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DOGE's only public ledger is riddled with mistakes

nytimes.com

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

#991

Post by consteval »

dmurray wrote: post #726
smogcutter wrote: post #695

Earlier 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…

It's important to recognize that a large part of the inefficiencies are due to the private sector and having to work around that.

A single payer healthcare system is, by every measure, more efficient than private healthcare. There's 1 system. You don't need hundreds of billing analysts. You don't need administrators on top of administrators. You don't need constant tug of war.

Part of the reason Medicaid is so inefficient is because there's other things that are not Medicaid.

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

#992

Post by consteval »

ethagknight wrote: post #947
stouset wrote: post #692

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But if the question is 'do you think an effort should be made to look for things to cut', I'd say 'yes, of course.' This is such an unbelievably lazy response. Every single person in existence thinks there’s some amount of government waste that we wish were cut and either returned to the citizens or put to better use elsewhere. The interesting and important question which GP poijted out—and which you completely dod…

“Cut all of it” is a serious response. Yes, cut a significant percentage of government spend across the board. Reduce my taxes. Let me decide how and where to reinvest my capital and how and where to give my charity. The fact that DOGE is only focused on the items it has access to is not a logical critique of DOGE’s effort.

1. Taxes are not charity. That isn't a legitimate position and saying that will rightfully get you laughed at. You rely on taxes HEAVILY. The Interstate system alone cost us 25 Trillion dollars and I know you drive a car.

2. Your taxes will not be lower. If that's your goal I don't know what to tell you.

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

#993

Post by bamboozled »

amarcheschi wrote: post #417
bamboozled wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I love the narrative that some how “startups are efficient”. I’ve worked at 6 startups, they basically all failed due to “inefficiency”, burned through money before they made money or were acquired. I’ve worked for one major success story, and that was the most inefficient startup of all, they just had some luck and the founder was a great salesman. We literally hired morons at scale to appear bigger and more success…

Most of the startups fail, I hope we don't want that in government things

They wont because they're propped up by tax payer money :) the very thing they whine about.

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

#994

Post by presentation »

slaw wrote: post #816
presentation wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah austerity is the excuse, it’s just an ideological purge.

Both austerity and purge are good.

Except austerity won’t happen because trumps policies will increase the deficit by a lot while DOGE will save peanuts

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

#995

Post by asielen »

k3vinw wrote: post #793
onislandtime wrote: post #731

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Budgets are approved by Congress... How are bureaucrats weaponising money they don't fully control?

What specific examples do you have of being terrorized by bureaucrats?

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

#996

Post by Whoppertime »

slaw wrote: post #734
insane_dreamer wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't hear you complaining when billions were being spent on military aid for Ukraine...

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

#997

Post by Whoppertime »

insane_dreamer wrote: post #850
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.

It's not a bold prediction. DOGE cut all the easier stuff first -- such as firing employees on probationary status, shuttering USAID. To achieve any meaningful cuts they have to gut Social Security/Medicare, Medicaid or the Military. SS/Medicare is off limits. Cutting Medicaid would not only break Trump's promise to "not touch Medicaid", but would directly hit his prime voter base. And cutting the Military won't be a…

He could touch social security/Medicare or Medicaid by purging the rolls of the deceased https://www.foxnews.com/politics/elon-musk-says-millions-soc... Elon Musk says millions in Social Security database are between ages of 100 and 159. If they purged millions of 120-160 year olds from the social security database and limited it to only people who were currently alive they could make progress

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

#998

Post by Neywiny »

archon810 wrote: post #582
Neywiny wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's why I like where I am. We usually work in really lean teams. One person in each role. And usually we're making a physical product so that's one mechanical, one electrical, one sideways, etc. Has its downsides but I don't feel like we're wasteful.

Are you in the private sector or government?

I've done both (though only once each) and it's been like that both times. Maybe I'm just drawn to it.

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

#999

Post by sebastianconcpt »

ave_b_2011 wrote: post #936
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #825

Discussing the correctness in the immoral use of public money is the wrong discussion to have. You don't try play chess with a parasite. You deparasitize a patient and then do any next thing you need to do.

I’m sorry. Just one thing to clear up. Are you saying that the public at large that pays taxes are the parasite? Veterans seeing the doctor at their VA location are parasites? Is the clean air and clean water we drink, seat belt laws, cancer research, etc. immoral? I’m not following what you’re saying at all.

No, the public at large has the parasite. The bureaucratic muscle of the country is parasitized (by "low and high calories" ideology-driven subversives in disguise advancing a sort of religious war against wester-civilization values).

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

#1000

Post by sebastianconcpt »

drawkward wrote: post #881
sebastianconcpt wrote: post #825

Discussing the correctness in the immoral use of public money is the wrong discussion to have. You don't try play chess with a parasite. You deparasitize a patient and then do any next thing you need to do.

Our system is based on laws, not morals.

And is Achilles heel: to infiltrate the country's bureaucratic corpus (to make system design decisions by unelected experts that if ideology driven the population has no defense against) and infiltrate the judiciary. If you have the supreme court in one ideology aisle alone, the population have zero defense against the problem of these subjects secretly executing a pact of conspiracy against their people. Zero. It's game over. This is Brazil today, by the way. The U.S. got just saved of having that same fate.
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