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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

#251

Post by theli0nheart »

munchler wrote: post #186
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

"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.

[flagged]

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

xphos wrote: post #246
Sysreq2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by theli0nheart »

biophysboy wrote: post #53
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

The estimate should at least be within an order of magnitude; otherwise, the estimate is pointless. Also, I am booing them because all of the doge line items on their website are in the millions, and our debt is trillions.

[flagged]

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

#254

Post by softwaredoug »

MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

Do we spend too much? Or do we not take in sufficient revenue?

All these things BTW do have some limited ability to be controlled by the executive (Clinton did layoffs in the 90s, but kept supporting the same federal services). But ultimately most of this stuff is the mandate of congress and can’t just be canceled by executive order.

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

#255

Post by alecco »

anigbrowl wrote: post #221
dang wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd be glad if you'd do something about the influx of trolls, like maybe requiring a few submissions before allowing comments. Right now it's easy to create an account and then just post slurs on 30 or 40 threads before getting shadow banned (and those of us who have showdead turned on still get to see it).

> I'd be glad if you'd do something about the influx of trolls

Mate, with all due respect, but the first few pages of your recent comments are mostly in US politics threads. https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=anigbrowl

I understand you must be upset. But a bunch of us don't care anymore about another country's internal stuff. It's not even worth the schadenfreude. For us it's been a clown show for a very, very long time. Remember weapons of mass destruction? Remember when one side raised the alarm on electronic voting and then 15 years later it was the other side, and then 4 years later back to the first side? Remember the massive bailouts, the Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street? Remember Epstein? Borderline fascist pro-American exceptionalism Hollywood? Then ultra-woke self hating Hollywood? It's like a bad soap opera where the audience is numb to any further plot twist. Whatever happens, happens. Good luck. But please let us have this last forum not tainted with US politics. I'm sure there's plenty of welcoming threads on reddit, Facebook, X/BlueSky, and even YouTube comments.

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

#256

Post by loanedempathy »

munchler wrote: post #186
MisterKent wrote: post #29

Two points that are often missed: 1. Perfectly tracking every dollar is more expensive than having some slack in the system. There's an optimal amount, at least from an overall value perspective. 2. We spend too much, and both sides of the aisle repeatedly blocked attempts to curb spending for literal decades while our debt got higher. That's how someone doing something coming in with a hatchet and no plan to build g…

"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.

Well, we either have a despot or mob rule--hard to have both.

Congress has abdicated its role, and the rot is now so plain that even a 78 year old can get the idiot masses to vote him in to do something.

The thing about power...it only stays with the people who have the balls to wield it. Congress needs to find their balls or we'll just be back here in another four years.

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

#257

Post by e40 »

sxyuan wrote: post #248

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 th…

The reason these questions are not front and center is that the people with money don’t want to talk about them. And, the ensure we are kept busy with cheap gadgets, entertaining tv and movies and enough controversies that don’t matter to last a lifetime.

Alsr, the population is less educated and able to actually think critically about these issues than they used to be.

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

#258

Post by alecco »

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…

I hope all this is not taking a toll on you. Stay healthy, Dang. You are doing a very good job. You can't make everybody happy.

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

#259

Post by loanedempathy »

theli0nheart wrote: post #253
biophysboy wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The estimate should at least be within an order of magnitude; otherwise, the estimate is pointless. Also, I am booing them because all of the doge line items on their website are in the millions, and our debt is trillions.

[flagged]

The old joke used to go: "A million here, a million there, and pretty soon you're talking real money!"

We have since updated it to billion in order to keep pace with the times.

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

#260

Post by ergl »

rayiner wrote: post #187
MisterKent wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are not just cheering for that. They're cheering because of the stated causes that money was going to were "woke" and "not America first" The general public's understanding of soft power, a global economy, and maintaining an economic hegemony is just not there. We have a democratic Republic because our founding fathers were smart enough to realize the general public is not smart enough (or, doesn't have the ti…

“Soft power” and “hegemony” are fake concepts invented by credentialed elites. Americans are properly distrustful of those ideas. The point of a Republican democracy is so the public doesn’t have to decide the best way to build warships. But what values America should spend its money supporting absolutely are what should be decided by the democratic process.

Is this comment satire?
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