Just to be clear, the US Government isn't stupid - there is a constituency for every single dollar spent. Opaqueness is a feature not a bug.
What you call “waste”, someone else calls “income”.
It's like Elon Musk tweeting about how the tax code needs simplifying:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1857919131464478752
Of course it does. But every loophole and tax break comes with an influential constituency attached to it.
Also the complexity isn't all tax breaks and loopholes. Much of it comes from the need to precisely specify things.
I remember several times when in my tax classes in law school looking at the history of complicated provisions and finding they started out as short and simple provisions whose meaning was obvious to anyone with common sense.
But then people would find ambiguities that could give them a favorable tax result. There would be a court fight over it, and eventually the provision would be change to be more precise. And so what had been short and simple because longer and more complicated.
I don't remember all the details (law school was 30+ years ago and afterwards I decided I'd rather go back to programming than become a lawyer), but I remember the overall gist of one example.
Some big company around the 1930s or so came up with a clever idea. Next time they were going to pay a dividend instead they did a fractional stock split, such as 1.01 to 1, immediately followed by a mandatory fraction buyback which resulted in each shareholder getting the amount of money they would have gotten if a dividend had been declared, and with no change in each shareholder's percentage ownership of the company unchanged. The company suggested that shareholders report that money as capital gains.
The IRS said it was really a dividend, and the IRS won that dispute. The tax code and/or regulations were updated to reflect that. But there are legitimate buybacks that really should get capital gains treatment, and so those updated rules had a bunch of clauses and steps to go through to apply them to any specific case.
Influential constituencies like poor people or homeowners or anyone with a 401k.
Weird to lump in poor people with people with tax advantaged assets. Poor people generally take the standard deduction, so don’t interact with most loopholes or tax breaks.
The standard deduction is a tax break.
I think there's a big difference between policies that benefit vulnerable people and those that benefit powerful people and corporations. It's a false equivalency.
(Policies regarding 401k's and homes can affect powerful people too.)
I agree. The tax code should benefit those most in need. It should also incentivize investment in the country through homeownership and retirement savings. But these are the reasons the tax code will never be “simple”. I’m all in favor of increasing taxes on the wealthy. But I’m not certain “simplification” will accomplish that. Or even that simplicity is desirable in our tax code.
One of the oldest examples of tax simplification is the flat income tax. This is extremely regressive and disadvantages the poor and middle class. Any exemption would be “complication”.
If there’s good and bad complication then simplicity is the wrong dimension on which to focus.
> I’m not certain “simplification” will accomplish that.
I think it helps democratically - people understand the code and could believe in its fairness.
> One of the oldest examples of tax simplification is the flat income tax. This is extremely regressive and disadvantages the poor and middle class.
I agree, but that's also a perversion of 'simplification'. If you follow that logic, the even simpler tax would be that everyone pays the same amount, not the same rate. E.g., everyone pays $10K, no matter what.
Obviously that's ridiculous, and so is the flat (rate) income tax. Simplicity and fairness is not equal tax or equal rate, but equal sacrifice.
> I think it helps democratically - people understand the code and could believe in its fairness.
Ok but to what benefit? Progressive tax codes are both complex and fair.
> I agree, but that's also a perversion of 'simplification'. If you follow that logic, the even simpler tax would be that everyone pays the same amount, not the same rate. E.g., everyone pays $10K, no matter what.
Ok, then what is true simplification?
This is where I don’t find the argument that taxes need to be simple compelling. What’s the benefit?
I spelled out a benefit in the first line. I don't understand you repeating the question.
Maybe we shouldn't be using things like taxes as a way to incentivize behavior. If we used taxes as just taxes maybe it would be easier to simplify the rules fairly and without having to endlessly litigate the meaning of each word and category involved.
> If we used taxes as just taxes maybe it would be easier to simplify the rules fairly
I agree, though using taxes is an efficient way to incentivize: If you want to fund home ownership, you can either identify each homeowner, cut checks, and mail them; or you can achieve a similar result by reducing taxes for homeowners.
I'm not sure the former isn't worth the extra hassle, for the reason you describe.
