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I'd rather the government keep the money and use it to pay for the many services that it provides. Like ensuring that I have clean water, unadulterated food, clean air, a functional banking system, healthcare, safe vehicles, making sure that unemployed people don't starve, researching infectious disease remediation, performing scientific research, maintaining national parks, making sure that kids have a baseline education, doing humanitarian work around the globe, and a thousand other things I don't have the time to enumerate.
Who's ignoring it? Once the problem is identified by someone, you fix it and move on. This already happens.
$1,300 coffee cups: https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2018/10/22... Audit of C-17 Spare Parts: https://www.dodig.mil/In-the-Spotlight/Article/3948604/press...
See also, the myth of the $600 hammer: https://www.govexec.com/federal-news/1998/12/the-myth-of-the...
Trashing whole departments/agencies first and then trying to find all of the 'waste' amongst the wreckage creates more work in the long run when you have to rebuild all of the processes and try to reclaim some portion of the institutional knowledge that got flushed down the toilet for no reason.
I'm sure I'm missing something, I'm no expert by a long shot, but government spending isn't a secret. Budgets get approved by congress and spent by the executive out in the open. Maybe someone interested in curtailing waste could start by auditing budgets? Making sure that the money allocated got spent where it should have and that the budgets weren't padded with unnecessary spending? But that takes a lot of time, effort, and energy, is kind of boring, and wouldn't generate dozens of headlines every day.
It's not an either/or situation. You can have responsible spending and also services to benefit everyone. Cutting me a check to give me back some of the money I've paid into the system doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you only got the money by destroying the CDC or whatever.
It would be kind of like the gas company tearing my house down because my windows aren't insulated and then giving me a couple hundred bucks because they technically eliminated the source of the wasted energy
Of course we don't want to toss the baby out with the bath water, but it's high time for a major course correction. In our government it is very hard to turn the ship around, and motivate people to serve.
I'd much prefer if we could magically motivate the 3/5 of govvies who are in cruise mode to try harder.
This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue.
It will create inefficiency. In the best case because it's not how the decades of built up institutional knowledge knows how to get stuff done. If the worst (and most probable) case, because what you're removing is actually needed... and we'll get an "oops sorry" later when the damage is done.
Needed to save that line,
Sometimes there are no shortcuts: You have to know what you're doing. The "This is 'something', therefore we must do it" bit only gets you so far.
There isn’t enough money to be saved to give you back anything.
"That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention."
It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt.
There should be little to doubt at this point, however. "Dismantling of the administrative state" was a mantra for many who are now in positions of power.
Then: "Prices will come down on day 1!" Now: "It's hard to get prices to come down once they're up".
At some point, there's not much reason to doubt someone's goals, regardless of what they say. You can look at past say/do combinations and make reasonable predictions.
Stop giving 'benefits' to people with years of documented track records under the aegis of 'doubt'.
I would implore you to develop the skill of judging one’s character overtime. Some folks have proven they don’t deserve the benefit.
Otherwise, I fear that your good nature will become a vulnerability instead of the strength that I can be.
Then you should be giving the benefit of the doubt to the people and institutions that are accused on flimsy evidence. Then you should be giving benefit of the doubt to Harris and Clinton too, to progressives, to SJWs, feminists, to centrists.
What will you do when they break your benefits of the doubt. Wait for the next time for more of the same words?
Deciding at which point that gift was misplaced is a learned skill and one I cannot claim to have expertise in.
I may credulously assume that our poster friend is sincere. However, as I read replies that the poster has made to sincere responses, I observe:
* a claim of mutual empathy via mutual distrust "I've criticized Musk!" ... "I've been contradicting DOGE on things since they became a thing"
* a surrender of high-ground via tenuous appeal-to-authority "Bibi says he's not a nazi"
* a veneer of emotional maturity over others: "we don't have to be so stressed about needing to trust DOGE's changes"
Buffeted yet calm, our poster friend claims the high-ground while having-and-eating cake.
Our poster is in an incredulous superposition of:
"So yeah, I don't trust him." and "I was shocked"
or
"I don't think they'd renege on it. I'm certainly not naive!"
