Keir Starmer’s imminent attempt to curb Britain’s spending on welfare is a more serious and important bid to curb the growth of government than Elon Musk’s theatrical Doge performance.
That is because the UK’s Labour government is at least engaging with the fundamental driver of higher public spending – the demographic shift towards an older and, perhaps, sicker population that absorbs an ever-larger share of national wealth.
Musk, meanwhile, is nibbling at the second-order costs of the US federal government. Public sector employees are, in the context of government spending, cheap. Fiscal transfers are expensive: follow the money, not the people. About three-quarters of that spending goes on health and welfare programmes – including social security, Medicaid and Medicare – as well as defence and debt interest.
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