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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

#811

Post by throw0101d »

cwalv wrote: post #426
sxyuan wrote: post #248

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…

> 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…

> 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.'

You mean like Reagan did, bringing in the private sector:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Commission

* https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/archives/topic-guide/president...

* https://www.gao.gov/products/123531

* https://www.pgpf.org/programs-and-projects/convening-experts...

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42463355

Or Bush (43):

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_the_Inspectors_Gene...

Or FDR:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownlow_Committee

Or Truman:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_Commission

Or Clinton/Gore:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...

There's an entire agency whose job is auditing:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Accountability_Offi...

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

#812

Post by whoitwas »

cryptoegorophy wrote: post #580
whoitwas wrote: post #561

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DOGE has destroyed several agencies that were investigating his companies including FAA (starlink), FDA(neurolink), NHTSA(tesla). I'm sure there are many more, but these instantly come to mind.

What do you mean destroyed? As far as I know they still exist?

Cut a lot of the funding and staff. In other words, we've exceeded regulatory capture and now the regulators (who are already captured) are being managed by DOGE. Regulatory capture now regulated by DOGE. It's unbelievable.

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

#813

Post by codedokode »

SecretDreams wrote: post #617
stogot wrote: post #604

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, than being spent on the military (which, by the way means that the big defense contractors in the US are _subsidized by tax payers_). We all would, but given that Russia, Iran, China, and NK are aggressive states and all actively claim that the US is the enemy, and that t…

I don't think the current admin codes Russian or NK as hostile states.

Well they both are across the large ocean and it's difficult to invade US from their location (especially for NK which probably doesn't even have ships). US is surrounded by weak, peaceful countries and separated by oceans from not-so-peaceful ones. It could cut the military spending completely and still be safe.

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

#814

Post by sarchertech »

etchalon wrote: post #394
harry8 wrote: post #366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

20 years ago I read a story about an obstetrician in the USA. His premiums at that time for professional negligence were $1m per year. He would have to keep paying those premiums for 18 years after his retirement. Same for every obstetrician. Professional fees then must be set to cover those insurance premiums. Has that changed for the better in the USA? Seems very unlikely to be the same in Europe. Obstetrics is obv…

This was an argument in the 90s/early 20s. TX, where I live, implemented tort reform in 2003 to limit doctor's exposure, and decrease insurance costs. It hasn't had much impact on costs: https://healtheconomicsreview.biomedcentral.com/articles/10....

It’s because physician compensation is only around 8% of medical costs and physician services billed are only 14%. So that’s your limit to how much reducing malpractice insurance premiums can reduce healthcare costs.

Also over the last 20 years physicians groups have mostly been bought up by private equity, so any actual savings just gets vacuumed up as their profit.

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

#815

Post by adammarples »

cuuupid wrote: post #605
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…

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.

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

#817

Post by wruza »

SmirkingRevenge wrote: post #609
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…

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.

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

#818

Post by jquery »

Jeremy1026 wrote: post #525
EGreg wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a "MAGA" guy at all. (Except my last name LOL) But I do think the government should constantly be using tech and putting systems in place to accomplish three things: 1. Become more efficient (use AI to solve Bloom's two sigma problem) 2. Become more transparent (data.gov, blockchain) 3. Become more useful and friendly (online, not on-line at the DMV) When DOGE first asked people to help, I applied the next da…

[flagged]

Umm, no they didn’t? Nothing “maga” about UBI or UHC.

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

#819

Post by ThunderSizzle »

xphos wrote: post #246
Sysreq2 wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I keep harping on this - but two points: 1) Our debt is above GDP and interest is rising faster than GDP growth. Debt is fine when being used as leverage but we are upside down at the moment. 2) We don’t have the ability to issue more debt at the moment. The government has no money. They are using employee pension funds to meet obligations with a promissory note. We have negative cash flow and have run out of the abi…

I feel funny to say it, but I think we have an income problem, not an expense problem. Republicans just spend money and then cut taxes. If people believe we need what we are spending on, we need to tax the difference. It sucks to pay taxes but we need to do it

How much tax is enough? The government would, without playing a deduction game, would love to take 20-30% of my income, while having devalued my dollar by 50-100% in the last 5 years. My salary goes half as far.

Being honest, on what should be a great local salary, we can't even afford a starter home, or savings after our monthly grocery bill. The government caused this inflationary Era to devalue the debt, and your suggestion is to take more from families already struggling to stay ahead?

Such a communist. Take from the people at gunpoint, give it to the DC bureuacrats.

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

#820

Post by throw0101d »

pitaj wrote: post #542
terribleperson wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure about point four? Taxes on corporate profits might be indirectly passed on to consumers (e.g. corporations take advantage of the knowledge of the taxes to justify raising prices), but since goods and services are presumably already optimally priced, and taxes on profits aren't an increase to costs, they shouldn't be directly passed on. It would be an extraordinary claim to say that corporations are not p…

Prices are set by supply and demand. Taxing corporate profits offsets the supply curve, resulting in higher prices. The data supports this. https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w27058/w270...

> Prices are set by supply and demand. Taxing corporate profits offsets the supply curve, resulting in higher prices. The data supports this.

Reducing corporate taxes also appears to reduce what is paid to labour:

> From 2010 to 2013, the Chinese central government cut the corporate income tax rate in 21 cities for service firms whose revenue from outsourcing services offshore surpassed half of their total revenue. Leveraging a regression discontinuity design with proprietary administrative data, we find that a one percentage point decrease in the statutory corporate income tax rate induces a one percentage point decrease in the firm-level labor share. Firms respond to the tax cut by increasing their physical capital and bank borrowing while keeping their employment unchanged, consistent with a capital deepening process documented in recent theoretical models. Our results suggest that falling corporate income taxes could have contributed to the global decline in the labor share. […] Labor share is defined as the share of gross value-added paid to labor and can be measured at the level of the firm or the economy.

* https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03043...

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