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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

#741
post #243
post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been posting a lot about this lately. Here are some recent posts: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130700 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43130063 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43093299 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43051836 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42978389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42911011 If you (or anyone) will read some of those and follow some of the links i…

This is starting to look like a lost battle. Can we have a "US Politics" filter at least? Thanks.

If past experience is any guide, then (1) it's a fluctuation, albeit a large one, (2) it will pass, and (3) it would be a mistake to change the design of the site at one of these moments.

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

#742
Doesn't matter. It's a propaganda tool. Go look at Twitter: It's full of right-wingers latching onto obviously false information "proving" some sort of Trump/Musk narrative. Which then gets sanitized into news articles and media pieces. Which then becomes the reason why people who live in information deserts vote against their own interests, their communities interests, and general common sense.

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

#743
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…

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.

I am certainly not a supporter of this government, but I do find it unsettling to have massive amounts of ideologically fueled bureaucrats running the government. It goes both ways. The pendulum is now swinging in the other direction. I am losing hope that it will return to the middle one day.

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

#744
post #50
post #40

If anyone has been involved in any sort of internal data analytics this is basically what is expected to happen. Data that is used in a new way tends to turn up all sorts of limitations and soft points. Trump, Musk, etc should have been (read: probably were) well aware this was coming; for what it is worth they've surely seen it a few times in business life. That being said, I doubt it is much of a factor. The strate…

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Please don't cross into personal attack.

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

#745

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue that we shouldn't expect government expenses to be effected that much by advances in productivity. Government services largely exist to handle situations that are inherently inefficient (disability, national defense, civil rights, education, elder care, etc.). What's the argument that corporations should be laying a lower share of the GDP? Due to their greater proportionate wealth, corporations and the weal…

The tax code can be looked at as written by the rich to pad their pockets. But it can also be looked at as the main lever by which the government manipulates us to get what it wants: affordable housing, high employment, cheap energy. There are a lot of real estate, business, and exploration / mining tax breaks presumably because the government wants to incentivize that activity. The book “Tax Free Wealth” covers this…

Most politicians are doing all sorts of real estate deals on the side. That’s why there are all kinds of tax breaks and incentives for real estate. It’s not to encourage such activity, but rather to directly benefit themselves and their associates.

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

#746
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 opposition against spending in itself is a subset of a wider issue of spending well beyond our means - taking on ever mounting debt. This [1] is a graph of the US debt to GDP. That's a rather unpleasant graph. The countries with comparable debt:GDP ratios (2 worse, 2 better) are Bahrain, Maldives, Laos, and Cape Verde. [2] In fact we have the 7th worst debt:GDP ratio in the world.

So the obvious response here should be - who cares? Nothing apocalyptic's happened so far. True. And the reason for that is because the US has (and to a lesser degree) retains a unique superpower to export our inflation [3] to other countries. This was because of a perfect storm of a number of factors including:

- the USD being world reserve currency (the currency other countries kept under their bed in case of a rainy day, or if they wanted to buy oil...),

- the US being the largest consumer economy

- the USD being the standard in global trade

But these factors are all coming to an end, some slowly and some not so slowly. The petrodollar is basically dead, countries are gradually to detaching themselves from the dollar, an increasing chunk of the largest economies in the world are now no longer settling trades in the USD, and so on. The world becoming more multipolar, the introduction of alternative global currencies, and such will only accelerate this trend. This is also happening that the US economy is starting to slow down.

So basically this level of debt spending is simply unsustainable. If the spending is indeed necessary, then our economy will have found itself in a situation where it can't sustain itself, and there will end up being a 'correction' that'd be far more painful than some bluntly targeted cuts.

[1] - https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEGDQ188S

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_governmen...

[3] - https://search.brave.com/search?q=exporting+inflation

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

#747
post #31
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally wouldn't want my government run by unchecked people who get the value of something off by three orders of magnitude. In a meritocracy private company someone confusing 8M with 8B is at best put in a closet job. More likely getting fired, and probably getting sued. When Jerome Kerviel was off by 5B he went to prison.

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

#748

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite debatable what the founders intended here. Congress has the power to appropriate funds, it’s not clear as a constitutional matter it has the power to compel the executive to use all the appropriated funds. Even as a legal matter, the impoundment act only requires rescission notification once it’s clear that the executive won’t use all the money appropriated for a “program.” When Congress is appropriating s…

Forget the Impoundment Act -- this is a Constitutional issue. The Supreme Court ruled in 1975 that the President is required to carry out the full objectives or scope of programs for which budget authority is provided by the United States Congress. Shuttering USAID, as Trump and Musk have done, goes way beyond mere line item impoundments. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Train_v._City_of_New_York

The current SCOTUS majority isn't afraid to overturn 50 year old precedents. Given they overturned Roe v Wade, why not Train v City of New York too?

But they don't strictly speaking have to overturn it, just limit its scope of application somehow. For example, Train was about grants to the states – SCOTUS might rule the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974 unconstitutional, and decide that the President has the right in general to impound appropriated funds, but they also might follow Train in carving out an exception to that general right for grants to the states.

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

#749

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?

You don't seem to understand how the game works.

Public sector liabilities are private sector assets. GOP is the party of billionaires and billionaires want more money, so they demand lower taxes and greater deficits.

Two birds with one stone.

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

#750
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…

I can’t even make my car payments, so I might as well eat out for lunch every day.
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