Essays in Idleness

It wasn’t really necessary to give Elon Musk a job recommending savings to the U.S. government. For he has a job already, or at least some $56 billion of personal income via “SpaceX,” formerly incorporated in Delaware. (“Meta” and various other corporations have also fled that state.) While Mr Musk is piling up his, and his shareholders’, winnings in the new space age, he shouldn’t waste his time unknitting the American bureaucracy (as “Doge,” named presumably after the Chief Magistrate of Venice). He is doing this charitably, apparently for free.

By simply cancelling all of the one-fifth of the American budget that is already identified as “discretionary” spending, the deficit could be eliminated immediately; and as 100 percent of this spending is essentially corrupt, there would be no need for regret. (Canadian spending is much more nebulous, even than American, so this would be incalculable up here.) Of course this is not real money, but electronic play money, that could not possibly be exchanged for gold, silver, platinum, or coal to keep us warm through the winter.

A more suitable financial topic for this morning, in the Canadian news, is “Trump tariffs.” (He is settling the score for decades of smug, Canadian abuse of American generosity.) I mentioned in a previous post that his intention is, incidentally, to destroy our government, and implied that this would be a good thing. The Canadian government is cooperating, by counter-tariffing, and the voters, especially in Ontario, are confirming their reputation as malicious idiots. I could explain how the trade war they are demanding will accomplish Trump’s end, by accelerating the tailspin of the Canadian economy (“drill baby drill”) — but why throw pearls before swine?