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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

#311

Post by istjohn »

generalizations wrote: post #305
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…

It doesn't look good for the quality of discussion here if the most substantive response to your questions was flagged & killed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43143579

Long doesn't equate to substantive.

Edit: I didn't flag it, to be clear.

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

#312

Post by unclebucknasty »

noirbot wrote: post #292
e40 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Citation on that last point? The amount of people I know who were the first in their family to attend college, and sometimes even graduate high school, makes me question that people are measurably less educated.

I believe it's more the critical thinking piece that's the problem. And, perhaps there has not been a decline there, but we're just witnessing an unprecedented cultural and technology-fueled abuse of an existing lack of reasoning ability (expansive reach, bot farms, algorithms, conspiracy theories, etc).

I mean, any actor—including state adversaries—can essentially run military-grade psyops on our population. In a "stable" environment, an inability to think critically is somewhat buffered and fallout is limited. But, in a hostile information space—intent on manipulating subjects for the destruction of their society—it's catastrophic.

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

#313

Post by int_19h »

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…

FWIW many people who believe that federal spending is out of control would say the same about 1970s.

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

#314

Post by silvestrov »

firejake308 wrote: post #298
qgin wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Number 3 can’t be overstated. Healthcare costs for the exact same care are 2x-3x what they are in Europe. Global health insurance plans usually come in two flavors: 1. Global coverage 2. Global coverage excluding United States (for half the monthly premium of the first plan) The United States in an extreme outlier in terms of cost. This is separate from rationing care. This is separate from even population health (ex…

I know of at least one source arguing that in fact, population health (mainly obesity and gun violence) explain upwards of 70% of the difference in healthcare spending between the US and other developed nations.[1] To me, this seems like the most likely explanation because I believe we have pretty similar diagnostics and treatments to other developed countries, and I don't feel like a British doctor would give me any…

It is very expensive to run the insurance companies, plus all the time the hospitals need to spend to talk/plead with the insurance companies.

When you have the state as a single payer then all those expenses just vanishes.

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

#315

Post by cassepipe »

rKarpinski wrote: post #291
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…

> 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] That might not be the best metric. Sure it's only "~13%" higher than the running average, b…

ZIRP ?

Ok, Zero Interest Rate Policy

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

#316

Post by TylerE »

bamboozled wrote: post #273
sbochins wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly charade. To actually cut the debt, it requires congress. Not just saving a couple millions dollars and posting on twitter about it. We’ll need to cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security, the military, etc. All the popular stuff that was never easy and will never be easy to cut. We’re not spending 2 trillion per year on condoms.

Won’t wiping all this stuff just lead us into a Great Depression anyway ? I’m not an expert on the topic but my basic understanding was that we (government) just decided we didn’t have any money, so everything just stopped. Like shutting all this stuff down or radically cutting it back will surely have some dire economic impacts?

Yes. These cuts will set our nation back by decades. Institutions are being destroyed, and with them cultural and institutional knowledge that will never come back.

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

#317

Post by throw16180339 »

bamboozled wrote: post #273
sbochins wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly charade. To actually cut the debt, it requires congress. Not just saving a couple millions dollars and posting on twitter about it. We’ll need to cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security, the military, etc. All the popular stuff that was never easy and will never be easy to cut. We’re not spending 2 trillion per year on condoms.

Won’t wiping all this stuff just lead us into a Great Depression anyway ? I’m not an expert on the topic but my basic understanding was that we (government) just decided we didn’t have any money, so everything just stopped. Like shutting all this stuff down or radically cutting it back will surely have some dire economic impacts?

Firing this many government employees, canceling grants, and imposing tariffs guarantees at least a recession.

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

#318

Post by intended »

bamboozled wrote: post #273
sbochins wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a silly charade. To actually cut the debt, it requires congress. Not just saving a couple millions dollars and posting on twitter about it. We’ll need to cut Medicare, Medicaid, social security, the military, etc. All the popular stuff that was never easy and will never be easy to cut. We’re not spending 2 trillion per year on condoms.

Won’t wiping all this stuff just lead us into a Great Depression anyway ? I’m not an expert on the topic but my basic understanding was that we (government) just decided we didn’t have any money, so everything just stopped. Like shutting all this stuff down or radically cutting it back will surely have some dire economic impacts?

Yup. I’ve seen 2 grand disasters like this each worse than the last. Demonitization in India, Brexit, and now this.

None of those other events had the same depth of damage going on here. America is dead, and doesn’t know it yet.

The only reason people aren’t saying this everywhere, is because this is unbelievable.

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

#319

Post by sxyuan »

newzisgud wrote: post #279
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 core question is less about the cuts themselves and more about if we the people are getting what we're paying for. 1) It kinda doesn't matter if it was caused by the pandemic or not, what matters is it needs to be fixed. Cherry-picking "since the 1970s" keeps us in difficult times energy-wise which we've attempted to correct for with more spending. If you go further back, our current ratio is what it was during W…

Thank you for responding. I'm glad we agreed in principle on #3. I'm afraid we'll have to disagree on the other points though:

1. The claim that spending / GDP is at WWII levels is simply wrong: please take a look at the link in my original comment.

2. 9% isn't nothing, agreed. It does, however, pay for: scientific and other research (mostly medical, then much smaller slice for general science, then a much much smaller slice for everything else); keeping national parks running smoothly; keeping planes in the air; shutting down financial scams; and other wonderful things like that. Like you said, it comes down to what we get for that spending. I think there's bound to be some waste here and there, but I rather like all these things our tax dollars are paying for. Oh, and funny you mention USAID - I rather like the idea of feeding starving children around the world too, with a triple whammy of moral impact, winning hearts and minds in other countries, and putting money into the pockets of US farmers. Would love to hear properly sourced arguments on why USAID is as terrible as you seem to think it is.

4. You forgot about the shareholders. Corporations mostly get taxed on profits, not revenues, so it's hard to see how consumers are part of the equation. (We're not talking about consumption taxes, which tend to be state level anyway.) And employees pay income tax - the only part that the corporation covers is the employer end of payroll taxes. Wikipedia has a nice breakdown and comparison: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payroll_tax

(Yay, thanks to whoever saved the parent post so my thumb exercise wasn't entirely wasted.)

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

#320

Post by xdavidliu »

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…

> Why shouldn't the health insurance industry be the first item on the chopping block?

I don't understand this question: how can the private companies in the industry be placed on the chopping block? By outlawing them?

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