the slightest missteps.
5) Endless paperclip audits, with harsh punishments for waste.
6) Punish unresponsiveness and malfeasance against citizens and taxpayers. The natural result of a hellish work environment is to not do one's job or to do it begrudgingly and poorly. Fortunately, government employees are so bad right now it's not like they can really hold this over our heads. Make sure they understand that no matter how bad things are for them, if their jobs are not done promptly and well things can get even worse. Make sure they are individually named, shamed, and humiliated for jobs poorly done.
7) Suggestion from @esquiste: Randomly relocate their office space, with an eye on making commutes as miserable as possible.
8) Make government office space more environmentally-friendly by banning the use of heating and air conditioning.
Don’t worry!
His “very smart people” are totally right about things this time when it comes to trade.
There is zero - I repeat, zero - moral difference between the people who pushed for "experimenting" with lockdowns because "we have to do something!" and the people who push for "experimenting" with trade wars because "we have to do something!"
Musk is out.
Musk put himself in a corner where he can't rip into Trump and he has to play nice probably at least through the midterms, but just look at the guy's face and watch him refuse to give a straight answer here. He put a lot on the line with endorsing Trump and starting DOGE, and Trump absolutely stabbed him in the back. Trump's supporters will blame congress, but Trump has very openly and loudly endorsed all of the DOGE-defying moves that congress has made, and has viciously attacked the one congressman (Thomas Massie) who has stood against it.
The reason is simple: Trump cares about trophies. Cutting the budget is not a trophy. DOGE trying to take a chainsaw to government was a trophy, but as soon as DOGE became more of Musk's than Trump's trophy, Trump stopped caring about it because congress offered him a Big, Beautiful Bill as a trophy instead. Just like the FBI offered the opportunity to build a Big, Beautiful new headquarters building for them (Trump loves buildings!). ...
As comedy slowly slides into unfunny wokeness hell, the last comedian standing (assuming he doesn't drop dead first, I mean just look at the guy; he's a trainwreck) will be Doug Stanhope. He closed out his recent special "The Dying of the Last Breed" with this bit on how important it is that we be able to make fun of anything. Because making fun.
Language warning, duh.
Preliminary Q2 numbers for Argentina are in. This is still subject to adjustment but so far their preliminaries have been pretty accurate under the Milei administration.
Slashing spending works. Trump and Bessent are very optimistically projecting economic growth of 3% doing the opposite of what Milei is doing to deliver 7.6% - and climbing!
