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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#241

Post by _heimdall »

FireBeyond wrote: post #189
relaxing wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence. What they want bigger is private riches through industry and church. They all believe this, voter and representative. What part do you think gets built back? Maybe the FBI, when they’re sure it can be weaponized against their enemies.

> Their stated goals are lower taxes, less regulation, less government presence. And if you believe Project 2025, which I do, however the Trump campaign tried to halfheartedly distance itself from them, lower education: Project 2025 talks of how children finishing school should be looking more to "buying a house and starting a family" than college. Of course, how the average 18 year old with a high school education a…

I haven't read 2025 so I'm going only off what you have here.

I think a strong argument could be made that an 18 year old with a strong work ethic should be able to get a job that allows them to afford a house in a reasonable timeline.

I don't have any expectation that's actually what 2025 argues, but it would be a good ideal. Why shouldn't a kid out of high school willing to work hard be able to save up for a house and a family in a reasonable amount of time? Should we gate keep that behind college degrees or similar?

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#242

Post by _heimdall »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #158
nemo44x wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Except these people have published that their real agenda is the destruction of the ̶F̶e̶d̶e̶r̶a̶l̶ ̶g̶o̶v̶e̶r̶n̶m̶e̶n̶t̶ administrative state. "We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work" https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...

Getting rid of the administrative state sounds honestly like a great goal.

I don't believe this is what Trump and crew want to do, but if that were the honest goal I don't see what the problem would be.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#243

Post by alecco »

dang wrote: post #167
torlok wrote: post #54

Why is this flagged? Even if the comment section isn't up to standards, the article should be relevant to everybody.

I've been posting a lot about this lately. Here are some recent posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43051836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 If you (or anyone) will read some of those and follow some of the links i…

This is starting to look like a lost battle. Can we have a "US Politics" filter at least? Thanks.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#244

Post by anigbrowl »

dang wrote: post #192
computerthings wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Since I just recently asked you to stop posting unsubstantive flamebait and you've continued to do it non-stop, I've banned this account. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html p.s. I suppose I'd better add that (1) no, this has nothing to do with your political views, and (2) yes, we ban accounts who are doing the same thing with different politics. Oh…

Most of that user's comments seem substantive to me, even if they're not always agreeable.

Maybe you should be focusing more effort on users like this one, who has been posing nothing but abuse for a month: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=13_9_7_7_5_18

Sure their posts are hidden now, but why are they able to post at all? Why is anyone able to post like this? It's not good for the site, but it's endemic. Equating opinionated and acerbic comments like the one above with flamebait while saying and doing nothing about overtly abusive behavior makes no sense, and is not good for HN.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#245

Post by TheAlchemist »

Except, these are not mistakes. This is every single Musk's company modus operandi.

Completely made up or inflated numbers, unrealistic timelines etc. Customers or investors buying into it, but if you look under the hood, outside of government subsides and contract, there is pretty much 0 money made from ALL of his businesses.

He's just using the same playbook now, except when people will realize that the 5000$ DOGE checks are bullshit (btw, 5000 x ~150M taxpayers = 750 Billion $...) they may finally wake up.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#246

Post by xphos »

Sysreq2 wrote: post #230
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

I feel funny to say it, but I think we have an income problem, not an expense problem. Republicans just spend money and then cut taxes.

If people believe we need what we are spending on, we need to tax the difference. It sucks to pay taxes but we need to do it

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#247

Post by cr__ »

Sysreq2 wrote: post #230
munchler wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"We spend too much" is a political opinion, rather than a statement of fact. Only Congress can change the amount of money spent by the government, so the executive branch's actions are unconstitutional, no matter how large the crowd cheering it on. This is exactly the sort of mob rule that the Founders wanted to prevent.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

So raise the debt ceiling?

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#248

Post by sxyuan »

For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions (putting aside questions of constitutionality for this thread):

1. There are claims that federal spending is out of control. How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? [1]

2. Federal spending largely falls into a few categories: taking care of the elderly (36%), defense and veterans (20%), taking care of the poor or disabled (22%), and interest on existing debt (13%). [2] This adds up to 91% of the budget. The US population is aging, which means that 36% slice is going to naturally grow. What do you think should be cut, and how?

3. The US pays far more for health care (28% of the budget if you include Medicare) and with worse outcomes on average. Why shouldn't the health insurance industry be the first item on the chopping block?

4. Corporate tax receipts have been steadily falling as a percentage of GDP. [3] Why shouldn't corporations (that benefit from a healthy and educated workforce, a safe and secure environment, a working transportation system, etc.) be paying their fair share to keep the national debt in check?

[1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S

[2] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...

[3] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1DUdb

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#249

Post by adrr »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #245

Except, these are not mistakes. This is every single Musk's company modus operandi. Completely made up or inflated numbers, unrealistic timelines etc. Customers or investors buying into it, but if you look under the hood, outside of government subsides and contract, there is pretty much 0 money made from ALL of his businesses. He's just using the same playbook now, except when people will realize that the 5000$ DOGE…

They won't be able to cut checks unless congress approves. They'll say they will cut checks, get sued and lose. They'll blame the judicial system and it will probably be a pretense to undermine that branch of government.

Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

#250

Post by rincebrain »

MisterKent wrote: post #132
turtlesdown11 wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Strong points in the face of this inaccurate, politically biased ledger that has revealed zero fraud, corruption or waste.

I am maybe cynical, but I sincerely doubt there's no fraud or corruption in the government spend. Among trillions of dollars of money being spent by people who can easily siphon some off, etc. Intuitively, there _must_ be some corruption. I have zero faith that Musk is interested in finding real corruption. He seems to be more interested in changing budget allocations and calling the removed regulations / "woke" thin…

It's also a very hard line to draw, in some cases, since you can have the right things happening for the wrong reasons.

If a bill contains funding to help fix a main street in a city that was destroyed by a natural disaster, is that corruption?

What if there's 500 other destroyed main streets and that one got picked?

What if it was destroyed by decades of the local gov't neglecting it?

What if it was included because you directly bribed the person writing the bill?

What if it was included because you did some horse trading and gave them something they wanted in another bill you wrote?

The intent there is not to argue that defining corruption is impossible or futile, but that some people might reasonably argue different sides of whether something was corruption without either side obviously being morally bankrupt.

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