Why shouldn’t we use taxes as an incentive? What should be used instead? How do we account for externalities?
Why is simplicity desirable in the tax code? Who does it benefit and how?
I suppose. No one likes to be taxed. But those people aren't rich enough to evade them. Well, most of them.
Unironically yes. In a democracy any sizable voting bloc is an influential constituency. Just try to cut current social security payments and you'll see they are no joke.
100%
I've seen it first hand.
Audits are about the journey, not the destination.
Maybe it’s all about the auditor friends we made along the way?
Casual Stormlight Archive reference I see.
The "journey not destination" meme has been around much longer than that https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/08/31/life-journey/
I will confirm that I have no idea what storm light is
And it's not a journey that the DoD wants you to ask about either.
If you've never seen the DOD contracts page [1] published daily, it's worth a look. The numbers, as you'd expect, are eye popping. The military industrial complex is chugging along nicely.
The DOD has to spend $2.3 billion dollars a day for every day of the year. That's $1.6 million per minute, 24 hours a day.
How can they possibly spend that much? The daily contracts page shows you a good chunk of it. And that's just for external expenses - not counting the costs of 1.4 million active service members and their infrastructure and equipment.
So, honestly? I'm not super surprised they might have issues keeping track of all that money.
> The numbers, as you'd expect, are eye popping.
What exactly was eye popping? I took a quick look, and while the numbers are large, I don't have a sense they are larger than they should be. The first for 15-Nov is a contract for roofing for the Army for $99MM. A number of firms are competing for that, and none of these firms sounds like "the military industrial complex". One is Roofing Resources from Pennsylvania. Its page states that it is "certified women-owned small business" [1]. Do you find anything nefarious with that?
Depends. How many square feet of roof are they doing? At $10 per sq ft, thats 10M sq feet.
Also, what "small business" is doing those kinds of numbers, especially in a single contract?
> Depends. How many square feet of roof are they doing? At $10 per sq ft, thats 10M sq feet.
It’s a 5 year long contract and buildings need to be reroofed every ~30 years, several million square feet sounds about right.
> Also, what "small business" is doing those kinds of numbers, especially in a single contract?
You were linked to an example. A “small business” construction firm can easily administer a $99M contract if they subcontract all of the work out and act as construction manager. One dedicated project manager could do it, honestly.
Performance and payment bonds ensure the work is completed.
Certain types of businesses have a bidding advantage on public work, depending on the funding source: minority owned businesses (MBE), women owned businesses (WBE), service disabled veteran businesses, (SDVOSB, which DoD and VA contracts often target), and others. The advantage can be as high as 12%, which can lead to the construction manager situation I described above.
My post is only relevant to construction procurement, no clue how it works outside of that.
Huh? You picked one small example out of dozens in the last week alone. There's billions flowing to military contractors.
You should probably take more than a "quick look".
That's incredible. I've never heard of it - where did you find it?
Just because the numbers are large doesn't make them more difficult to add. The DOD is either incompetent or embezzling taxpayer dollars.
From what I remember when I read up on this last time, the problem is mostly with the salary and pension system that has organically grown to some ridiculous complexity.
What's a third option? I encourage the brainstorming exercise.
> awarded … for fielding of latticed mesh network to additional space surveillance setwork sites, implementing an unpriced change order definitization action
lol
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Akin to, and largely responsible for the sweeping changes in our industrial-military posture, has been the technological revolution during recent decades.
In this revolution, research has become central; it also becomes more formalized, complex, and costly. A steadily increasing share is conducted for, by, or at the direction of, the Federal government.
Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been over shadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.
It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.
Pretty amazing that the military industrial complex was of sufficient importance to him that he used his farewell address to warn against it. And now it is just treated as an absolute necessity never to be scrutinized.
I often wonder if spending the money is the point - simply to say “The USA spends more than the next 10 countries combined” with no consideration for whether it is getting more value for the money. Like a startup, could other countries simply be getting significantly more value for their money and so the effective gap isn’t as large as the pure numbers suggest?