I've wasted too much time discussing our mutual friend. I should not have done my drive-by, and I apologize to you both for the energy consumption of my this and my previous post. I shrink away cowardly from responding anymore.
I do not apologize for lacking credulity.
My interest in having any kind of "superposition" is simply to be impartial and accurate to the greatest degree possible as to get the greatest results possible. That is it. In any case, you got it wrong when you said:
> * a veneer of emotional maturity over others: "we don't have to be so stressed about needing to trust DOGE's changes"
There is nothing like that at all in my posts. What I was saying is that DOGE should operate with such a level of transparency and controls that would eliminate needing to simply trust DOGE's changes. Tthus the stress that goes along with that level of trust would fade away.
> * a surrender of high-ground via tenuous appeal-to-authority "Bibi says he's not a nazi"
That is not an appeal to authority. It is saying that the people who are most equipped to answer the question, because it is a matter of their own history and hide, are the ones saying that it warrants overlooking or good faith. By all means, continue that line of investigation on your own if you want.
> I should not have done my drive-by
I agree! Because it's poor faith and on top of that you're questioning my own consistency and integrity to boot, even though it's clear that in one case X has premium features warranting a credit card...whereas there's no reason at all to blast my bank account details on here...
Anyway, to summarize it all...CAT should audit DOGE and DOGE should be on a tighter leash or quarantined if they cannot be trusted to make changes.
Always has been, always will be.
Also, the capital gains taxes ARE low and the income taxes ARE high, so just paying down the debt isn't nearly so "even-handed" as it seems.
Personal income taxes are the larges revenue source for the U.S. Government, so it is the main way we have decided to tax ourselves. Arguably it is one of the most steerable, and we have long health that progressive taxation is for the common good (as much of a mockery as some high-income individuals have made of that).
So with that as the background, the U.S. ranks towards the bottom of the OCED countries in taxes vs. GDP. Yes we get less than the citizens of the countries paying the most, but not that much less.
https://taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-co...
That seems insignificant when their other proposed policies are intended to massively increase that debt?
Like.. we could just personally tax Elon a little bit more while changing nothing else and recover more money, most likely.
Elimination (or indefinite pause) of the CFPB that was a trade of 21 billion in consumer savings for like 750 million in expenses.
If they wanted to improve efficiency, there's an easy place to start: the IRS. And you wouldn't start by firing, you'd start hiring lots and lots of people.
Spoiler: Nobody is _directly_ getting a refund. That money will be less than the planned increase in the deficit. (This is the house's budget bill which is the supported version of the president unlike the senate's version).
It's what authoritarian populists do when they get control of governments. They "hack" the economy with short-term stimulus and giveaways to keep the rubes content and happy while they dismantle civil society and the rule of law and entrench themselves.
Economic stagnation and decline usually follow within a couple year, but if they've entrenched themselves well enough, they don't have to care about public opinion very much and can shift to repression.
The core issue is the idea that they are incentivized to act in good faith.
Theres a great article which was shared here: "Why is it so hard to buy things that work" https://danluu.com/nothing-works/ The idea here is that since its the right thing to do, firms will do the right thing. or: "markets enforce efficiency, so it's not possible that a company can have some major inefficiency and survive" > Although it's possible to find people who don't do shoddy work, it's generally difficult for someone who isn't an expert in the field to determine if someone is going to do shoddy work in the field. and > More generally, in many markets, consumers are uninformed and it's fairly difficult to figure out which products are even half decent, let alone good.
Trump has no interest in increasing good faith. He doesn't need to. He can't run for office anymore, and even if he could, there's literally nothing he could do to lose voters. And he certainly doesn't give a shit about the future of the Republican party.
The people that voted for Trump fully support everything that's being done.
> increase good-faith in the masses big time
What incentive is there for anyone in the Trump administration to care about that? I don't see one.
> I don't think they'd renege on it.
Lower prices on day 1. Stopping Ukraine war on day 1.
Trump just says things in the moment to play for approval, then says something contradictory later if need be. There is no fallout, pushback or consequence from his supporters, and they have control of ... all branches of government right now.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_information_voter
Sadly, there were enough people like you to enable a fascist coup.