What do you give the man who has everything? The opportunity to sell it.
Not content with being the world’s richest man Elon Musk would like to privatise any American public businesses and assets that can be sold.
As a starting point the South African-born billionaire appointed to make the United States Government more efficient has recommended that the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) and passenger rail service Amtrak be offloaded to the private sector.
Speaking virtually at the Morgan Stanley Technology Media & Telecom conference, Musk said “we should privatise anything that can be privatised”.
Referring to Amtrak, he also said it was “kind of embarrassing” that other countries had “way better passenger rail than we do”.
He compared Amtrak’s service unfavourably with bullet trains in China, saying the American passenger rail service established in 1971 was “a sad situation.”
“It’s like if you’re coming from another country, please don’t use our national rail. It can leave you with a very bad impression of America,” Musk was quoted in a CNN news report as saying.
“I think we should privatise anything that can be privatised, just so you’ve got a feedback loop for improvement, is what happens when something’s privatised.
“Basically something’s got to have some chance of going bankrupt or there’s not a good feedback loop for improvement.”
Musk however acknowledged such sales would require Congress' approval.
The man who leads the new Department of Government Efficiency spoke as Wired magazine reported that the General Services Administration (GSA) planned to sell hundreds of government buildings, including FBI headquarters.
In a news story, Wired reported that on Tuesday, the GSA published a list of more than 400 federal buildings and properties to be sold, but by Wednesday the list had disappeared from the GSA website.
The USPS lost US$1.8 billion (A$2.9 billion) on revenue of $80 billion in the 2024 fiscal year as it delivered mail and packages to 169 million American addresses.
Although it is mainly self-funded, USPS has a universal service obligation to provide affordable and uniform service across the U.S., including remote geographical locations.
Amtrak (National Railroad Passenger Corporation) reported an adjusted operating loss of $705 million for the 12 months ended September 2024 on revenue of $3.6 billion, as ridership increased 15% to a record 32.8 million customer trips.
