Tim Worstall points out the difference between what Jeff Bezos said about cutting government spending and what Elon’s hired guns were able to achieve with DOGE:
“Jeff Bezos' iconic laugh” by Steve Jurvetson is licensed under CC BY 2.0 
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So online we find:
Jeff Bezos: “Any corporate or Amazon CFO could find 3% (to cut) in Federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon” to fund zero taxes for bottom half/poor.
And we also find the obvious rebuttal from Derek Thompson:
cmon man, this is not sophisticated stuff from bezos
Elon sent all the 22yo genius into the govt for several months and they only cut federal spending by 0.01%
this idea that it’s trivially easy to cut govt spending is one of the oldest tropes in the genre of ‘business guy talks about washington without having any knowledge of the budget’
Clearly, there’s a certain difference in those two views.
The difference explained by the fact that they’re talking about two different things. Thompson is talking about “If we assume that govt continues to do what govt does, in largely the same way, then how much is actual waste?” While Bezos is talking about “What is it we shouldn’t be doing and so cut that shit?”. If you ask a different question then of course you’re going to get a different answer.
Now, I am emotionally attached to that second set of question and answer because that’s me. But I do acknowledge that politics doesn’t, in fact, work that way. A corporate CEO does have the power to just go “Nope. G’bye” in a way that someone in a politial system does not. Which is what largely describes the difference in both Q and A.
The full interview is here at CNBC:
And so really it’s a skills issue. You want to say any corporate CEO, CFO worth their salt, an Amazon CFO could find 3 percent in the federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon. This is, there is, there is so much waste in government spending.
I take this to be obviously true. Not, perhaps, in the way Elon was trying to do it — seek the inefficiency in the current structures. But in what is being done and how. For example, from Bezos:
They spend $44,000 per student, $44,000. That’s 30 percent more per student than other big cities like Chicago, L.A., and Boston. And it’s three times more than Miami and Houston. And by the way, New York City doesn’t get better outcomes.
…
SORKIN: But there’s also a question about, you know, there’s teachers unions in New York, for example.
BEZOS: None of this money is getting to the teachers. I promise you, if you’re, if you’re charging $44,000 per student, how much is that money you think is trickling down to teachers? Not much.
In a private sector corporation the CEO can indeed just say fuck that shit — fire the power skirts and Hang the Lanyards. This is something a political system finds very difficult indeed. Thus the different Q and A.
