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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

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

#601

Post by parineum »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #453
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…

> Why should it scale linearly with GDP? It doesn't have to. But GDP is a good proxy for the tax base. If the problem is deficits and spending isn't increasing linearly with GDP, that suggests the problem is with taxation. Not spending.

I don't understand this logic.

For simplicity, imagine one program like food stamps. It costs X dollars per person on the program.

The cost of that program should scale with inflation and population. If taxes and government should scale with GDP, that implies either making more programs or expanding existing ones. As an example, you'd increase the amount of people eligible for food stamps as the population became wealthier.

I can understand that as an argument but implying that the government isn't growing because the relationship to GDP hasn't changed seems to prove the opposite to me.

The federal budget, if the size of government remained static, should be Inflation * Population increase, shouldn't it?

GDP is rising faster than inflation so the services that the government provides should take less, as a percentage, of the population's money.

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

#602

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

#603

Post by IAmGraydon »

jmward01 wrote: post #203

People aren't voting for what benefits them which means we are now in post policy politics. That means that what matters is the messaging and not the actual things done or the impact of those things on people. This leads to doing things that you have the ability to message the way you want and not doing things that help people. The MAGA crowd figured this out and figured out that angry yelling is the easiest message…

This post is a series of illogical leaps strung together one after another, starting with the first sentence. The core fallacy that is obvious in your post is that you seem to think everyone who voted for Trump is part of this “MAGA” group of yelling yokel troglodytes. Your viewpoint is utterly saturated with obvious polarization. I honestly don’t know a single MAGA or anyone who would be caught dead at a Trump rally, but I know lots of Trump voters. Most of them do care about policy and they say the same thing - they don’t really like Trump, but they’re tired of bad policies and extreme liberalization of everything.

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

#604

Post by stogot »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #550
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 proposed Senate budget includes $150 billion increase in the defense budget, which already was 50% of all discretionary spending (that means after SS and Medicare as that is covered by a separate tax). This is much more than any DOGE savings, and shows that this isn't about reducing the federal budget, but about cutting services in order to fund two things: military, and corporate tax cuts (which largely benefit…

> I'd much rather my money being spent on education, foreign assistance, scientific research, etc., even if there is some inefficiencies and waste, than being spent on the military (which, by the way means that the big defense contractors in the US are _subsidized by tax payers_).

We all would, but given that Russia, Iran, China, and NK are aggressive states and all actively claim that the US is the enemy, and that the relative world order expired in 2022, we cannot have nice things. The peace dividend expired years ago

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

#605

Post by cuuupid »

yodsanklai wrote: post #201
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…

All organizations are inefficient. My company would send people across the world in business class for a few meetings they could do remotely without problem. I'm pretty sure everyone could come with many anecdotes of waste in the private sector. I also worked in the public sector (not in the US) and frankly, I think it was pretty efficient. Most employees were competent and weren't paid very well. The problem with re…

I see this take a lot in this thread, I think people do not comprehend the scale.

Your company sends people in business class needlessly, ok. The government sends people in private jets needlessly -- there are dozens of separate aviation programs just within Dept. of State each with their own planes and contracts to staff and supply those planes. We have hundreds of posts around the world, many people are getting to those mainly on charters, private legs, or in the contractor case, business class tickets billed at 2x rate under T&L.

This is just one specific example; it applies across the board, when the government spends it is on an exponentially different scale to commercial. A single database will easily cost them 5M$ -- that is ~10x the cash moved on the floor of a major casino during a busy night.

> I also worked in the public sector (not in the US)

Yes, key phrase not in the US. As a comparison, the largest spending item in our budget is Medicaid -- ineffective healthcare that applies to less than 20% of our population. We spend 4x more on Medicaid somehow than the UK spends on the entirety of the NHS.

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

#606

Post by James_K »

oezi wrote: post #428
James_K wrote: post #343

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2 is not a fact in the slightest. The American government is guilty of under-investment in perhaps every area outside of military. The notion of bipartisan climbing public debt is also false. Bill Clinton brought the government into running and Democrats have had consistently better budget responsibility than Republicans, though the reason for this is more that the Dems fund government through taxes where the Republi…

So why are the Republicans now trying to reign-in the spending? It worked well for them in the past to rely on debt. Why should they care now? Is it about funneling this money into their tax cut? Why not just run up more debt?

