Donald and Elon: two immature guys running the entire US economy.

Actually his grandfather was not all that wealthy. His father made a good fortune. Trump has had about 12-14 businesses go belly up (failed, went out of business or bankrupt). On the other hand, Trump has about six ventures, personal business ventures, that made him wealthy; the successes outweighed the failures. His father provided capital for him, he made the money he has made on his own steam.

keepingquiet

Yes, a nightmare pairing indeed. Neither of them care anything about the UK economy, only the US. They will bleed us dry and strip us bare and on top of Brexit we are well and truly scuppered.

Be careful what you wish for folks- Trump is a many times failed businessman and felon who inherited most of the wealth he has actually mananged to squander. As for Musk? He would not have made his money without jumping on other people's technological bandwagons and Tesla is losing money hand over fist.

Of course, this doesn't matter because they are both seen as strong men even though they are both as human as you or I.

It was mentioned on Question Time last night that Musk has received a lot of government subsidies for Tesla and Space X.

www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html

There is a huge conflict of interest with his partnership with Trump but I don’t suppose that will bother either of them.

“Why, for example, does the MoD require 63,000 civil servants, when the army is down to 72,000 and the Navy and RAF half that number each?”

The MOD certainly employ a lot of civilians mostly as contractors for back up roles, they are not “civil servants” as most understand.

CooCooforCocoPuffs

Actually his grandfather was not all that wealthy. His father made a good fortune. Trump has had about 12-14 businesses go belly up (failed, went out of business or bankrupt). On the other hand, Trump has about six ventures, personal business ventures, that made him wealthy; the successes outweighed the failures. His father provided capital for him, he made the money he has made on his own steam.

Trumps grandfather made his living from a hotel on the California goldfields running a brothel, entirely acceptable in those days.

What happens when you sack thousands of Civil Servants, is that the government then has to bring in consultants to do the work the Civill Servants previously did. Consultants cost a lot more than full time staff. This is one of the problems facing the NHS, which is paying huge sums of money for agency nurses because they cannot recruit staff because they get paid so much more if they work through an agency.

Anyone who worked in industry during the great chuck outs of the 1980s and 90s will remember how people were made redundant, but their work wasn't and those left were expected to do their own job plus the job of several of those made redundant.

This is not to deny that there is overstaffing in places in the Civil Service, and the MoD is a classic example, but downsizing is so often done with an axe rather than a scalpel.

nanna8

Now why did they get to be millionaires? Bull crap and bluster may be part of it but it isn’t the whole story- they know how to make money. The jury is out as to whether this can be broadened to cover their country. Either way I think my country and your country will be worse off because they will focus purely on the USA and won’t give a rats about us except, possibly,where they might gain a benefit.

To make money you have to have bull and bluster, then when you get the opportunity you have to deliver the goods, if you fail the customer won’t ask you again. That applies to a one man window cleaner or a multi million corporation.

It’s easy to make money if you deliver the goods, satisfied customers will spread the word, you expand and make more.

“Anyone who worked in industry during the great chuck outs of the 1980s and 90s will remember how people were made redundant, but their work wasn't and those left were expected to do their own job plus the job of several of those made redundant.”

Wasnt that the objective of reducing staffing?, with new technology and AI, far fewer admin staff are going to be needed

GDP per head (Purchasing Power Parity) 2022: USA $74.6k, UK $54.6k.

Cannot stand either but why should they care about UK economy...America first and that is right as they are Americans....We will see if US economy improves it's Trump's foreign policies that concern me as he doesn't care a jot about Europe or rest of world.......

David49

“Anyone who worked in industry during the great chuck outs of the 1980s and 90s will remember how people were made redundant, but their work wasn't and those left were expected to do their own job plus the job of several of those made redundant.”

Wasnt that the objective of reducing staffing?, with new technology and AI, far fewer admin staff are going to be needed

in the mid 1990s AI was a future pipe dream that we now know was 20 years ahead. However the new technology was already there and that was actually used to get people to do more work because the attitude of managers was now we have got all this equipment we can access information we never had before and I think what we need to know is this, this and this.

