Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 1001 posts

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

#611

Post by cfraenkel »

otterley wrote: post #586
brightball wrote: post #536

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way to attack the problem economically would have involved giving everyone in the USA an HSA that was funded to allow them to directly consume healthcare services with price exposure. It would naturally force competition on price. The ACA that we got instead cemented the separation of people from the price of their service and costs have ballooned even more than that were previously. The economic approach is the…

I think you’d be surprised how little price competition there would be if everyone paid out of pocket. It won’t change insurance premiums; it won’t change the amount of investment (training and certification) needed to become a health care provider; it won’t change the price of advanced medical equipment; and it won’t change the price of patented drugs. Before you conclude that the free market can solve everything, c…

Sure there is. It's called single payer. There's no way to fix this with the current layers of middlemen milking profits from what should be a public utility.

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

#612

Post by SmirkingRevenge »

cwalv wrote: post #426
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…

> 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…

> Absolutely, it should be looked at! I don't think it's a trivial problem to solve, but as RFK was confirmed as the secretary of HHS we should expect a lot of scrutiny on big pharma and insurers.

Eh, we're going to see a lot of scrutiny on proven vaccines and other proven medications that RFK harbors a lot of delusional beliefs about, because he's a conspiracy addled pudding-brained nutjob.

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

#613

Post by cuuupid »

sxyuan wrote: post #209
cuuupid wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are good questions that are easy to answer once you’ve spent time in gov: - it is very hard to go thru every project and generally not worth it, it seems like they are sorting by contract vehicle size. there are 120k+ contracts spit out by the government every fiscal year alone so this is a monumental effort - the DEI programs are probably a PR thing, generally speaking though they accomplish essentially nothin…

You really think that reducing IRS funding will reduce audits on the bottom 80%, and not the top 20%? If you're going to go around telling people they've been gaslit (using a straw man, I might add), you might want to check your own biases first.

Yes! The IRS budget has nearly doubled in the last decade, primarily to increase their workforce and use manpower to focus on shotgunning low-yield audits.

High-income audits are difficult to conduct. To increase receipts, it is far easier to just conduct more easy, low-yield audits. This is the optimization they are making, and in service of their mission (maximizing revenue) it is technically correct.

Instead of picking your favorite logical fallacy to throw at me, you can go look this stuff up yourself to confirm.

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

#614

Post by akoboldfrying »

jfim wrote: post #608
stogot wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

Not OP, but I don't think the cuts will do that. I think the additional defence spending might, though, at least w.r.t. Russia and China.

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

#615

Post by AnthonyMouse »

unclebucknasty wrote: post #523
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? I can see an argument that it should scale linearly with population (maybe) That does seem more intuitive, but I think throwing GDP in the mix is intended to measure something different—kind of our theoretical ability to bear the cost. > but if GDP per capita increases, you could also expect better tech/productivity to allow gov spending per capita to decrease. To some degree,…

Medicare is very much not a direct transfer. It's highly dependent on the cost of providing healthcare, which, if reduced (e.g. through regulatory reform) would allow the same value in benefits to be provided at a lower cost.

Social security is a direct transfer, but it's also... not a very well-targeted program. The nominal purpose is to prevent indigent retirees from being on the street, but then it not only makes payments to the retired Bill Gates, those payments are larger than the payments people who had made less money will receive. A major efficiency improvement would cause everyone to receive the same payments. That would face obvious opposition from the affluent retirees who are currently receiving payments and spending them on luxury vacations etc., but it could certainly save a lot of money without at all compromising the goal of the program.

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

#616

Post by cuuupid »

FireBeyond wrote: post #177
cuuupid wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are good questions that are easy to answer once you’ve spent time in gov: - it is very hard to go thru every project and generally not worth it, it seems like they are sorting by contract vehicle size. there are 120k+ contracts spit out by the government every fiscal year alone so this is a monumental effort - the DEI programs are probably a PR thing, generally speaking though they accomplish essentially nothin…

> not all outgoing money has been frozen, idk how this rumor got started, it’s very specific and generally just foreign aid No, that's absolutely not true. My partner is the accounting manager for a university. All their access to federal funding was turned off for a couple of days, and several grants (which they could draw from and get overnight) have not shown up in several weeks (specifically there are some that e…

I said `generally` not `exclusively` and you are selecting one very specific application of funding to generalize against all federal funding.

I literally analyze this stuff for work, there is barely a 3-5% contraction in spending.

This is such an insane rumor too because it takes 10 seconds to disprove it: https://www.usaspending.gov/search/?hash=8980ee6820c47f96a19...

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

#617

Post by SecretDreams »

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 don't think the current admin codes Russian or NK as hostile states.

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

#618

Post by alabastervlog »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #535
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…

Not from USA but please explain 28% healthcare? I thought health care is not free and people pay ton of money from their pocket?

The following categories of people have much or all of their healthcare expenses covered by the government:

1) Military (and their families)

2) Retired military.

3) Government workers (all levels of government—not all paid out of the federal budget, but paid by public dollars nonetheless; this includes teachers. To be clear, these folks all pay quite a bit themselves, too, but their insurance is covered by the taxpayers. This isn’t a complaint, just an observation)

4) Many of the very poor (Medicaid, CHIPS)

5) The old (Medicare)

6) The disabled (Also Medicare)

7) Elected officials.

Probably a few more groups I’m forgetting about.

This ends up being a large proportion of all people in the US.

On top of this, the government funds things like healthcare research.

End result, our government spends as much per capita as some OECD states do to provide universal healthcare… but we spend that much and don’t cover everyone.

Part of the reason the math works the way it does is that the government covers a lot of the costs for some of the most-expensive groups of people (old, disabled, veterans with extra wear n tear if not outright injuries).

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

#619

Post by pwagland »

cwalv wrote: post #426
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…

> 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…

>> 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.

Over time it _can't_ scale linearly with population, unless you decide to not adjust for inflation. It _could_ scale with population and inflation, assuming that you agree that you don't want more services from your government.

Don't forget, a percentage of that GDP increase is just inflation.

Most people, as they get richer, want to have services increase, as they can afford to pay more. For example, they go to nicer restaurants, nicer hotels, maybe they get a massage, where previously they would not have, etc.

This is largely also true of a population. We expect that our children will be better educated. We expect better roads/bridges/other infrastructure. Heck, we might even expect better public infrastructure such as trains, buses, etc.

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

#620

Post by cuuupid »

croes wrote: post #214
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…

Imagine you know you are sick. Doge is the one recommending bloodletting and brushing with burning straw. The issue is rarely that neither side can name the problem but what is claimed to be the reason and therefore the solution.

I will raise you a more direct analogy, let's imagine you have a deep wound in your arm and are actively bleeding out.

There are 5 doctors who you have paid to treat you; they came, performed some tests, confirmed you are wounded, but don't know how to patch you up.

DOGE comes along and says well, what if we amputate the arm and cauterize it?

This will stop the bleeding, but you will lose an arm. That sucks, there is probably a method to treat you to stop the bleeding and prevent the loss of an arm, but nobody has figured it out and you are going to run out of blood.

Do you amputate or choose to bleed to death?

Post reply on HN