At what cost? Are we counting lives lost, QALYs, who defines the cost-benefit.
I can free up a lot of budget by sacking the entire armed forces and selling the jets to Ukraine and Saudi Arabia. "freeing up a significant fraction of the budget" is not consequence free. If he forces the health insurance industry to reform and extract a sane profit margin above cost of service, he deserves a medal. If he wipes out USAID and stops his competitors being funded for battery car programmes he secured for himself in times past.. Less such.
"waste" is a very emotive term for government spending. Many economists laugh at the belief spending less money is net advantageous as a thing in itself: money makes the world go round. Sometimes you want it spent more than you want it saved.
Presumably positive lives and QALYs. That's the whole point of cutting taxes for many people. I would rather be spending my money on my health than going without while the fed pisses it away on handouts, corruption, and incompetence.
I want to run the heater so my kids aren't cold but cant afford it. Meanwhile my mayor is using my tax dollars to buy 200 home depot sheds for 800k each from a donor.
Yes, the point is spending money, just by the people who earned it.
I can't rebut this without being insulting, or dismissive of the situation you have to live in. I am sorry you are living in such constraint. I continue to believe you are wrong "less tax" will fix your problem but I can say that from the comfort of an economy with a fully hypothicated medicare tax, and something approaching universal health coverage.
I do not believe paying less tax will fix the kind of cynical systematic corrupt behaviour of your mayor, and other tiers of government.
I don't think paying less tax will fix the corrupt behavior of my mayor either, but it would limit my exposure and loss.
Fundamentally, the urge to eliminate taxes and reduce the size of the government is a vote of no confidence. Not just now,but permanently. It's not a vote for reform. I don't think the government leadership has my best interests at heart. I think it would happily take everything I have and leave me to starve in the street if it could.
No, I didn't think my way into it. I initially thought myself into thinking efficient government was possible, then I watched the government callously destroy friends and family. Watched them be eminent domained without compensation. Watched their businesses and retirement plans capriciously taken away, often for no practical reason.
These real world observations demonstrated my theoretical model was flawed.
I would argue it is you that has not seen the balance sheets, absurdly high line items, or worked for a government contractor - else you would 100% agree with his stance on taxation.
A huge chunk of government spending is a horrendous waste/scam and you will likely never understand this unless you take the initiative to look at the spending breakdowns or actually spend a bit of time at a government contractor.
Wanting to cut whatever tax is going to those sheds has nothing to do with for-profit companies. They are not the alternative. The alternative is not having the tax.
The only QALYs that should matter to the US Gov't are American QALYs.
I don't need to be funding $50M worth of condoms to be sent to Gaza. That's a "them" problem, and while there might be second order effects to a population explosion there, I honestly don't care.
He can save a bunch of money and fire everyone! The amount of money doesn’t matter if what is gone is critical. When those things are lost, we will have to rebuild at a higher cost than maintaining.
If he frees up a significant fraction of budget while making the government better and more effective, and not doing anything illegal or wrong, then yes, I'd be happy to eat my words!
Thing is, I checked my twitter feed for the first time in a month, and was recommended Alex Jones, so I can predict how well DOGE is going to work out pretty accurately.
Better for who? Because since the inauguration, lots of marginalized people are facing increasing government harassment, and if any newly freed monies are applied to more of that, then I'd say the government isn't getting any better for a huge swath of society.
Though he absolutely, literally is. The executive branch taking control over finances is unconstitutional, and there are likely a bevy of other things involving laws for conflicts of interest and laws for security clearances.
The only question is what'll happen in response when the criminals control so much of the infrastructure.
As a bonus, Musk is currently breaking the First Amendment as well, as he is both wearing a government hat and actively censoring people discussing what he's doing.
Why the hell should be trust that liar's opinion on what is "waste". He has absolutely no authority to stop any payments that Congress has authorized. Trusting any one person with that much power let alone someone as morally bankrupt as Musk is deeply stupid.
In total, federal workforce compensation amounts to 4.3% of the federal budget. So even if Musk fires literally every single federal employee, I would still say that he would not free up a significant fraction of the budget.
> if Musk frees up a significant fraction of the budget?
Freeing up money is not actually that hard. Doing it in a constructive way is a lot more difficult. I could go in and completely defund roads, airports, social security, public schools, the courts, the military, and save a ton of money.
Then what. What's the big plan? What are we going to do with all this money that will give us a better ROI?
That money was paying for stuff. Some stuff runs smoothly we enough that we take it for granted. Is everything perfect? No, but I'd like to see a little more care when screwing around with important infrastructure and services.
This reminds me of people that join a legacy software project and start proposing that you do a completely rewrite of the system without really understanding why certain decisions were made. It's almost always a total disaster and then someone else needs to come up and clean up after them.
Only if he does so in a way that doesn't actually hurt the millions of people who rely on that money. Only if he does so in a way that doesn't dismantle agencies that spread the US's soft power around the world. Only if he does so in a way that's auditable, transparent, and accountable.
Even if he does manage to find his $2T to cut (which I think is pretty unlikely), he will fail at the above metrics.
But sure, it would be cool to be proven wrong on that. I really hope I'm wrong. Otherwise he'll have hurt a ton of people (that he doesn't care about) and will have set the US back on the world stage decades. Not to mention... hello recession... or worse.
Musk has zero chance of freeing up a ‘significant’ fraction of the budget. 73% of the budget goes to mandatory spending (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, interest payments, and other income assistance programs). Musk will touch zero of this. Trump and the GOP won’t let him. The Democrats too for that matter. And it’s mandatory spending is what has been exploding over the last decade, not discretionary spending
The remaining 27% is split 50/50 between defense and everything else. Musk will not be given access to the DOD. The remaining half of discretionary includes things like transportation, R&D/science funding , education, NASA/SpaceX, climate/energy, etc… essentially a lot of high value investments for our future that slashing would be like shooting ourselves in the foot.
It's so sad and disappointing that no one seems to understand this. It is literally impossible for Musk to cut $2T of spending, at least not without an act of Congress. An act that would likely be career suicide for even the most right-wing reps and senators once their constituents stop receiving their social security checks and health care. And when the bond market collapses when we stop paying interest on our debts.
What words? That this playbook of making promises to then create another crisis to change the subject is well known? That is true and will remain true. Will you read up on the 20th century so you're on the same page as the comment you're replying to?
But how would the words "it's not about the budget, but ideology" but refuted by budget cuts, anyway? I can give you candy in my van, and the candy can be real, but that still doesn't make it about the candy. And freeing up a significant fraction of the budget is hardly saying anything. You can save money by throwing people on the streets and letting them starve. You can make money by letting drug dealers go free and making them give the government a cut of the profits. Maybe not enough to offset the tax cuts to the super rich, or the costs incurred by just setting everything on fire to consolidate wealth for a few sociopaths, but probably "significant". So? That's supposed to be an argument for waving firing prosecutors for political reasons through?
