DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes • Hacker News Board

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

#731

Post by onislandtime » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:42 AM UTC

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…

I think we all agree that making the Gov more efficient is a good thing but this is about terrorizing federal employees for ideological reasons. There is no crisis to justify this. We do have a crisis in healthcare which is being ignored.

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

#732

Post by bostik » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:43 AM UTC

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 US population is aging, which means that 36% slice is going to naturally grow. What do you think should be cut, and how?

The callous, cynical and on-brand answer to that question is: "the number of elderly, in the cruellest possible fashion". You've got to balance the age pyramid somehow, right? And if that sounds obscene, you're not alone.

The depraved part is that from an inhuman, entirely utilitarian perspective there is a ruthless logic to it. For many Western societies it would be fiscally so much easier if you could just ... get rid of the over-aged population. Or at least the segment who don't have dynastic wealth to protect them from the ruin.

It seems to me the US now have a government who have no problem trying out their own variant of Logan's Run.

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

#733

Post by ant6n » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:45 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #732

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 US population is aging, which means that 36% slice is going to naturally grow. What do you think should be cut, and how? The callous, cynical and on-brand answer to that question is: "the number of elderly, in the cruellest possible fashion". You've got to balance the age pyramid somehow, right? And if that sounds obscene, you're not alone. The depraved part is that from an inhuman, entirely utilitarian perspec…

Ironic, given the age of the leadership.

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

#734

Post by slaw » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:46 AM UTC

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_).

I would rather not spend taxpayers money on any of these and especially on military.

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

#735

Post by refurb » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:49 AM UTC

guax wrote: post #712

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 went to search, the us gov has a nice website about the dev. Til. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/natio... The debt graph caught my eye. I did not expect it to be that stable for so long. I wonder what happened in 1981, impossible to say.

> I wonder what happened in 1981, impossible to say.

Total federal income was flat after the early 80's recession, then grew by 60%+ over the next decade, despite the Reagan tax cuts, increasing $400B.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYFR

Federal spending continued to grow.

That's what happened.

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

#736

Post by hamburglar » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:51 AM UTC

bostik wrote: post #732

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 US population is aging, which means that 36% slice is going to naturally grow. What do you think should be cut, and how? The callous, cynical and on-brand answer to that question is: "the number of elderly, in the cruellest possible fashion". You've got to balance the age pyramid somehow, right? And if that sounds obscene, you're not alone. The depraved part is that from an inhuman, entirely utilitarian perspec…

It’s also notable that those who used “death panels” as a scare tactic back when Obamacare was being created were perfectly fine with saying some old folks just have to be sacrificed during COVID and will be perfectly fine cutting Medicare and Medicaid if they can get away with it. And, of course, they are also ok with the private-run death panels most of us are subject to by our insurance refusing to cover necessary treatments.

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

#737

Post by hamburglar » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 7:56 AM UTC

insane_dreamer wrote: post #687

ipython wrote: post #644

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And don't worry, the House is ready to extend and expand tax cuts to more than extinguish any potential "savings" - to the tune of over $3 trillion in extra deficit spending. But don't worry, they've planned for that- just increase the debt limit by $4 trillion to cover the difference! After all, now that the Democrats aren't in charge any longer, increasing the debt limit is no biggie - we'll just grow ourselves out…

Wait, I thought the GOP was the party of fiscal conservatism and reducing the deficit? Shouldn't they be reducing the debt ceiling rather than raising it?

It’s no accident that you have been led to think that. But it isn’t true.

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

#738

Post by UberFly » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 8:00 AM UTC

With it's massive history of bias and credibility issues, I don't trust the source of this story. Sorry.

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

#739

Post by ingohelpinger » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 8:03 AM UTC

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…

most GDPs around the world are printed.

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

#740

Post by etchalon » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 8:04 AM UTC

mlsu wrote: post #425

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…

Corporate income tax is a bad idea. It should be cut to zero. If you run a corporation, and a larger tax bill comes, you will keep your own salary (hence, wealth) and either pass the tax onto your employees or cut employee benefits/jobs to afford the tax. With corporate tax in effect what you are doing is handing the responsibility of allocating obligations to the owners/controllers of the corporation. They will defi…

Corporate income tax exists because S-corps have legally distinct income. If you set that rate to 0, there would be nothing stopping everyone from forming an S corp, transacting solely via that S corp, and evading massive amounts of tax.