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

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

#891

Post by cuuupid » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:13 PM UTC

anon7000 wrote: post #658

cuuupid wrote: post #599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are now billions-USD-worth fewer dollars being taken from struggling American workers. Administrative spending is also not that high, the majority of savings are in contracts. This is related to jobs because every employee you lay off, is one less person who can spend millions of dollars. So in practice, there are now billions-USD-worth fewer dollars being taken from struggling American workers and being sent a…

This is not true, unless a tax cut is actually passed which lowers taxes for the poor. (And the poorest already aren’t paying that much in tax. And FICA wouldn’t get cut, since that money doesn’t fund what doge covers.)

Why are we setting the bar at the poor? 65% of americans live paycheck to paycheck yet pay 20-30% in income tax alone.

John Doe working in sales with three kids will lose his home if he misses a few paychecks. He drives a 2009 Toyota Camry and only buys things on clearance. Why should 20 cents of every dollar he makes go towards a bureaucratic machine that accomplishes very little? Why should 1 cent on every dollar he makes go towards funding mandatory charity and foreign aid, why should 5 cents of every dollar go towards a federal jobs program? It is easy to talk about things in isolation when we look at individual impact on budget or only look at the poor, but empathy based arguments fall flat when that same empathy is not extended towards the american workers funding this. Keep in mind we had an Industrial Revolution and fought two world wars without income tax on 90% of Americans!

FICA and payroll tax is the ultimate evil and should at the bare minimum be rolled into graduated income tax, but I digress.

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

#892

Post by carom » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:14 PM UTC

javcasas wrote: post #800

carom wrote: post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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"

The point after the first one (number 2) has some examples. The USAID money going into NGO admin salaries is another. Cost plus defense contracting. Medicare overpaying for drugs. Farm subsidies.

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

#893

Post by SmirkingRevenge » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:15 PM UTC

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #651

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE isn't really cutting things to fund others. Many of their cuts are going to be net revenue negative. Many will cost taxpayers more of their money. It's about gutting the civil service and staffing them with loyalists that will do what Trump or Musk want, despite what the law says. It's consolidation of power and corruption. Musk is also crippling many of the agencies that enforce regulations on his businesses.

The most obvious case is the CFPB, which returns roughly twice its cost to taxpayers. I would argue that's honestly very inefficient, I'd like to see the CFPB returning a multiple of its cost to taxpayers... but nonetheless it is obvious shutting it down will cost taxpayers more.

Your point is spot on, but I think it actually does have better returns for consumers on paper than that. IIRC, it saves consumers 10s of billions for < 1 billion of expenses.

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

#894

Post by SmirkingRevenge » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:23 PM UTC

wruza wrote: post #817

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE isn't really cutting things to fund others. Many of their cuts are going to be net revenue negative. Many will cost taxpayers more of their money. It's about gutting the civil service and staffing them with loyalists that will do what Trump or Musk want, despite what the law says. It's consolidation of power and corruption. Musk is also crippling many of the agencies that enforce regulations on his businesses.

Why doesn’t anyone do anything? They risk ending up as the rest of the world according to this, and everything they do is talking 1k+ threads. If everything people say here is true, US is in its own version of Perestroika.

It's congresses job to reign in the executive here, but the R's in charge have decided to let Trump usurp their power.

Courts are doing their thing, but they are slow. Republicans are already starting campaigns against judges and threatening impeachment against those that rule against them, and we're still all unsure at what point the Trump admin will defy courts and go full rogue. I think it's inevitable.

It's basically up to us now. If you have any Republican politicians representing you, blow them up on the phone, emails. Confront them in town halls and public appearances. They need to feel the backlash. We're seeing a little bit of this the past couple of days:

https://www.ajc.com/politics/mccormick-confronted-by-angry-c...

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

#895

Post by BurningFrog » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:24 PM UTC

thih9 wrote: post #714

BurningFrog wrote: post #693

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is much more than any DOGE savings DOGE is an 18 month project. Confidently asserting the end result after a few weeks is bold.

A bit off topic: end result and how to measure it is often the point against DOGE - that their “move fast and break things” approach would in fact break things, causing unexpected and excessive long term costs. I get your point, they are still active and there will be more to evaluate.

Side note here in the unread downvoted realm:

"Move fast and break things" was an early FB motto, that they abandoned in 2014. Pretty sure Musk has never said it.

