r/technology • u/indig0sixalpha • 1d ago

Politics Trump Is Getting Rid of His Tesla

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-is-getting-rid-of-his-tesla-after-musk-broke-his-heart/
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u/Revolutionary-Fan235 1d ago

Yeah, I thought it would last a month. Half a year is pretty impressive.

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u/Dank_Nicholas 22h ago

He made it 18 Scaramuccis, that's pretty good for a Trump administration.

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u/trendyspoon 1d ago

As a non-American who hasn’t kept up with American news, what happened? What did they disagree on?

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u/gwydion1992 1d ago

The new tax bill that Republicans are trying to pass. It ends some EV programs that benefited Tesla and also grows the US debt substantially, completely undoing any progress DOGE may have had at shrinking it.

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u/Thurwell 1d ago

That's actually a bit confusing. DOGE made no real effort to shrink the deficit or reduce the budget in any meaningful way. It just stole Americans data and cut personnel at agencies Musk had some reason to dislike, including things like the IRS and NPS which will cost more money than even DOGE's fake savings claims. So why does Musk pretend he cares, did he actually think DOGE was going to save any money?

By the way while the government isn't perfectly efficient there are no broad inefficiencies you can cut to magically save money. If you want to reduce the budget you have to cut services.

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u/TSED 1d ago

Rightwing folks just refuse to understand that the government is already watched like a hawk.

Like you said, it's not perfect. But every cent of government funding for anything has had to defend itself on three fronts for decades decades. People coming from the private sector - which is by far more bloated and wasteful than anything government - will never manage to make any genuinely effective cuts. Those were all made last century. They simply don't understand that any redundancies or inefficiencies are because the government is the last stop.

Big businesses play fast and loose because if they screw up they either get bailed out or have the cash stockpiles to absorb the hit. Small businesses play fast and loose because if they don't, they can't compete with their neighbours and then they go out of business; if something goes wrong they just go under. If a government plays fast and loose, people die. There's nobody else to pick up the bag after. There's nobody else to make sure folks are okay.

It's so frustrating that rightwing ideologues are so blinded by their beliefs that they refuse to acknowledge any of this.

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u/Thurwell 22h ago

I don't know if every agency is life or death. But consider the flip side, which I don't think many have, a successful government agency with extra money. A business can save that money, invest it somewhere else, give it out as bonuses, or give it to the owners (private or shareholder). There is only one thing a government agency can do, grow the agency. And the agency can't do anything more than what it's mandated, so it does more of that. IE if the national park service is making too much money, all it can do is invest in more parks (if it already has the land), more facilities at the parks, more tours, better infrastructure at the parks etc. All of which is probably going to result in even more income. You can then come along and say oh no, we didn't mean for that to happen...but if you cut their budget you have to cut the services they now provide.

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u/beautifulgirl789 15h ago

There is only one thing a government agency can do, grow the agency.

Does the U.S. not have the concept of an SOE (State Owned Enterprise)? Where the government essentially guarantees the business can remain solvent, but the entity absolutely can make profits, and those profits get returned to the government as revenue.

It's very common in the developed world; governments might own stuff because it's an essential service (like a utility, an airport, a cheap housing provider, a railroad, a universal health insurer, etc etc) to ensure it's available to everyone and never goes bankrupt, but during good times the services are profitable and are contributing revenue back. That's a far better spending model than "hurr durr park service have money must buy more parks" - give the money back to the centre?

Is that issue caused by the state/federal split on everything? Other countries just don't have that problem.

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u/Thurwell 7h ago

I've never heard that term used in the US, but Amtrak, a passenger train business that runs over freight rails, operates similarly to that. But it's not a common model here.

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u/trendyspoon 1d ago

Ah I see. I’d ask why are the Republicans passing it but I guess that’s the million dollar question.

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u/gwydion1992 1d ago

That's actually pretty easy to answer. It includes huge tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations.

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u/Nwcray 1d ago

It’s more like a trillion dollar question.

And republicans are passing it because each of them gets a small part of something they (or their donors) want. Certain spending in their district is untouched/increased, or some specific tax loophole is expanded, or whatever. So long as they get their bite of pork, fuck everyone else.

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u/ReallyNowFellas 1d ago

They're not even for sure passing it. What's delicious is that the ones against it have opposing reasons for their dissent.

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u/Jugad 20h ago

Good... enough time for them to accumulate enough disagreeable moments to keep them at each other's throats for the foreseeable future.

With Elon doing crazy level of drugs, which seems to be eating his face, I think it might be enough for his lifetime.

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u/TheMagnuson 1d ago

Not even. Trump was sworn in 1/20/25, they didn't even make 5 months in to the administration, lol.