Elon Musk Wants to Privatize Post Office & Amtrak

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Elon Musk has just suggested privatizing both the Post Office and Amtrak services.

During a virtual appearance at a Morgan Stanley conference, Elon Musk spoke about his personal experiences riding trains overseas.

“And we come back to America, like, Amtrak is a sad situation,” he noted, before suggesting, “I think we should prioritize anything that can be privatized.”

Later on, he clarified that he wants to “privatize everything we possibly can, and that would be my recommendation.”

Here are the details:

Elon Musk’s suggestions comes as the USPS has been bleeding billions of dollars per year and Amtrak struggles, losing millions per year.

President Trump has also floated the idea of privatizing the USPS in the past.

Per Reuters:

Billionaire Elon Musk, who is advising President Donald Trump on plans to radically shrink the U.S. government said Wednesday that the U.S. Postal Service and passenger railroad Amtrak should be privatized.
“I think logically we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized,” Musk said at a Morgan Stanley conference. “I think we should privatize the Post Office and Amtrak for example… We should privatize everything we possibly can.”
He said he thought those actions would require congressional approval. Amtrak, a government-owned company created in 1970, and USPS, also government owned, did not immediately comment.
Last month, Trump said he was considering merging the Postal Service with the U.S. Commerce Department, a move Democrats said would violate federal law.
The Postal Service has lost more than $100 billion since 2007, including $9.5 billion in the 12 months ending September 30. Earlier this month, however, it reported a fourth-quarter profit of $144 million. As email boomed, the agency has been hurt by an 80% decline in first-class mail volume since 1997. Volumes are now at the lowest level since 1968.
NBC News added:

Trump adviser and tech mogul Elon Musk suggested Wednesday that the U.S. government should privatize “as much as possible” and named Amtrak and the U.S. Postal Service as two services ripe for privatization, according to a source in the room.

During a virtual appearance at a Morgan Stanley technology conference, Musk told attendees about his experiences riding bullet trains abroad and said, “And we come back to America, like, Amtrak is a sad situation.”

“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 added. “So, I just, I think we should prioritize anything that can be privatized.”

Ownership structures of high-speed railways abroad vary widely. Some are fully state owned, as in China. Others, like Japan’s railways, have been largely privatized. The European system is mixed.

Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, whom President Donald Trump on Tuesday credited with running the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, said privatization would ensure “a feedback loop for improvement.”

“Basically, something’s got to have some chance of going bankrupt, or there’s not a good feedback loop for improvement,” Musk added.

“We should try to privatize everything we possibly can, and that would be my recommendation,” Musk said later.

What do you think?

Would you support privatizing the Post Office and Amtrak?

Opinions are mixed online.

Many support the idea:

But many other folks favor fixing the current system and charging more for junk mail:

What are your thoughts?

Let us know in the comments…



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