Take this job and shove it! Elon Musk tries to prune the federal bureaucracy

 Take this job and shove it

I ain't working here no more.

Sung by Johnny Paycheck

America's budget deficit is on track to hit $1.9 trillion, which will be added to the nation's accumulated national debt of $36 trillion. 

Elon Musk, chief of President Trump's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), is moving savagely to prune the federal workforce, which he urgently needs to do.  

He began by offering buyouts to entice federal employees to resign--a classic corporate tactic to trim payroll costs. So far, roughly 75,000 people have accepted the offer, a tiny percentage of the nation's 2.3 million federal workers.

Unfortunately, the employees who accepted the offer include some of the nation's most efficient bureaucrats. That's because the people who left federal service have job skills that can transfer to the private sector.

Most civil servants are hanging on to their federal jobs despite a pointed invitation to leave.  These include those who don't have the skills or experience to find employment outside the DC swamp. They will dig in at least long enough to reach retirement age.

DOGE will be forced to fire thousands of government workers to trim the workforce. Many will file lawsuits challenging DOGE's authority to make the government more efficient. They'll also avail themselves of the elaborate civil service regulations that protect their constitutional right to due process.

In short, it will be months or even years before the federal workforce shrinks. Meanwhile, the primary beneficiaries of the DOGE initiative will be lawyers--lots and lots of lawyers.

In the near future, we are likely to see the passive-aggressive nature of the federal civil service rear its ugly head as the apparatchiks of the DC swamp begin a work slowdown. We can't fulfill our duties, the bureaucrats will moan, because the workforce has been slashed by a "Nazi nepo baby."

Indeed, we are already seeing worksite sabotage in the Social Security Administration. Senior SSA administrators say it will be more than a year before they implement the directives of the Social Security Fairness Act, which is intended to benefit retirees who have been unfairly penalized. 

Why? They're understaffed.

Take number. A federal bureaucrat will assist you sometime in the next century.

Bad Moon A-Rising: America faces a looming real estate crisis

I see the bad moon a-risin'

I see trouble on the way

I see earthquakes and lightnin'

I see bad times today

Creedence Clearwater Revival

Americans live in a Panglossian environment, encouraged by our government to believe we live in the best of all possible worlds. Inflation? It's going down. The job market? Our economy is creating an astonishing number of new jobs. Our President? A paragon of wisdom.

Of course, we don't live in the best of all possible worlds. America is neck-deep in two terrible wars: Ukraine and Gaza, and those wars will eventually bite us on the national butt. Right now, these global disasters still seem far away. No reason to put off buying a new Land Rover.

Domestically, however, an economic calamity is looming, and it will soon come crashing down on us. I'm talking about the collapse of the domestic real estate market.

Driven by catastrophic weather events (hurricanes, wildfires, windstorms, and floods), the cost of homeowner's insurance has risen significantly, increasing the cost of owning a home.

Lenders require people with home mortgages to have adequate property insurance, typically added to the home borrower's monthly mortgage payment. Since most homeowners buy houses based on what they can afford in monthly payments, rising insurance costs will force many Americans to buy less expensive homes.

Interest rates on home mortgages are going up, too. The Biden administration and the Fed are doing their best to keep interest rates down until after the presidential election, but the days of 3 percent mortgages are over.

On the global stage, the BRIC countries are slowly undermining the American dollar's status as the world's reserve currency, and that process is well underway. Our government now spends a trillion dollars every 100 days in interest payments on the national debt, and that debt grows larger each month. Our growing debt has started to put pressure on interest rates, including the interest rate on home mortgages. 

All these trends are gathering into a perfect storm for homeownership. Who resides on the dirty side of this storm? 

Not the banks. When the real estate market collapses the next time, the feds will bail out the banks as they've done in the past, assuming the value of the U.S. dollar holds up through the crisis. 

No, the losers will be American middle-class homeowners. And when the next real estate crisis is over, the American middle class will be much smaller. 

You'll be goddamn lucky if you're still in it. In the meantime, I recommend listening to more Creedence.

Who stole the Dude's Creedence tapes?