It comes to mind how the Pentagon running out of ammunition in recent years so to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and US donations.
Its just Natural. The World is much more complex and ever changing, than the chimp troupe has capacities to react to it all.
When you look at Nature do you start asking why do we "need" blue whales or redwood trees? No one "needs" them but they emerge anyhow.
We chimps (mysteriously) love to believe we are in control of nature and what emerges out of it. And time and again the universe takes a gigantic shit on that belief. See Theory of Bounded Rationality/Illusion of Control or read Jurassic Park.
Its also why we see monopolies emerge in every sector of the Economy inspite of all kinds of speech making, laws and govt depts to "control" things.
If you go look at the Annual Report of your favorite monopoly, you will find hundreds if not thousands of subsidiaries/factories/offices around the planet to manage their empire. No External Auditor visits each of those sites cause its just not possible within a reporting period. So every report has a large warning - hey man this our best guess about whats going on in the 10% of the sites we had time to visit - don't sue us.
Don't fall for the notion that people have perfect control over complex ever changing systems. It will just lead to misunderstandings and confusion.
A masterpiece in reification.
It's absolutely necessary. And we do need to scrutinize it. It's unhealthy to have such deep consolidation and little competition.
Plus our shipbuilding hadn't been the best, and our shipbuilders basically depend on defense contracts to survive instead of building warships as side gigs. Definitely areas where we need to do improvement.
We also need production of shells to support Ukraine and our Europeans allies had been underspending for decades at this point.
Spending money is the point, notice how defense contractors set up shop in key congressional districts, I believe that the US could maintain the same capabilities with a significant discount
I think Ukraine is a good value war for the US though, besides the issue of sending them outdated munitions, we get to cripple a geopolitical rival sacrificing other countries soldiers
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> It comes to mind how the Pentagon running out of ammunition in recent years so to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and US donations.
This is due to differences in doctrine and force structure. The Ukrainian military burns artillery ammunition at a far higher rate than the US military ever would because the US military does not use a lot of artillery. You don’t need a lot of ammunition of a type you’ll never use much.
> Pretty amazing that the military industrial complex was of sufficient importance to him that he used his farewell address to warn against it. And now it is just treated as an absolute necessity never to be scrutinized.
You completely misunderstand the purpose of the speech.
The speech is an acknowledgement that it was necessary due to the changing nature of warfare and geopolitics [0], but at the same time warning that it we should be vigilant about not allowing government to be captured by it.
The same way the banking or tech industries are important and necessary, but shouldn't be allowed to directly further their own interests by setting government policy, but with additional moral gravity given the nature of the military.
[0] this was an era where military weaponry was becoming sophisticated enough that you couldn't just e.g. convert civilian car factories to produce tanks anymore, and you wouldn't have time to do it either, because the ICBMs and long range bombers on the horizon removed the invulnerability of the US mainland. Sitting tight to build up a military over the course of multiple years as was the case during WWII was no longer an option, so combined with the threat of the Soviet Union it was obvious that the US would need to maintain a large standing military and the accompanying industries for the first time in it's history. It was a novel, necessary, and nonetheless dangerous development, and that's what he was trying to get across.
> It comes to mind how the Pentagon running out of ammunition in recent years so to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and US donations.
That’s because the munitions we spend most of our money in isn’t going to Ukraine. The stuff we would use against Russia would be wiping cities off the map from thousands of miles away. The things we gave Ukraine are intentionally limited in range and power to prevent it from escalating beyond a regional conflict (aka stuff that can’t strike important targets inside Russia).
Nuclear blackmail wasn't entirely effective but it is enough to self deter the Europeans and the US from giving permission to Ukraine unrestricted permission to strike legitimate military targets.
Let's make it clear. Ukraine is forced to use their own long range drones to strike targets deep inside Russia, as opposed to also using more effective and more powerful weapons to do so.
> The things we gave Ukraine are intentionally limited in range and power to prevent it from escalating beyond a regional conflict (aka stuff that can’t strike important targets inside Russia).
Can we take your words to UN crime court?
And now it is just treated as an absolute necessity never to be scrutinized.