There are practical limits to the amount of debt a government can take on. Additionally, the government usually collects debt from the wealthy, who then make money back through interest payments. The "fiscal responsibility" of the Democrats is how private individuals actually extract value out of the government. Republicans issue debt, Dems use tax money to pay the interest. I think the wealthy have become more sceptical about the ability of of government to pay back these loans.

There are reasons why both parties allowed the system to remain as it was. I find it's increasingly true that new politicians don't understand the value of the systems they are meant to control. They see Chesterton's Fence and tear it down with abandon. Someone like Trump has no clue why politicians act the way they do. He lies and bullshits and does whatever he wants, and it works in the short term, but the long term effect is disastrous. These people are taking a private equity approach to government. Buy it cheap and load it up with debt, then sell as much as you can and let it crash to zero. This is more looting than governing.

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

#607

Post by AnthonyMouse »

LargeWu wrote: post #445
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…

Scaling with GDP, rather than population, implies that government spending is scaling with the country's ability to provide services commensurate with prosperity.

> Scaling with GDP, rather than population, implies that government spending is scaling with the country's ability to provide services commensurate with prosperity.

This is only true if the value of government services increases over time and not just their cost. If GDP doubles and the government then spends twice as many real dollars to provide the same level of services as before, all you've done is cut efficiency in half.

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

#608

Post by jfim »

stogot wrote: post #604
insane_dreamer wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The proposed Senate budget includes $150 billion increase in the defense budget, which already was 50% of all discretionary spending (that means after SS and Medicare as that is covered by a separate tax). This is much more than any DOGE savings, and shows that this isn't about reducing the federal budget, but about cutting services in order to fund two things: military, and corporate tax cuts (which largely benefit…

> I'd much rather my money being spent on education, foreign assistance, scientific research, etc., even if there is some inefficiencies and waste, than being spent on the military (which, by the way means that the big defense contractors in the US are _subsidized by tax payers_). We all would, but given that Russia, Iran, China, and NK are aggressive states and all actively claim that the US is the enemy, and that t…

I fail to see how the cuts as being implemented actually make US citizens safer from Russia, Iran, China, and NK. Can you elaborate on how they do that?

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

#609

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #550
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 proposed Senate budget includes $150 billion increase in the defense budget, which already was 50% of all discretionary spending (that means after SS and Medicare as that is covered by a separate tax). This is much more than any DOGE savings, and shows that this isn't about reducing the federal budget, but about cutting services in order to fund two things: military, and corporate tax cuts (which largely benefit…

DOGE isn't really cutting things to fund others. Many of their cuts are going to be net revenue negative. Many will cost taxpayers more of their money.

It's about gutting the civil service and staffing them with loyalists that will do what Trump or Musk want, despite what the law says. It's consolidation of power and corruption. Musk is also crippling many of the agencies that enforce regulations on his businesses.

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

#610

Post by mckn1ght »

blago wrote: post #541
xvector wrote: post #488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Sixty percent is high. So high, that it almost seems impossible. Can you provide some details? What's the breakdown?

I was curious so tried running my own numbers. TL;DR I find it’s about 34.5%-43.5% for a single person earning $100k-$300k in SF. So taxes would have to rise half again to hit that 60% claim.

According to https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#QL3tlUFIae, it’s an effective tax rate of 28.3% for federal/state/local income tax for someone making $100k in SF. For $300k, effective tax rate is 38.13%.

Then the total sales tax in Sf is 8.63% according to https://www.avalara.com/taxrates/en/state-rates/california/c....

So, for each gross dollar, you have 71.7¢ net after income tax, which gets taxed 8.63% on purchases, about another 6.19¢, bringing that original dollar’s purchasing power down to about 65.5¢ for a $100k/yr earner. At $300k, this goes to 61.87¢-5.34¢=56.53¢.

Edit: I don’t think I’m calculating the sales tax burden correctly, but don’t see my error yet. Would I just subtract the 8.63¢/$? That’d make the combined tax rate 36.3%-46.76%.

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