901–910 of 1001 posts
I'd be interested in whether they are fixing mistakes that are reported to them. If they won't then there is an issue. If they do then maybe this is just another nitpicking attack on DOGE.
I 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…
Do you expect that contracts with Palantir will be under any scrutiny? Do you really think Peter Thiel would have supported this administration if that was at all a risk? Lots of Americans think the government needs to be more efficient. Very few Americans think the way to do that is closing national parks, cutting veteran healthcare, and firing the nuclear security workforce. It is easy to be pro spending reform but…
I don’t know that Palantir will be under scrutiny but they are a really tiny government contractor. I would love to see the defense primes + big consulting firms like Accenture be on the chopping board.
On an absolute scale, DOGE is not performing well and it makes sense so many are upset with their performance. On a relative scale to past attempts and the 5 existing agencies that exist to audit and reduce spending, DOGE is like a unicorn and that’s why many with experience are silently cheering them on.
They have not gotten far but have gotten farther in 1 month than everyone else combined over 20 years.
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 next argument would be that most of the spending is not wasteful, so doge will fail to make a dent, as most money is going to directly help people.
Lets see!
Debt will skyrocket. They will slash billions of dollars from federal spending under the guise of "efficiency," while simultaneously cutting taxes for corporations and millionaires. The result: the first trillionaires will emerge, and they won't be the oil sheikhs you expect.
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The core question is less about the cuts themselves and more about if we the people are getting what we're paying for. 1) It kinda doesn't matter if it was caused by the pandemic or not, what matters is it needs to be fixed. Cherry-picking "since the 1970s" keeps us in difficult times energy-wise which we've attempted to correct for with more spending. If you go further back, our current ratio is what it was during W…
Thank you for responding. I'm glad we agreed in principle on #3. I'm afraid we'll have to disagree on the other points though: 1. The claim that spending / GDP is at WWII levels is simply wrong: please take a look at the link in my original comment. 2. 9% isn't nothing, agreed. It does, however, pay for: scientific and other research (mostly medical, then much smaller slice for general science, then a much much small…
2) USAID has nothing to do with humanitarian efforts. It is not "aid", it is Agency for International Development. Specifically developing "capabilities" in those foreign countries, with "capabilities" being defined as things our intelligence and defense departments can use for their missions. It's not humanitarian. It's international manipulation, with a heaping side of money laundering. Seriously, it's horrible.
4) Employer end of payroll taxes is a thing. Tax on profit is a tax on the customer. Companies would not exist if they are not profitable; they protect profits harder than they protect anything else. Therefore additional costs, including taxes, are passed on to the customer, even if it's indirectly.
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The core question is less about the cuts themselves and more about if we the people are getting what we're paying for. 1) It kinda doesn't matter if it was caused by the pandemic or not, what matters is it needs to be fixed. Cherry-picking "since the 1970s" keeps us in difficult times energy-wise which we've attempted to correct for with more spending. If you go further back, our current ratio is what it was during W…
> Corporations do not pay corporate tax, their customers and employees do. Why should we burden our productive populous with tax on their income, tax on their workplace before they even get paid, inflation due to government spending, etc? I can answer this one: Corporations come with a veil, to shield risk takers from financial liability and ruin. That’s normally good, as we want to encourage business. But the corpor…
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The core question is less about the cuts themselves and more about if we the people are getting what we're paying for. 1) It kinda doesn't matter if it was caused by the pandemic or not, what matters is it needs to be fixed. Cherry-picking "since the 1970s" keeps us in difficult times energy-wise which we've attempted to correct for with more spending. If you go further back, our current ratio is what it was during W…
> Corporations do not pay corporate tax, their customers and employees do Corporations pay tax on their profits not, revenue. Employees have already been paid and customers have already bought before these taxes are levied. (The first bit is of course more complicated; for example, salaries paid for R&D don't always count as a deductible business expense.) The market price is the market price. If corporations could r…
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The core question is less about the cuts themselves and more about if we the people are getting what we're paying for. 1) It kinda doesn't matter if it was caused by the pandemic or not, what matters is it needs to be fixed. Cherry-picking "since the 1970s" keeps us in difficult times energy-wise which we've attempted to correct for with more spending. If you go further back, our current ratio is what it was during W…
Customers and employees are not burdened by corporate taxes and this can be shown by a simple equivalence. Savings and profits are not passed onto customers OR employees, they're pocketed by wealthy investors and the c-suite.
A simple/common form of this subversion is giving the c-suite ungodly salaries such that there are no profits, on the books at least, to be taxed. In that case, and basically all others, the customer is paying the corporate tax because the corporation has shifted all burdens (including tax) away from the protected profit.
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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.
Source?
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USGS seemed like it was mostly worthwhile stuff when I was there, just operating on outdated technologies and under budget cycles and patterns that incentivized goofy behaviors because saving money in even the simplest of ways could only lead to budgets being cut in unconstructive ways. For example, imagine there's a budget of $5k and it's assuming that you'll replace a computer with part of it. But you don't actuall…
Yes, well documented phenomenon — the government spends more between July-September than the rest of the year combined. Conversely spends very little in December and January. Not me but another contractor got a phone call the last day of the fiscal year and was told essentially “hey we have an extra 5M$ in the budget we need to spend, can you make something up and we will just give you the money for a random pilot.”