Some times the technology did indeed enable us to access information we hadn't before and use to to good purpose, most of the time it merely generated reams of paperwork (from those nice printers attached to every computer) that was no use to anyone, but made the senior managers feel better and made more work for the people who had to generate it.

Trump has just appointed Kennedy , who is anti vaccination , with bizarre ideas on of other health issues , to be in charge of Health . God help America

Blimey, what a shower! Jobs for the Boyz.

David49

“Why, for example, does the MoD require 63,000 civil servants, when the army is down to 72,000 and the Navy and RAF half that number each?”

The MOD certainly employ a lot of civilians mostly as contractors for back up roles, they are not “civil servants” as most understand.

Thank you for that clarity, I get fed up of figures being quoted that are unsourced for us to look at and not ultimately accurate.

Why? HiscDad had to bail out his business and save him from bankruptcy because he overspent on vanity projects. Not my idea of a safe pair of financial hands.

Trump and Dad….

apnews.com/article/0452d29cd2564eaf97605ab90acc3a67

“NY Times: Trump got $413M from his dad, much from tax dodges”......

The UK is very dependent on the USA. This swing to the Musk/Trump right undemocratic moronic undiplomatic presidency wise is likely to have a massive negative economic and security effect on not just the UK but the planet itself. Musk has literally bought the US presidency to further his power rush. I hope the terrible consequences I foresee are proven wrong.

“Some times the technology did indeed enable us to access information we hadn't before and use to to good purpose, most of the time it merely generated reams of paperwork (from those nice printers attached to every computer) that was no use to anyone, but made the senior managers feel better and made more work for the people who had to generate it.”

You’re right it did generate a lot of paperwork most not needed but you did it anyway so that you had “evidence” of a transaction now that’s changing fast, you do everything on an IPad.
We opened a new bank account last year we were shown into a room given an IPad, follow the instructions as they come up, photographed the identification and it was done.
Banking has changed most of all, gone are the days you stood in a queue at the counter to pay cheques in, it’s all done online, if you do get the occasional cheque you feed it into the cash machine.
On holiday we never get foreign currency every thing is contactless, including buying an ice cream!, when I want a pint at the RugbyClub you can’t pay cash. Other industries are the same admin is digital, I fear for the employment prospects for graduates, decision making is going to be done by computers.

Whether that is a step forward or backwards I’m not sure but it is happening.

Employment prospects are the last thing to worry about with computers making decisions! & they won't want their decisions appealed, computers are never wrong you know [grin}]

How will Trump be better than Biden? Our annual inflation rate is down to about 2.2%. Our economy, which has produced record job growth of 15.7 million new jobs in less than four years, is now achieving the much desired “soft landing” — taming inflation while avoiding a recession and continuing growth. And wages have been growing faster than prices, so workers are feeling more positive about the economy.
Trump’s radical economic plan would endanger all the progress we have made. The former president proposes exorbitant tariffs on the imports of goods and services into the U.S. that would bring back high inflation. His so-called Maganomics would be a mega-disaster for American consumers and families.
Trump’s tariffs are “economic proposals that can actually cause inflation and put you into a recession – at the same time,” says David Kelly, chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, calling them a “perfect stagflation machine.”
Even the deeply conservative National Interest publication says “Trump’s tariffs would be a disaster for America, sparking 20 percent inflation or more for many goods and burdening average consumers with high costs. The conservative Peterson Institute for International Economics estimates Trump’s plans could cost the average household $2,600 a year, with low-income Americans suffering most.
The Financial Times points out that Trump’s proposals are similar to the protectionist Smoot Hawley Tariff Act passed by Congress in the 1930s that helped prolong the Great Depression. The Times calls the Trump’s plans “a poison pill for the American people, the US economy and the world.”

