Note to Elon

Dear Mr. Musk –

If you are taking a minute to read this, thank you: I know you’ve set missions for yourself that you apply yourself to very assiduously, and that you are very selective in how you direct every minute of your energy & attention. The disillusioned American people just handed team Trump an opportunity to fulfill its hopeful promise to them. But if it doesnt, the groundswell of conservative pragmatism that has swept through the jaded populace will dilute once again. This is a rare opportunity to seize upon, but I am afraid that what Trump promised will impossible for him to him fulfill. Your have rightly highlighted that what America needs to gain its longterm legs again is for everyone to be willing to go through a period of austerity: a combination of spending reduction and federal revenue gathering that together funds a period of debt paydown while Americans willingly bear a contracted economy and lifestyle until its done. Although Trump’s tax cuts will be stimulative, that and his tariffs (and I fear your bureaucracy-cutting) will be insufficient to fund an adequate paydown themselves. His campaign basically ignored our ugly and very serious debt issue altogether. Biden ran up the national debt more than any other president, in second-place was Trump during his first administration.

I love that we now have private sector businesspeople in charge, but Trump is not you. When he filed BK he still was driving around in limousines and living large; yet when Tesla was on the ropes for three years you slept under a desk on the CA & NV factory floors. You knew how to lead your team by-example so that they held morale and willingly stayed with your organization bearing hardship through a tough period with you. Trump and you are both indefatigueable and foreigners to fear, and you both say things that seem impossible to accomplish. But he is boisterous and I fear overpromising. You seem to be accomplishing your ‘impossible’ goals, however I dont see how Trump can ‘bring America back’ by being pollyanish about the debt problem.

In preparation for your own DOGE role in his administation, I suggest you examine the experiences of the Reagan administration. In his 1980 campaign, he promised to eliminate the Depts. of Energy and Education, and effect many other expense cuts; he was unable to deliver on any of it. I doubt that Trump will be willing to get real with American people all of a sudden to do anything economically besides the debt-ignoring things he pledged. But if you can gain the ear of anyone who can influence him, I think it would be worthwhile to put-forth some innovations for tackling the debt issue.

One person I consider worth listening to, who has thought and talked about this problem, is Martin Armstrong, who has been an economic advisor to banks, governments, and major institutions, and whose 35 year-old AI economic forecasting model, Socrates, has laid-down a stunningly-accurate track-record (e.g., it predicted the 1st Trump presidency and it predicted the Russian meltdown 11 year in-advance to-the-day(!)). For injecting new liquidity, he says that printing money is less harmful now than raising taxes. However, his central idea for ameliorating our national debt is to implement a debt-equity swap to convert holdings in public Treasury debt into equity holdings in private corporations (look-into this interview at the 16-minute mark). Such swaps have been used in the corporate arena to convert debtholders in a company into its stakeholders, as well as to occasionally swap-out the federal debt for a couple of smaller nations. I must admit that I personally dont understand the details of a public-for-private swap, but because I do respect Marty’s work I would love for someone in the administration to engage him and ask him to explain them ( https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/ ).

Marty gave up on advising governments years ago because his experience with them was always the same: They would call him in, by-himself or as a member of a panel, to hear suggestions on economic policy, then afterwards they would ignore all of it and continue doing what they originally wanted to regardless; the consults were always just a dog-&-pony show to give the appearance that the politicians were listening. However, after Trump’s win, I suspect he may be willing to try to convey some ideas to the administration once again.

The American people became so spoiled by prosperity and ease of lifestyle that they became completely divorced from worrying about essentials like food & energy production, as well as maintenance of sustainable & efficient military and healthcare systems. They became so entitlement-minded about these things that many became captivated instead by things like imaginary genders & fantasy-based ideologies. All Americans just dodged a huge bullet by electing team Trump, but they are still soft and need to learn how to get tough to endure a badly-needed period of austerity period to assure a strong, stable society for the future. So-far, that has been something that no politician has dared to tell them. But as I said, if temp Trump also doesn’t, the inevitable consequences will manifest and this great groundswell of pragmatism may be squandered for the final time.

Again, thank your for time.