Even if government were like a tech startup, you shouldn’t run it like a stupid one.
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2000/04/06/things-you-should-...
DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
791–800 of 1001 posts
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#792For 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…
> For those who want to have a substantive discussion on the federal budget and believe these cuts are justified, I have a few questions
Have you seen this? https://balajis.com/p/americas-175-trillion-problem
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#793Earlier 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.
Ha. I have the complete opposite take. That the terrorism being done here is by unelected bureaucrats weaponizing tax payers money against the tax payers like myself. And it’s gone unchecked for decades. That’s the crisis.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#794For 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 don’t think it’s about the budget at all. It’s just an excuse to purge the civil service, since it’s overwhelmingly liberals in it, so that they can swing it more republican. Deficits are just a cover.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#795DOGE = austerity measures Without saying austerity
Nah austerity is the excuse, it’s just an ideological purge.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#796Earlier 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 In fact, I’d argue that the government’s role is specifically to spend on things that are economically inefficient but nonetheless important.
Right, but theres a difference between "economically inefficient because every dollar spent here translates to less than a dollar of direct returns" and "economically inefficient because every dollar spent on this requires spending five dollars more on administering it". It's absolutely possible for a government to value investing in health care or education or foreign aid in a way that a corporation could never mone…
> "economically inefficient because every dollar spent on this requires spending five dollars more on administering it"
Is there evidence that this is what’s actually happening?
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#797Earlier quoted context omitted.
did 2 years at a medicaid federal system integrator, same, their primary program was a $40M/yr capital bonfire and it was not subtle, not a single engineer in the trenches believed it would succeed. Is a competitive startup 100x more efficient? Hard to say yes because i couldn’t deliver that contract for $400k/yr, but they lost it in the end—they couldn’t deliver for 40M—so there’s a divide-by-zero in the comparison.…
You might find this Washington Monthly article interesting as it echoes your point: "Fire the Contractors" https://washingtonmonthly.com/2025/01/05/fire-the-contractor... "Voters are right to want a less bloated and wasteful government. But Elon Musk’s plan will fail because the most inefficient parts lie outside it. ... That’s because Trump and his DOGE sidekicks both misunderstand the nature of the problem and risk…
i honestly could not find any root cause analysis in that article that i agree with. it is not a problem of “too few bureaucrats”, it is that the contract procurement process is not competitive, nor is literally any other process on the government side, including meta processes like the bureaucrat hiring and selection process. the entire govt side system top to bottom has evolved in a world where money does not matter and the contractors have simply evolved to the constraints of that interface to get at the money the way a plant grows towards the sun.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#798For 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 the q’s seems strange imo:
1. Is spending as a % of GDP the metric used to determine whether spending is out of control?
If so, 70’s was Vietnam and other things since, is that why the date starts there?
Is all spending the same?
If I had limited money and spent it on luxury cars where as before it was beans for food I haven’t changed spending but it’s not far off to say I’m out of control. The USA govt isn’t necessarily doing that though just an example.
2. If those are the categories, are the $ spent in those categories spent well?
If a $ marked for the elderly category is spent badly, is stopping that taking $ from the elderly?
3. Why should it?
Would I be wrong to expect that theoretical timeline to have 3. instead be something like why should healthcare be first in the chopping block? Kind of like 2. alludes?
The chopping block is t/f sometimes good.
4. National debt isn’t included in 1.
Is locking in CTR as a % of GDP what’s fair?
Seems that you want more taxes instead of spending cuts and to go after health insurance. Maybe that’s the right thing to do I don’t know but the q’s seem loaded.
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#799Frankly, this doesn’t matter. What matters is that an unofficial agency of the executive branch is deciding unilaterally - with no oversight - to stop payments that were voted on by Congress. Even if Musk and team were geniuses and doing brilliant work, it would be outside the rule of law.
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source?
Re: DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes
#800For 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…
1. I do not really care about any historical precedent, they take 40% of my money and there is clearly a ton of waste, if not grift. 2. All of those things can be done more efficiently. Drug prices, crappy mega defense contractors, welfare work traps, etc. 3. People eat themselves to death. RFK is going after this problem. 4. I'm in favor of simplifying the tax code and charging a flat tax to corporations, ending tax…
> and there is clearly a ton of waste
Can you be a bit more specific? I mean, I can use that "argument" everywhere.
* Pointing to a government building "there is clearly a ton of waste"
* Pointing to a car "there is clearly a ton of waste"
* Pointing to a rock "there is clearly a ton of waste"