Is the 'DOGE dividend' a dream proposal or dangerous fantasy?

Yes, $5,000 checks for all sounds tempting, but the idea is riddled with problems — most pressingly, inflation risks. But then, maybe that's what they want.

It’s hard to keep up with all the ideas floating around Washington D.C. these days. Trump and team have cranked up their solutions generation machine to 11, with the latest coming from James Fishback, CEO of an investment firm called Azoria.

He suggested — with all the savings DOGE has squeezed out of the bloated ranks of the bureaucrazy — "DOGE dividend checks" should be sent to US households.

Fishback posted on X:

“20% the money that DOGE saves should be sent back to hard-working Americans as a tax refund check. It was their money in the first place! At $2 trillion in DOGE savings and 78 million tax-paying households, this is a $5,000 refund per household, with the remaining used to pay down the national debt.

@ElonMusk, let’s do this! This is how we rebuild trust in our government.”

President Musk tweeted back that he thinks it’s not a bad idea, and that he’ll run it past co-President Trump.

The plan revolves around using the supposed $2 trillion in savings to hand out $5,000 checks to every US taxpayer. Sure, we all love a check from the government, right? Who says no to ‘free money?’ But buckle up, because there are a few problems with this fantasy.

Firstly: the numbers. The whole thing is built on the notion that DOGE will save $2 trillion by 2026. They say this will happen by cutting government contracts, slashing jobs, and sniffing out fraud, but without clear proof that the cuts are real or even achievable, it’s hard to believe that handing out a huge sum of money is anything but a dream.

Then there’s the little issue of legal authority. If DOGE actually makes cuts that result in savings, only to go through a lengthy process to find out that they never had the legal right to handle sensitive government data, we could be looking at a litigious quagmire of epic proportion. Who’s watching the watchmen?

Beyond these not insignificant but resolvable concerns, inflation is perhaps the most dangerous side effect with the potential to topple the entire house of cards called an economy.

Think about it — poof — everyone has $5,000 burning a hole in their pocket. What happens next? Demand for goods and services skyrockets, businesses can’t keep up, perhaps fewer people show up to work and compound an already tight labor supply, and more people chase fewer things. That is, at its most basic, a recipe for soaring prices. So while on the surface, getting a fat check represents a welcome dividend for all of the DOGE handy work slicing and dicing government fat, expect the immediate aftermath to result in higher prices for groceries, gas, and rent as the dividend checks chase already expensive goods and services.

X user Darryl Singh laid it out perfectly:

Please do not return @DOGE savings to the taxpayers. We do deserve it, but we must first pay down the debt as much as possible - the interest is sinking us. Also, this would be severely inflationary. We don't need any more inflation.

Lastly, it’s worth looking at the precedent of sending a universal sum of money to all Americans. Sure, it starts out as “dividend checks” but that’s the equivalent of a drug pusher telling a new client: “Just a small taste, you won’t get hooked.” Soon, the addiction is in place.

It’s no secret Musk and many others from Silicon Valley are fans of universal basic income. We also know that AI has the potential to replace large swaths of the workforce — think HR departments, PR departments, accounting and even legal departments in large and small corporations alike. Before long, between the unemployed masses and their need to pay bills, the flow of money — made more efficient by electronic distribution by an everything app, say X — is a welcome relief for families in dire financial straits.

The DOGE dividend proposal appears to largely be a public relations stunt. The priority needs to revolve around abandoning quick fixes and sugar highs, and instead focus on long-term solutions that promote economic stability and fiscal responsibility and budgetary restraint. Oh, and paying down the debt would be good, too, if we’re to put our fiscal house in true order.

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