Elon Musk sees the foolish way in which our government operates.
The multibillionaire entrepreneur and businessman has experienced something of a political awakening over the past few years, culminating in his vocal support of President-elect Donald Trump in the last election.
As Musk throws himself into the work of reforming government, particularly through the new Department of Government Efficiency he will run with Vivek Ramaswamy, Musk appears to be seeking the wisdom of yesteryear on how to restrain the federal beast.
That led him to share some “very wise words” from former President Ronald Reagan.
Reagan sat down with Johnny Carson in 1975, only a few weeks after finishing his tenure as governor of California, and shared his views on how to fix the American approach to government, spending, taxes, regulation, and more in the now-famous interview shared by Musk on social media.
The bloated size of government was clearly a problem for Reagan, and it remains so in our day.
“When you and I were boys back in the Midwest, governments — federal, state, and local — were only taking about 15 cents out of every dollar earned,” he told the television host. “Today they are taking almost half of every dollar earned.”
Very wise words
pic.twitter.com/5yH99l3kId— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 24, 2024
Should Trump’s incoming administration take heed of Reagan’s wisdom?
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Reagan quipped, “We live in the only country in the world where it takes more brains to figure out your income tax than it does to earn the income.” He thus suggested, “We ought to have tax reform, and we ought to start by making it so simple that you don’t have to hire a lawyer to find out how much you owe every year.”
But the problem of taxation extended, and continues to extend, far beyond the income taxes paid by individuals and households. There are many forms of “hidden sales tax” in regulations imposed upon businesses, which are then passed onto consumers through higher costs.
That is because there is an unelected class of “permanent employees” in the government that actually draft and enforce those regulations rather than the elected representatives of the people.
“The difference is, when you break the law, you’re innocent until proven guilty,” Reagan told Carson. “When you break a regulation, the fellow that charges you with breaking the regulation, you’re guilty. If you want to take him to court and prove that you’re innocent, that’s up to you.”
Beyond overregulation, Reagan offered some folksy advice on how to address overspending. “Balancing the budget is like protecting your virtue: You have to learn to say no.”
That line provoked raucous laughter from Carson and his audience.
As a possible alternative, Reagan suggested,“Any time a legislator, a congressman, introduces a spending program, he has to introduce with it a tax program to pay for it.”
Reagan also observed that all of those problems existed because people simply did not pay attention to who was governing them, as revealed by a recent poll he had seen.
“Only 46 percent of the people in the poll could name their United States congressman, but what was worse, 86 percent of those who could name him couldn’t tell you a single thing that he represented or stood for,” Reagan continued. “The same is true with the local levels of government.”
Most people agree that the government is broken, but they are not informed enough to notice the driving forces behind the problems or how they should be solved.
Perhaps that is the lesson we should take away from our disastrous government.
Ultimately, if we are to be a self-governed people, we the people must be the ones who retake control of the government.
But perhaps even more difficult is using government in a virtuous manner, by only taxing what is needed, as well as refusing to spend beyond our means.
As Elon Musk and millions of others awaken to these matters, and as they turn their attention to reform, they should most certainly take these “very wise words” to heart.
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