I definitely don't see a lot of people pushing for the "never to be scrutinized" part.
Then you're not looking at congressmen a lot. Both sides of the isle are constantly approving ever increasing budgets, while TFA shows there has not been a single successful audit of what is being done with that budget for decades at this point, despite attempts at doing so.
You're right, I haven't been.
That's the problem with passive language. The person who wrote that can redefine who they posit isn't scrutinizing.
The military industrial complex is a cesspit of squandered money, but it has not corrupted US research or society the way Eisenhower warned about. I guess "we must beware the rise of incompetent generals and defense contractors who will waste taxpayer money on sci-fi boondoggles" doesn't have the same ring.
The idea that the US goes to war primarily to satisfy Raytheon stockholders is almost as brainless as saying it's the Zionist lobby: why struggle with thinking about a complex problem when you can conjure a simple boogeyman?
The thing about defining "squandered" is that it's hard!
Is the alternative how you personally would spend that money? Is it how the individuals paying taxes would spend it? How about the individuals holding wealth, assuming it's debt spending that's paid for via inflation?
I like to compare to how the broader private market would have spent the same amounts toward the same goals. A lot of that money would be squandered too - many companies fail. I think if that's an issue you really care about, ask yourself how you measure the problem!
Eisenhower had some of the greatest speeches of any American president. On the theme, also read his first major speech as President- “a chance for peace”- https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/dwighteisenhowercr...
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people. —-
A old soldier who was horrified at the cost of war, but keenly and sadly aware of the necessity of preparation and defense.
Ryan McBeth says existence of a "military industrial complex" is false and has not been true since 1993. I like how he notes Procter & Gamble makes more revenue than the top 5 defense contractors combined.
If Ryan McBeth defines MIC as just the defense companies, or its existence being conditioned on these companies having greater official revenues than Procter & Gamble, then he either misunderstands the concept, or he is (why?) trying to spread some weak argument for an idea that U.S. does not have an MIC, which is quite comical.
MIC is not just the defense companies, read the name again - it' the complex made of industry and the military. And Eisenhower's point in warning against it is not about revenue of the industry part, but about influence of the whole complex on major decisions.
In 1990's there was a short dip in funding, but since 2000's, its growth caught back on, and it's getting close to a trillion dollars a year. That much money chases a lot of constituency and a lot of power. Millions of people are dependent on it.
To you is it just the industrial complex?
I didn’t watch the video but Lockheed Martin has 60 billion revenue per year from defense contracts, PG has 80 or so? Northrop has 30 so these two are already over PG. Or am I missing something?
In the video he specifies profits. https://youtu.be/C2gIId1dpDs?t=988
I’d rather have a cost plus contract with Uncle Sam than sell consumer staples for sub 10% net margin, much lower risk.
Yeah, but the government is in charge. After the cold war, there was an event known as the "last supper" which involves the government telling military contractors that the government thanks them for their service but they are no longer needed.
I would be more worried about Disney and Apple and their unwarranted influence.
Is there something Disney or Apple have already influenced in a specific way that concerns you?
Is this the only department with this record? It’s astonishing to me that the federal government will spend something like nine trillion this year. Where does it all go? I know we can get high level breakdowns but it just seems insanely inefficient and wasteful just looking at the overall figures.
FY2023 total spending ~6.2 trillion (it's a bit higher in FY2024, but not sure where you're getting 9 trillion from).
The largest buckets non defense buckets are social security (1.4 trillion), medicare+medicaid (~1.6 trillion), interest payments (~800 billion). Total DOD spending is like ~750 billion, and DHS is like ~100 billion. FY2023 deficit was roughly 1.7 trillion dollars
Social security and medicare together at like ~2.4 trillion dollars a year, and are supporting a population of roughly 55 million Americans (just grossly taking the 65+ age population). This works out to roughly 43k per year per 65+ adult. You can decide for yourself is this seems like the right way for the government to work.
Anyhow, I am certain there is a lot of waste, and a lot of different types of waste there.
