Not sure why this really matters a ton if they announced a 100+ billion pentagon budget increase.
There have been multiple errors posted in this thread, and I don't know where those numbers are coming from since the budget is public record. The '25 budget has not yet been approved, but the request is $8 billion more last year, not $100 billion.
You're right that Trump's original request for 2025, and what Congress has been working on was not bumping up to a trillion.
https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/space-explor... https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/e... | https://archive.is/2025.04.06-135244/https://www.washingtonp... https://freebeacon.com/issues/emails-epa-rushed-to-resolve-t... “Who is John Galt?” /s He is Schrödinger's Entrepreneur: a self made man when the ego and cult calls for…
Most of those subs linked are from direct negotations from the state, and they are in the form of tax incentives, not cash in account. How are you going to use that against a company that nevada agreed to give them X amount of tax incentives over a year if they build a giga factory there? Using that as a justification that "tesla only lives because of tax payer money" is ridiculous. Also, poking around the SpaceX dat…
I am not here to talk you out of your mental model around the cult of Elon. His companies have received almost $40B in various forms of government support, those are the facts. He is a skilled operator, able to whip teams of engineers to success and distort reality persuasively to customers and investors alike, but his ventures would not have survived without the government support he’s received.
On the face of it cutting huge IT govt contracts sounds like a good choice to reduce waste, but with this administration I'm expecting any savings to be funneled to Grok/xAI/Elon.
So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.
We know damn well all these stories will do is trigger "muh Trump" and "muh Elon" responses. Especially from non-Americans who have no idea how their own government works or what it's doing.
I'm no fan of the Pentagon and certainly think it's a money sieve, but why are you asserting that this $5.1B is "actual waste" and also not imaginary?
They're not, they're saying that GP imagines genuine waste-saving will happen, when in fact it's more likely to be fabricated "waste" conjured up by Elmo and his army of teenagers.
On the face of it cutting huge IT govt contracts sounds like a good choice to reduce waste, but with this administration I'm expecting any savings to be funneled to Grok/xAI/Elon.
So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.
How would you know it is actual waste? This government has a track record of cutting things regardless of their importance, so you can't rely on the fact they did it alone, so what is your source?
So you are comparing existing, actual waste with your "imaginary" waste that might or might not happen... Go easy on the kool aid.
I don't totally trust this DOGE crew and think we should keep a hawks eye on them but the whole "they are cutting waste so they can funnel the money to themselves!" conspiracy theories making the rounds are pretty bizarre... And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy? I sure hope I'm wrong.
> And to what end, aren't many of these people already extremely wealthy?
I don't know, I really don't know. To this day I can't imagine the day I become a president of a big country I tell my citizens "BUY MY COINS AND THOSE OF MY WIFE!". It's difficult to imagine on so many levels. But yet this guy is doing it. So no conspiracy theory is too weird to at this point.
Yes but do you really believe Deloitte isn’t showering them with bribes and bending the knee to keep these contracts? It’s not about who bends and who doesn’t. They all will. Even Tim Cook who famously wears his politics on his sleeve has completely bent the knee to Trump. Money talks.
Yes, the president has made it clear through his actions that $1m will make him reconsider who's an enemy and who's a friend and any corporation that hasn't made a donation yet is probably calculating what the ROI would be and how big a donation to make.
Wait are you telling me that Dana White was put on the board for Meta as a favor and not his incredible social media acumen?
> we do waste a ton of money on consultants I bet the median skill of a Deloitte consultant is higher than that of the average government office worker.
I would take that bet. First, government office workers have a higher bar to entry. While I've heard criticism of them being myopic, it was rarely that they were lacking intelligence. Deloitte consultants have a much wider variance. They too are capped on how much they can be paid, but they do not get the benefits of government service (e.g. pensions.) They are shuffled from subcontractor to subcontractor and the pro…
As someone who has worked in the federal government, alongside other federal workers and deloitte consultants, you would lose this bet undoubtedly.
"higher bar to entry" -> true civil service style testing for jobs is basically illegal in the feds and they have to give massive preferences to various interest groups.
> we do waste a ton of money on consultants I bet the median skill of a Deloitte consultant is higher than that of the average government office worker.
No chance. The median consultant is a fresh graduate. The median government office worker actually knows something.
I have met plenty of fresh graduates who know more and are much more productive than older people.