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

#896

Post by cuuupid » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:26 PM UTC

wat10000 wrote: post #865

cuuupid wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this take a lot in this thread, I think people do not comprehend the scale. Your company sends people in business class needlessly, ok. The government sends people in private jets needlessly -- there are dozens of separate aviation programs just within Dept. of State each with their own planes and contracts to staff and supply those planes. We have hundreds of posts around the world, many people are getting to…

How does that compare to the scale of the federal government as a whole? Federal revenue in one year is more than the market cap of the most valuable US company. It’s an enormous organization. If waste is as a similar level proportionally, it’ll be similarly enormous. Is it actually more than that?

Large private sector companies operate on a 30% profit margin and have exponentially lower capex and opex compared to the federal government.

The federal government with exponentially higher revenue that exceeds the entire market cap of these valuable companies actually runs a deficit while predominantly providing inferior services in competing categories; while having insanely high opex and capex.

This inefficiency passes everywhere, including to their contractors — because of all the random shit, compliance, regulations in government contracting, the average margin is somehow only 10-30%. They charge often 3-100x the price of a good or service when provided to the private sector yet make 3x >lessThe scope of the inefficiency is unimaginable, something we must absolutely not accept under any circumstances if we want to have a future as a country that does not involve being a permanent debtor to other economies.

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

#897

Post by drawkward » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:28 PM UTC

IAmGraydon wrote: post #588

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #521

Right in line with Umberto Eco's item 3 in his list of common features of fascism: "3. The cult of action for action’s sake. “Action being beautiful in itself, it must be taken before, or without, any previous reflection. Thinking is a form of emasculation.” https://www.openculture.com/2024/11/umberto-ecos-list-of-the...

Ok, but while I disagree with Musks actions, more than half of the 14 items don’t fit what’s currently happening.

I see all 14

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

#898

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

cuuupid wrote: post #555

spiderfarmer wrote: post #222

Earlier 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…

[deleted]

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

#899

Post by cuuupid » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:31 PM UTC

adammarples wrote: post #815

cuuupid wrote: post #605

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see this take a lot in this thread, I think people do not comprehend the scale. Your company sends people in business class needlessly, ok. The government sends people in private jets needlessly -- there are dozens of separate aviation programs just within Dept. of State each with their own planes and contracts to staff and supply those planes. We have hundreds of posts around the world, many people are getting to…

Well do remember that you have 5x the population of the UK, and the NHS is effectively limited to about 20% of our population given that our "ambitious" target is to get the delay between referral and treatment down "only" 18 weeks in most cases. About 10% of the population is on an NHS waiting list as we speak, which should be pretty much everyone that needs it.

Medicaid applies blanket to less than 20% of the population while providing less coverage and having worse outcomes than the NHS.

I picked the NHS because it serves the same size population (70M) while having more coverage and better outcomes.

Having lived in the UK yeah the waiting times suck, I went to a doctor actively bleeding out with an infection and they gave me a dressing and said to wait 3 months for a surgeon. That’s insane but the same outcome people on Medicaid will get in the US.

In the above anecdote I just flew back to the US the next day and was treated and “cured” 4 hours after landing. But, I did that on private insurance, not Medicaid. When americans shit on the NHS they are comparing it to their private insurance, not to the state funded healthcare options (Medicaid/Medicare).

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

#900

Post by cuuupid » Sun, Feb 23, 2025, 3:34 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #888

yodsanklai wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All organizations are inefficient. My company would send people across the world in business class for a few meetings they could do remotely without problem. I'm pretty sure everyone could come with many anecdotes of waste in the private sector. I also worked in the public sector (not in the US) and frankly, I think it was pretty efficient. Most employees were competent and weren't paid very well. The problem with re…

>>All organizations are inefficient. My company would send people across the world in business class for a few meetings they could do remotely without problem. The difference is that businesses that are inefficient are wasting revenue, and eventually go bust. There is no self-correcting mechanism for government.

There technically is because the interest on the deficit alone is about to exceed total defense spending, over time we will eventually just become a debt slave society paying to other economies.

But practically the self correcting mechanism is democracy, our elected officials have been failing us. Like it or hate it, DOGE has gotten farther in 1 month than everyone else conbined incl 5 other agencies over the last 20 years. The reaction from the bureaucracy and political machine should tell you everything you need to know about our prospects in the absence of DOGE.