But fundamentally, the US government is trying to do a lot of frankly difficult and gigantic tasks. The DoD is tasked with amongst other things, perpetuating American hegemony, which right now is kinda critical for the entire US government funding situation. The USG's ability to leverage USD status as the world's reserve currency to help fund expenditures is contingent on it being if not THE global hegemon, then at least amongst the world's top powers, and the hegemon (or uh... senior security partner) for a substantial fraction of the world's economy.
Clearly the military could spend less (every other nation does) but it would require changing foreign policy.
For example the navy exists as "force projection" - not coastal protection. Force protection is a foreign policy goal, not a "defense" goal.
The US military is not designed to fight on the US mainland, it's designed to fight on someone else's mainland.
Equally the medicaid budget could be way less. Other countries manage with less (for their entire population) but they dictate pricing, whereas in the US the suppliers dictate pricing. And they expect healthy profit margins at every point.
In general, the govt spends so much because the people charge so much. The govt has enormous negotiating muscle, but dares not flex it least they incur the wrath of "the free market".
We spend more because it enables our influence around the globe. Other countries spend less because they do less and/or rely on our protection.
> Clearly the military could spend less (every other nation does) but it would require changing foreign policy.
Every other nation spends less because they are not the global hegemon. USD is in the position it is because we are the global hegemon. If you remove that by spending less on defense, USD strength goes down and our budget deficit and outstanding government debt start going up, weakening the country.
Steve Ballmer's USAFacts has a bunch of info on US Govt, including DoD budgets. It's a good start on data analysis of the US economy: https://usafacts.org/
> Social security and medicare together at like ~2.4 trillion dollars a year, and are supporting a population of roughly 55 million Americans (just grossly taking the 65+ age population). This works out to roughly 43k per year per 65+ adult. You can decide for yourself is this seems like the right way for the government to work.
New City Herald
Rioters set fire to the entire city after the Mayor's new budget accidentally starved roughly 8.6 million disabled people and 6 million survivors of deceased retirees.
Try File -> New City to start over.
> accidentally starved 6 million survivors of deceased retirees.
Wait, so they had wills for their kids and the government just... took that money? How does that work, or am I way off base?
>A surviving spouse, surviving divorced spouse, unmarried child, or dependent parent may be eligible for monthly [Social Security] survivor benefits based on the deceased worker’s earnings.
Very narrowly defined the DoD spent ~$750 billion in 2023 (over 800 billion). This doesn't count over $300 billion in veteran's benefits. Nor does it count Department of Energy military nuclear expenditures, nor tens of billions of military/intelligence spending in non DoD departments. Then when we look at the $800 billiom interest on the debt, a chunk of that is for unpaid military spending from last year and the years before.
This idea that military spending is not a large chunk of the budget is only when one has a very, very narrow definition of military spending.
The military and defense related spending absolutely is a very large chunk. I think your accounting is fair and better than mine. I did not mean to imply that defense funding was "small", only that defense funding is not the overwhelming gorilla that many people seem to think it is.
It is all designed to move money.
The DoD spends nearly a trillion of that. Honestly it’s just understandable that doing audits for first time takes years to get right.
Everything else is a lot smaller and a lot simpler.
Just hang tight a few months for our savior, the Doge, to sort it out.
DOGE needs to talk to people like Paul Ryan. He spent decades trying to massively reform the US government and was one of the most knowledgable, skilled and well connected people to try. And he failed miserably.
Because ultimately politics is about getting votes. And there simply aren't any votes in making the US government more efficient or balancing the budget.
I don’t think it’s accurate to make that blanket statement without the qualification that his options were precluded by his political alignment. For example, Medicare cost reduction hits the broader problem of the American medical system being so much less efficient than everywhere else, but since both drug companies and doctors are key constituencies he couldn’t propose anything significant. Similarly, hiring civil servants instead of contractors would avoid several massive sources of inefficiency but that’d involve boosting pay scales, hiring more people, and shifting from saying the government is inherently inefficient to discussing realistic changes to incentives and oversight – all of which would have been political suicide.
>And there simply aren't any votes in making the US government more efficient or balancing the budget.
