{"id":102719,"date":"2026-05-28T04:00:07","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T08:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=102719"},"modified":"2026-05-27T15:34:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T19:34:30","slug":"any-corporate-or-amazon-cfo-could-find-3-to-cut-in-federal-budget-on-a-tuesday-afternoon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2026\/05\/28\/any-corporate-or-amazon-cfo-could-find-3-to-cut-in-federal-budget-on-a-tuesday-afternoon\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Any corporate or Amazon CFO could find 3% (to cut) in Federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/timworstall.substack.com\/p\/of-course-jeffbezos-could-find-3\" target=\"_blank\">Tim Worstall<\/a> points out the difference between what Jeff Bezos said about cutting government spending and what Elon&#8217;s hired guns were able to achieve with DOGE:<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_102720\" style=\"width: 490px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jeff-Bezos-iconic-laugh-by-Steve-Jurvetson-CC-BY-2.0.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-102720\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jeff-Bezos-iconic-laugh-by-Steve-Jurvetson-CC-BY-2.0-480x553.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"480\" height=\"553\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-102720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jeff-Bezos-iconic-laugh-by-Steve-Jurvetson-CC-BY-2.0-480x553.jpg 480w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jeff-Bezos-iconic-laugh-by-Steve-Jurvetson-CC-BY-2.0-130x150.jpg 130w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Jeff-Bezos-iconic-laugh-by-Steve-Jurvetson-CC-BY-2.0.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 480px) 100vw, 480px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-102720\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">&#8220;Jeff Bezos&#039; iconic laugh&#8221; by <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/people\/44124348109@N01\">Steve Jurvetson<\/a> is licensed under <a rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by\/2.0\/?ref=openverse\">CC BY 2.0 <img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mirrors.creativecommons.org\/presskit\/icons\/cc.svg\" style=\"height: 1em; margin-right: 0.125em; display: inline;\" \/><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/mirrors.creativecommons.org\/presskit\/icons\/by.svg\" style=\"height: 1em; margin-right: 0.125em; display: inline;\" \/><\/a>.<\/p><\/div>\n<blockquote><p>So online <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DKThomp\/status\/2057091426303832197\" target=\"_blank\">we find<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em><strong>Jeff Bezos<\/strong>: &#8220;Any corporate or Amazon CFO could find 3% (to cut) in Federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon&#8221; to fund zero taxes for bottom half\/poor.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And we also find the obvious rebuttal from <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/DKThomp\/status\/2057091426303832197\" target=\"_blank\">Derek Thompson<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>cmon man, this is not sophisticated stuff from bezos<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Elon sent all the 22yo genius into the govt for several months and they only cut federal spending by 0.01%<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>this idea that it&#8217;s trivially easy to cut govt spending is one of the oldest tropes in the genre of \u2018business guy talks about washington without having any knowledge of the budget&#8217;<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Clearly, there&#8217;s a certain difference in those two views.<\/p>\n<p>The difference explained by the fact that they&#8217;re talking about two different things. Thompson is talking about &#8220;If we assume that govt continues to do what govt does, in largely the same way, then how much is actual waste?&#8221; While Bezos is talking about &#8220;What is it we shouldn&#8217;t be doing and so cut that shit?&#8221;. If you ask a different question then of course you&#8217;re going to get a different answer.<\/p>\n<p>Now, I am emotionally attached to that second set of question and answer because that&#8217;s me. But I do acknowledge that politics doesn&#8217;t, in fact, work that way. A corporate CEO does have the power to just go &#8220;Nope. G&#8217;bye&#8221; in a way that someone in a politial system does not. Which is what largely describes the difference in both Q and A.<\/p>\n<p>The full interview is <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cnbc.com\/2026\/05\/20\/cnbc-exclusive-transcript-jeff-bezos-speaks-with-cnbcs-andrew-ross-sorkin-on-squawk-box-today-.html\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a> at CNBC:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>And so really it&#8217;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.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I take this to be obviously true. Not, perhaps, in the way Elon was trying to do it &mdash; seek the inefficiency in the current structures. But in what is being done and how. For example, from Bezos:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>They spend $44,000 per student, $44,000. That&#8217;s 30 percent more per student than other big cities like Chicago, L.A., and Boston. And it&#8217;s three times more than Miami and Houston. And by the way, New York City doesn&#8217;t get better outcomes.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>SORKIN: But there&#8217;s also a question about, you know, there&#8217;s teachers unions in New York, for example.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>BEZOS: None of this money is getting to the teachers. I promise you, if you&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re charging $44,000 per student, how much is that money you think is trickling down to teachers? Not much.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>In a private sector corporation the CEO can indeed just say fuck that shit &mdash; fire the power skirts and Hang the Lanyards. This is something a political system finds very difficult indeed. Thus the different Q and A.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Tim Worstall points out the difference between what Jeff Bezos said about cutting government spending and what Elon&#8217;s hired guns were able to achieve with DOGE: So online we find: Jeff Bezos: &#8220;Any corporate or Amazon CFO could find 3% (to cut) in Federal budget on a Tuesday afternoon&#8221; to fund zero taxes for bottom [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,831,84,28,53,13],"tags":[833,697,1584,1049],"class_list":["post-102719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-business","category-government","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-amazon","tag-budget","tag-doge","tag-jeffbezos"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-qIL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102719","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102719"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102722,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102719\/revisions\/102722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}