And all those immigrants he plans to deport? Well, deporting millions of undocumented workers would mean that businesses will need to replace those laborers. With historically low unemployment, finding people willing to work for low pay could be difficult, and companies may need to advertise higher wages to attract workers to replace deported laborers.
Consumers would foot the bill if companies’ productivity slows or paychecks increase in the agriculture, construction and services sectors, which have a large number of undocumented workers.
In 2022 unauthorized immigrants contributed $46.8 billion in federal taxes, with $22.6 billion going to Social Security and $5.7 billion going to Medicare.
Unauthorized immigrants also paid $29.3 billion in state and local taxes.
The deportation plan itself could be enormously expensive. Trump recently told NBC News that “it’s not a question of a price tag” for his plans for militarized deportations. The average cost of apprehending, detaining, processing and removing one undocumented immigrant in 2016 was $10,900, according to figures released by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) at the time.
I just hope there's a way we can stop him from destroying one of the best economies in the world.

👏 Good post, I couldn't have got that together.

Why do you think that? If protectionist tarriffs are imposed as Trump has said they will be, then the cost of all imported goods in the US will rise. A vast amount of the public purse will be funnelled to loyalists involved in the construction and running of detention centres; recent improvements to medical insurance costs and the reduction of costs of some drugs are likely to be reversed and the only tax cut actually planned is to corporation tax.
Whilst aid to places like Ukraine may well be cut, it’s unlikely that Trump will stop shoring up Israel, and very likely that the YS will massively increase the military presence and aid in Taiwan and possibly S Korea.
The child tax credits and changes to Medicare that were proposed by Harris to allow insurance to cover care in the home is unlikely to be taken up by Trump.
If Musk has his way and starts to try to busts the unions then goodness knows what that leads to by way of strikes and industrial action.
And if it is honestly the intent to try to save 2 trillion in government spending, that sounds like a lot of jobs.
So I’m always at a bit of a loss to understand why people think Trump is somehow going to make ordinary peoples’ finances any better.
I know he said he would ‘end inflation’ but whilst it might sound lovely, it means nothing, and I’ve not seen any proposals that give any credence to it.

Cossy

Ladyleftfieldlover

Very succinctly put and I agree 100%, particularly re Liz “Lettuce” Truss.

As far as D.T. and his family go, you are 100% correct without a doubt in my mind.

Bellzy

Why do you think that? If protectionist tarriffs are imposed as Trump has said they will be, then the cost of all imported goods in the US will rise. A vast amount of the public purse will be funnelled to loyalists involved in the construction and running of detention centres; recent improvements to medical insurance costs and the reduction of costs of some drugs are likely to be reversed and the only tax cut actually planned is to corporation tax.
Whilst aid to places like Ukraine may well be cut, it’s unlikely that Trump will stop shoring up Israel, and very likely that the YS will massively increase the military presence and aid in Taiwan and possibly S Korea.
The child tax credits and changes to Medicare that were proposed by Harris to allow insurance to cover care in the home is unlikely to be taken up by Trump.
If Musk has his way and starts to try to busts the unions then goodness knows what that leads to by way of strikes and industrial action.
And if it is honestly the intent to try to save 2 trillion in government spending, that sounds like a lot of jobs.
So I’m always at a bit of a loss to understand why people think Trump is somehow going to make ordinary peoples’ finances any better.
I know he said he would ‘end inflation’ but whilst it might sound lovely, it means nothing, and I’ve not seen any proposals that give any credence to it.

well said Bellzy, it may be that the USA population has a wake up call once Trump has been in power a while in the same way that we did with Johnson, a slick talker does not necessarily make a popular president.

When I worked at MOD, and similarly when DH did, it was widely acknowledged that even the most inept civil servants didn’t get sacked - they simply got moved aside. There were people there who were long past retirement age but just kept hanging on - I worked with a couple of them.
The MOD also employs a good many retired military officers in various roles where they employ their former expertise.

Let’s resurrect this post in 6 months shall we; maybe then we will be able to comment on what Trump and Musk have achieved or not achieved. How can any of you know what is going to happen?