I hear this and wonder how The New Deal ever managed to get off the proposal floor. Real shame how underinformed the voting populace is.
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or they will just do as they always have, axe social security, education, epa, state department, and increase the 800 lb gorilla that is DoD
Social security was last cut in 1983. Education is funded by the states. The rest of the things you mention are rounding errors in spending.
Everything in the US is funded by the citizens of the states and territories. Outside of the tiny area that is Columbia, the federal government has no citizens.
Parents point is that the vast majority of educational funding in practice is not decided at the federal level but at the state and often city level.
Most of the money public k-12 schools get from municipal property taxes, and most of the public funding that state universities receive comes from the state level.
What's your point?
States also receive federal funding for education. DoE is 2.0% of the federal budget for 2024.
And what percentage of education spending does that 2% amount to?
Around 15% of K-12 education in America, although a good chunk of their money beyond that is spent on aid for poor students who want to go to college and special ed.
missing my point. they are going to gut the parts of government that deliver value to citizens, and inevitably drive up spending of the most bloated part of government
>Social security was last cut in 1983.
yes, during a mini-recession IIRC. we're around that point.
>Education is funded by the states.
and federal funding.
Right now it looks like the current administration (with enough congressional votes) will pass a bill increasing social security benefits before inauguration of the new president, even though the social security fund is in a bad shape already.
I tried searching and it looks like social security is the biggest expense of the budget. Medicare is larger than defense, excluding other health stuff like Medicaid and public health spending, which separately also add up to more than defense. That said I agree defense spending is out of control and inefficient, probably due to big contractors who have been robbing taxpayers for decades.
The Social Security trust fund is projected to run out around 2033. The trust fund pays somewhere around 23% of people's monthly benefits. The rest of the monthly benefit comes from the payroll taxes of current workers.
If Trump gets the tax cuts he talked about before the election that moves up the exhaustion of the trust fund by 1-3 years depending on whose projections you use.
There are two approaches that can reasonably get Congressional support.
1. Raise the retirement age to 69 or 70 (from the current 67). You could still retire as early as 62 just like now, but when you retire early your benefit is less than your full benefit amount.
Most projections I've seen have that adding a few years to the life of the trust fund.
2. Raise the cap on the payroll tax. The payroll tax is a flat rate tax on payroll (half paid by the employee and half by the employer) on the first $168k of you annual pay.
Raising that cap to something like $400k would extend the life of the trust fund something like 70 years.
From what I've read both Democrat and Republican voters strongly favor approach #2.
In Congress Democrats favor #2 and Republicans favor #1.
We probably should do both. One of the Republican arguments for #1 is that people live longer now, so it makes sense to raise the retirement age. But #1 is only a relatively short term fix for the trust fund.
#2 is long term. In particular #2 fixes it long enough to get well past dealing with the situation we are in now where people born at the peak of the baby boom are retiring. We are seeing around 11k people a day turning 65. It's expected to remain in that ballpark through 2027. With #1 the trust fund should be good long past the time all those people have died.
So do #2 to deal with the trust fund. Do #1 to address longer lifespans (if we decide that your longer life should mean more working years rather than more retirement years).
I expect good recommendations from DOGE, and some amount of implementation of those ideas that is non-zero, but also barely makes a dent.
Once operationalized DOGE should start their prune exercise with the Pentagon.
I bet you a beer Musk and Vivek will not be able to prune anything significant in 4 years, because a) neither has an understanding of how the money is spent b) actual cuts need to be approved by the same people who introduced the expenses in the first place c) they might not even stick around for 4 years.
> neither has an understanding of how the money is spent
Stop the funding and see what breaks?
That’s what you do if your goal is trying to cut costs at your top 20 social media network after accepting it’ll never be in the top 10, not when things actually matter. People depend on government services and you can’t easily undo things like impacts on livelihoods, the environment, the economy, etc.
yeah just push to prod and see what happens, understanding the problem is for nerds
a) Accounting is not that hard. Also you can't be seriously making the argument that one of the richest man in this world does not know how federal funds are spent...
b) I don't think that's true. And even if were to suppose that it were true then your accounting problem would be so easy to solve.
c) Agreed. That outcome is more likely.
