DOGE slashing 10,000 USPS jobs isn’t exactly ‘government efficiency’
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is one of the worst ideas ever conceived. DOGE and USPS will slash 10,000 vital USPS jobs and call it an “efficient” strategy.
DOGE, named after the internet meme featuring a Shiba Inu dog, is an unofficial government department and the brainchild of President Trump and Elon Musk. The goal of DOGE is to cut out what the Trump administration sees as “wasteful spending” and to promote better State efficiency. However, this is a fraudulent claim, as DOGE has primarily been used to make needless layoffs and shut down diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and programs.
According to Forbes, things are about to get a lot worse, as the USPS Postmaster General Louis DeJoy is now working with DOGE to lay off thousands of mail service workers. DeJoy’s reasoning for this is as follows:
“The scale of our daily work is unprecedented and extraordinary; our infrastructure has greatly deteriorated due to years of underinvestment, and our operating practices were for a postal environment of long ago that were never adjusted as the times and our business changed.”
The problem with that is that it’s not efficient at all. Laying off 10,000 workers will only make the mail run more ineffectively. Working conditions for mail workers are already poor. According to PBS, mail services are understaffed, underfunded, and incredibly disgruntled about government inaction on improving things.
So many services rely on mail, including our democracy. Around 43% of people voted by mail-in ballot in the 2020 elections. Of course, people like Trump and Musk already believe that voter fraud is rampant, so this is clearly not a huge concern to them.
Another thing to note here is that this is not exactly new. Over 30,000 USPS jobs have been slashed since 2021, after DeJoy became Postmaster General in 2020. DeJoy has no interest in improving postal workers’ conditions, and things will deteriorate further with the USPS’s continued mass layoffs.
DeJoy is reportedly stepping down from the position soon. He’s been running the show in the mailroom for about 5 years and even made a disastrous 10-year plan to streamline postal service functions. The sooner he’s out, the better, though given the current administration in place, there’s no telling who will fill the void next.
If you’ve experienced any delays in mail delivery lately, the Trump administration is probably to blame.
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