To be fair, they are drawing from bad data so it shouldn't be a surprise.
DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
661–670 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#662Earlier 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…
> 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.
And we've devolved into ad hominem arguments 2 replies in. I don't think this is the forum
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#663Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. Agreed. 2/3. Then perhaps the US should elect representatives who will expand Medicare to more people. (Or go back in time and get the public option added back to Obamacare.) Unfortunately, instead we have an increasing number of people using Medicare Advantage, essentially a private wrapper around a public insurance plan, which costs taxpayers 22% more per participant. 4. Are we looking at the same graph? The rat…
4. Sorry, been flat for 40 years not 50 years. > The economy has grown substantially; corporate tax contributions, not so much. Hey wait a second. Why should the PERCENT of corporate tax contributions increase as the economy grows? That doesn't make any sense. Corporate tax percent has been basically flat for 40 years. The absolute value of corporate contribution has, of course, increase substantially alongside GDP.…
I don't have time to dig into the history of US corporate tax rates, but two things:
1. The effective corporate tax rate has been decreasing over time. Corporations are enormously profitable, and contributing a smaller and smaller share of those profits over time. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...
2. The corporate tax rate was cut by the last Trump administration in 2017, which also removed tax brackets and made the rate uniform. So even the nominal rate hasn't been flat.
But at the end of the day, I actually agree with you. There are other ways to raise revenue, and the US needs to decide if it wants to pay to support its old people, its poor people, and its military. Right now, it seems like the answer is trending towards "no".
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#664[dead]
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#665For 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…
> 4. Corporate tax receipts have been steadily falling as a percentage of GDP. [3] Why shouldn't corporations (that benefit from a healthy and educated workforce, a safe and secure environment, a working transportation system, etc.) be paying their fair share to keep the national debt in check? I'd be incredibly careful assuming that lower tax receipt from corporate income is due to lower tax rates. Why? Because lots…
I think you're only half right. Yes, the nominal rate is far from the only thing that determines corporate income tax receipts. But in practice, what you see is that the effective tax rate has been steadily dropping. That is, corporations are more and more profitable, and contributing a smaller and smaller fraction of those profits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_tax_in_the_United_St...
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#666Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 Soc…
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Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#667I 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…
> it’s insane watching everyone around me get gaslit into thinking the government is actually efficient.
It's equally insane to me that people think the private sector is somehow efficient. The amount of resources used to feed profit alone are a huge waste.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#668For 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…
2. Techbros are young and they dont care about old people.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#669Sounds like waste, fraud, and abuse to me
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#670For 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 going back to at least the 1970s, with the main deviation in the past few years coming from the after-effects of the pandemic? To begin with, that is a chart of federal spending as a percent of GDP . Since 1960, real GDP per capita has increased by 360%, so if real government spendi…
Thanks for the response. I think we agree on a fair amount - in particular, I absolutely think Medicare and Medicaid can and should be made more efficient. I'm doubtful, however, that an administration that tries to antagonize its civil servants at every turn and an organization like DOGE is going to do the kinds of things you're suggesting. At the end of the day, I don't efficiency is really even the goal for them.
Regarding insurance companies, I was writing a bit hastily - my train of thought is that providers are able to charge obscene amounts largely because insurance companies pass on these costs to consumers, who have little choice (and only see the result as steadily rising premiums). Meanwhile, these government programs end up paying the same kind of increasing costs to health care providers.
On your first point, I think sibling comment threads already have some good discussion about why it may make sense for spending to keep pace with GDP.