> a) Accounting is not that hard. Also you can't be seriously making the argument that one of the richest man in this world does not know how federal funds are spent...
Politics is hard. Government spending is death by a thousand cuts, so the easy things to do are two: remove whole departments (remove all of the education, veterans, and defence, that will net you 1.5T) or ask the heads of each department to do the cuts. But then each one will face the same issue, and the deeper you go, the more you encounter people who want a specific spending e.g. reps who got elected supporting veteran support or education spending or a specific factory in Springfield, Illinois.
People favor spending cuts the way they favor tax breaks: don’t cut you, con’t cut me, cut that fellow behind the tree.[0] everyone's is for them in the abstract as long as they don't touch them.
And yes, I think the richest man in this world does not know how federal funds are being spent, based on the fact that he thinks he can cut "at least 2T" out 6.5T. To save 2T you'd have to erase the Department of Health[1]. If you cut 50% of Social Security, Health and Defence, you'll not get that, and people will riot.
Also, I point you to X, where Musk managed to save money by firing 70% of the workforce and <checks notes> losing 80% of the company value. The fact SpaceX and Tesla are successful[2] does not automatically translate in Musk being good at everything.
[0] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/04/04/tax-tree/ [1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder... [2] both, let me point out, with massive help from government expenditures
> Politics is hard. Government spending is death by a thousand cuts ...
If the solution is not to cut excessive and unchecked spending, you tell us your solution for the dealing with the problem?
> remove whole departments (remove all of the education, veterans, and defence, that will net you 1.5T)
AFAIK DOGE or rather Elon hasn't specified how they are going to cut $2T from the annual budget so all this is speculation and we don't actually know which sectors might receive the cuts. For all we know it could be a goal setting figure. Even if they don't reach this target, the endeavour is still worthwhile. They have 4 years to sell their plans to Congress after all.
In summary you fail to make a good case for why DOGE is a bad idea other than Elon bad. I challenge you to remove this bias from your thinking, it alone just may help you avoid missing the forest for the trees on the issue of government overspend and the relation to uncontrollable public debt.
DOGE is bad because the Government Accountability Office already exists, and “auditing agency operations to determine whether federal funds are being spent efficiently and effectively” is already part of its mandate.
There is no need to create another new program instead of improving what already exists, except that GAO is non-partisan so it won’t cut whatever the new administration says it should, and Musk wouldn’t join it unless he’s at the top.
GAO claims to have saved a paltry $70B [0] in taxpayer dollars last year.
Here's them in 2022 saying $247B [1] got lost in that year due to "payment errors".
Looks like their job is to only make recommendations on spending and nothing more.
[0] https://www.gao.gov/blog/gaos-scorecard-how-we-saved-federal...
[1] https://www.gao.gov/blog/federal-payment-errors-known-improp...
> Looks like their job is to only make recommendations on spending and nothing more.
The new department will do exactly the same. Congress controls spending, so recommendations are all any executive department can do. If GAO should be able to find more inefficiencies, or should be given the power to cut stuff on its own (it shouldn’t), then the focus ought to be on making them do that. Adding a whole new redundant department seems…inefficient.
DOGE, the idea, exists today because in their 100+ year history GAO has nothing to show for responsible government spending. It's that simple.
I think they'll cut what is in their interest to cut. Also, where is the evidence of all this excess, or that any particular thing they cut is excess?
Doge wont go anywhere without members of congress agreeing to spend less money in their states - so its pretty far fetched
Pentagon has 23k employees, DOGE need more than 4 years for something like this. My assumptions is that they will focus elsewhere for quick wins.
Key word here being employees. There is no historical precedent for what DOGE has set out to accomplish assuming DJT was actually being serious. Though I would be curious to know where you see them grabbing those said quick wins.
Based on DJT first term, my guesses are:
- Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- State Department
- Science and Public Health Offices
- Civil Rights Offices
DOGE doesn't have to do something new or significant, all they have to do is to promote it better even if it's the same actions by any republican reaching office.