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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

#551

Post by shadowgovt »

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 booing will start when Americans realize what a delicate web of interconnects they live in. It hasn't really sunk in yet, but these "waste" jobs tend to be there for a reason, and this whole project is the ultimate exercise in flattening Chesterton's Fences and seeing what happens.

(I'm reminded of the Golgafrinchans from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They sent their "useless" third of society into space... The folks who did jobs like telephone cleaner or insurance salesman. The remaining two-thirds of the population died from a plague sourced from a dirty telephone.)

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

#552

Post by amanaplanacanal »

vkou wrote: post #341
loanedempathy wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Congress needs to find their balls Some of the GOP tried to do that a few years ago, and went against Trump. They were all destroyed. There's no longer an escape hatch from this.

They should have convicted him when they had the chance, either time they had the chance to do it. But party over country seems to be the motto.

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

#553

Post by whoitwas »

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…

GOP has made it it's mission to ensure the federal government doesn't function my entire adult life. They've been working to destroy the middle class since long before I was born. They continue with this mission now and have really turned up the heat. They're currently working to cut taxes for those who make >$360k/year and also eliminate medicaid while INCREASING the deficit by $4.3 trillion.

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

#554

Post by insane_dreamer »

cuuupid wrote: post #533
uses wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

There are 5 different existing agencies within the government that all exist for essentially the same purpose -- to track and audit government spending. None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years. It's easy to just go online and say "this is wrong these people are idiots" but what is your alternative solution? We have exhausted pretty much every other method at this point, all the big co…

> None of them have been successful in any capacity over the last 20 years.

That's nonsense.

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

#555

Post by cuuupid »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #222
uses wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

Exactly. They exploit people like the one you’re responding to as mouthpieces for their broader campaign against the institutions that regulate their businesses. As long as they can claim they’ve stopped some money from being “wasted,” these people will look the other way and let them operate unchecked. Trump and Musk are both petty, vindictive, greedy, and narcissistic billionaires, known for grifting, deception, ab…

None of the existing cuts target deregulating SpaceX/Tesla, and the proposed regulatory cuts affect everything across the board and not just Musk's companies.

When it comes to deregulation, we can pretend like this is new, or we can have an honest discussion and acknowledge deregulation in various forms has been a key component of the Conservative, Libertarian, and Liberal platforms for decades. Recently even the Socialist platform has adopted deregulation for key industries like housing and infrastructure.

You can both hate Musk and Trump (as both are demonstrably all of the things you said above) and acknowledge that ultimately what they are doing is the best progress we have had on this front in 20+ years. Regardless of how many bureaucrats parade on media claiming otherwise, we must not forget that the government is and has historically been incredibly inefficient, reckless with spending, and filled with endless waste. This was a universal and bipartisan opinion up until 3 months ago!

We have a chance for the first time in decades to actually reform our bureaucracy; instead of passing on it because of character flaws, we should seize and celebrate this as _progress_. It is not perfect, nor is it optimal, but it is far better than the last 5 attempts.

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

#556

Post by patagonianboy »

Debt will skyrocket. They will slash billions of dollars from federal spending under the guise of "efficiency," while simultaneously cutting taxes for corporations and millionaires. The result: the first trillionaires will emerge, and they won't be the oil sheikhs you expect.

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

#557

Post by IAmGraydon »

leandrod wrote: post #509
uses wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if you’re 100% correct, these aren’t the right people and these aren’t the right methods. Completely the opposite actually.

So who and which would be? Given SpaceX, Trump could have chosen worse.

I don’t know, maybe not the richest man on earth who also happens to have massive conflicts of interest, calls respected people he disagrees with “retards” and is clearly losing his grip on his sanity. I mean that’s just my dumb take, though. What do you think?

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

#558

Post by jquery »

pitaj wrote: post #540
blago wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taxes on corporations, like tariffs, are just passed onto consumers Never heard this argument before - it sounds very implausible. Do you have any studies or source for that claim?

https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27058/w270...

According to that, corporate taxes are passed through at a rate of .24. And the pass-thru decreases as there’s more competition and for cheaper goods. In other words it’s a fairly progressive tax. Tariffs are a 100% pass-thru by definition because they’re a sales tax. This hits lower income people the hardest (unless we only tariff luxury goods).

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

#559

Post by AnthonyMouse »

terribleperson wrote: post #526
cwalv wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How do you square that with the fact that spending as a percentage of GDP is only slightly elevated compared to the historical average...? Why should it scale linearly with GDP? I can see an argument that it should scale linearly with population (maybe), but if GDP per capita increases, you could also expect better tech/productivity to allow gov spending per capita to decrease. > What do you think should be cut, an…

There's a lot of other data on the site the graph in 4 came from. I put together my own chart comparing corporate tax receipts to annual corporate profits, and it doesn't look any better. Looks worse, in fact. I have successfully convinced myself that corporations are not, in fact, paying their fair share. See the CPROFIT, CPATAX and FCTAX charts.

To understand what's going on here, compare corporate income tax with VAT.

These are very similar taxes: A business takes its revenue and subtracts its expenses, the tax rate is applied to what's left. The distinction is that VAT is paid to the jurisdiction where the corporation's customers are, whereas corporate income tax is paid to the jurisdiction where the corporation files paperwork. It should be obvious what happens when you do the latter: International corporations start filing their paperwork in the countries with lower tax rates.

To fix this you need to tax corporations using a different kind of tax which is tied to some actual activity happening within the jurisdiction, which is what the US has been doing piecemeal rather than all at once, with corporate income tax playing a smaller role as time passes.

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

#560

Post by cuuupid »

christophilus wrote: post #206
cuuupid wrote: post #84

I think impartial observers have not spent time in actual government bureaucracy. Basically everything will seem like “they’re cutting something important!” Or “they’re stopping critical research!” because every government contract needs justification; so naturally they will all sound good. The data and accounting itself is such bad quality in all cases that it is impossible to be perfect at this; there are entire in…

I spent a few weeks working at a contractor who specialized in VA contracts. I put my two week notice in after the first few weeks. There’s no way I could “work” like that. They had teams and teams of people doing the job of a single person at a normal startup. I’ve never seen such bureaucratic waste anywhere in the private sector. It made my stint at Microsoft look like a lean startup by comparison. I talked to them…

Yes, I maintain anyone who has spent any measure of time in govcon will come to the same conclusion. Our government is endlessly wasteful -- this was a universal, bipartisan take 3 months ago but now people are getting successfully gaslit into believing every dollar the government spends is efficient and critical.
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