The Doge and the DOGE

In 1577, at age 81, Sebastiano Venier was elected Doge of The Most Serene Republic of Venice (La Serenissima Republica de Venezia) after a distinguished military career, during which he commanded the Venetian fleet at the Battle of Lepanto, the largest naval battle in all of history. That battle saved Christian Europe from the Ottoman Turks, and secured Venetian control of the Eastern Mediterranean trade routes for two more centuries.

The Doge, a title derived from the Latin word for Leader, was the head of state and head of government, like the U.S. President. The Venetian Republic was nominally a Republic, with a legislative body and elected leader, but it was really an oligarchy, with both economic and political power wielded by a small group of the richest merchants of the city-state. According to a study by the Italian scholar Guido Alfani published in 2017, the share of wealth held by the richest 10% of Venetians held steady at about 50% from about 1350 to when Venier became Doge. After Venier’s short term as Doge, however, all the domains of the Republic of Venice entered a long period of economic stagnation, steady monotonic growth in economic inequality, and low and worsening rates of social-economic mobility. The share of wealth held by the top 10% rose from 50% to 80% between 1600 and 1800. This was the major contributing factor to the fall of the Republic.

Fast forward to today. One of the first decisions made by President-elect Donald Trump after his election last November was to announce his intention to create a new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and nominate as its head the richest person on the planet, Elon Musk. Another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy, was nominated to co-head DOGE with Musk.

Of course, there are several differences between the Venetian Doge and the U.S. DOGE. First, the President does not have the constitutional authority to create a new government department; only Congress can do that, and they have given no indication that this is what they intend to do. Second, Musk was not elected, nor does he come to his new position with any record of service to the Republic, certainly nothing at all comparable to Venier’s.

These differences, however, are not significant. It is the similarities between the Venetian Doge and the American DOGE that are important and merit attention. The most significant similarity is the accelerating trend of the ultra-wealthy concentrating more and more economic and political power in their own hands.

According to an investigative report published last week by the New York Times, Musk’s plan for DOGE is to place one or two DOGE representatives inside every department and agency of the federal government, tasked with finding and recommending cuts to be made to the agency’s budget. The main purpose of DOGE is, as stated by both Trump and Musk, to cut wasteful government spending. Musk has said that his goal is to cut two trillion dollars out of the federal budget, a sum that accounts for nearly all discretionary spending.

There are two assumptions made by Trump and Musk about cutting government spending that are demonstrably false. The first is that a huge fraction of government spending is wasteful. The second is that government over-spending is what leads to ballooning debt and economic stagnation. The truth is that our debt burden and economic woes are predominantly the result of deliberate policies of the Republican Party. It all started back in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan and the so-called “Reagan Revolution” he ushered in. The Party’s focus shifted to lowering taxes, especially on the rich and corporations; vastly increasing defense spending; cutting funding for health, education, welfare, and infrastructure; rolling back government regulation of business, including non-enforcement of anti-monopoly laws; and neutering the economic and political power of labor unions. It is the triple whammy of the Reagan tax cuts, the George W. Bush tax cuts, and the first-term Trump tax cuts, in combination with increased defense spending, that has led us down the same path that the Venetian Republic went down after the battle of Lepanto.

Federal Reserve data show that the share of wealth in the U.S. held by the top 10% has risen from about 60% in 1980 to nearly 80% today. Thus, the obscene levels of wealth inequality that took the Venetians 200 years to achieve have been achieved by the U.S. in only about 50 years. The DOGE, with its focus on further tax cuts and defunding government, will surely only make the problem worse.

Jeff Colvin is a research physicist and co-chair of Gettysburg DFA (www.gettysburgdfa.org). He lives in Gettysburg.