DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee credit cards

The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government. They haven't been especially subtle about it in their writing. The ideal outcome is not the same government outcomes but at 70% of the cost. The ideal outcome is the collapse of the federal bureaucracy so that the lords of capital can scoop things up and create their little kingdoms.

Remember that "probationary" doesn't mean new. I just learned this, but apparently when getting a promotion it puts you back into the "probationary" period at your new role. So people with 10+ years of service are being let go because they had recently been promoted.

If we aim for 100% efficiency we end up with massive unemployment, because a lot of jobs and businesses are just not necessary. We all just got to experience that first hand, as when COVID hit something like 1/3rd of people either stop worked or worked massive reduced hours and the truth of the matter is the world kept spinning JUST FINE, save for a some inconveniences.

The more efficient things becomes, the more another mechanism is needed to control people, so you are going to eventually have to bring back some kind of formal class system or slavery.

I did read somewhere - and I may be incorrect - but a lot of internal employees are put on 'probation' after internal promotions, and not all probationary staff are like new hires.

You're only observing reporting about these actions. There's very little in the way of actual reporting on impacts. Are we actually objectively measuring government performance in any real way?

> will have far-reaching and serious blowback.

I doubt that it will be "far" or "serious." We did all of those things before credit cards even existed. It will be "minimal" and "altered on a case by case basis."

> The plane that we're all on is being dismantled midair,

I'm on the ground. Your government employees are in the plane. It's concerning to be sure, but not anything we can't fix if it goes poorly.

Maybe let the guy iterate. That's what he does. Remove things till there's actual pain and not just moaning. Moderate by that. Has worked actually wonders till now.

USA is bankrupt and the elites have known this since 2008. Trump and co. are the front for the bankruptcy proceedings and the rest is stage management. So this is class warfare in a system that is about to lose its preeminent (power) position in the world. As for alliances, I can guarantee every power center in East Asia has taken note of how US just threw Europe under the bus under the pretext of "change of presidency" as if!

I wonder if the future holds a civil war or a revolution. One of the two is a given at this point.

Now somebody is finally addressing the debt/deficit.

If you think someone else can do better, have them explain their plan in detail.

This is literally going to cost the government more money.

Eventually to solve this resulted in a system where a $40 pizza lunch went to a committee of completely disconnected morons who debated it and would then forward it to a VP to make the final call. Probably a couple thousands in time costs with the paperwork and people time involved … for $40 of pizza. Oh and they had lunch while they debated.

I got an email from the committee once, I told them to forget it and I would buy my team pizza with my own money…. they actually tried to get me in trouble for that.

These kinda dumbass middle manager politics sound like they help (to people with no work experience…) but they’re more costly in the end.

Thankfully we were bought and the new CEO did away with it.

Either way, they're saving $50, either by stealing it from the employees who'd rather pay themselves to be able to do their job, or by causing hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the productivity because someone spends 2 hours hunting for an unused pen instead of just grabbing one from the supply box in the corner.

These are people who want to prove, regardless of anything, that government is less efficient than private enterprises... particularly their private enterprises, who would be happy to help you with your problem, dear citizen, for a nominal fee.

Sounds like my company.

It finally got rid of the travel agency contract, so for my meeting last week I ended up spending $600 in salary hours making my own arrangements so the company could save a $50 commission to a travel agent.

Penny wise and pound foolish.

The goal isn't to reduce spending. It's to create bad press to get rid of parts of the government that get in the way of the cronies in charge.

Suppose a 500$ monthly expense for taxi, where the employees need to use public transport in its absence. Or a software tool that saves 1 hour per week, and costs 20$/ month.

In both cases the employees need to spend more time and the costs are reduced.

But the salary cost is fixed (for the most part, whatever cuts where possible were already done), so the workload goes up in this phase. And I'm assuming they are just trying to crack the whip.

It's just a typical business management tactic of reducing costs, and maximizing workload per employee, (and increasing income usually, but in this case I think they'll translate it to reduced income as tax cuts, the increased income is for the private sector)

At least that's my take, pretty straightforward.

The correct answer is both, until and unless the perpetrators wish to come forward and defend themselves as just malicious or just incompetent.

https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/hegseth-military-maj...

I doubt this. Do you really think the government is the reason Silicon Valley has been so successful? Sure the government created the internet, but after that many tech companies flourished in Silicon Valley with very little regulation. I think that's why America has been so successful. If you look at anything the government gets its hands in, costs sky rocket (education, healthcare, etc).

From all accounts the firing was incompletely indiscriminate and so many people who you would think would never be fired were e.g. US Army Corp of Engineers working on flood prevention.

And so I can't imagine anyone wanting to join the government when there is a strong chance you will be fired in the medium term with no notice and with no reason. All after you've physically moved you/family to Washington because remote work is no longer available.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/podcasts/the-daily/trump-...

The idea is to replace these government positions with private positions.

Remember feudalism? Some guy with all of the capital - which, in those days, meant arable land - basically got to dictate how things worked, because he had the stuff you, as a peasant, needed to live. He was called the king. If you didn't do what he wanted, your life got cut short. Government was just one guy's ideas enforced by his brute squad. In many ways, it was a sole proprietorship. Eventually, nobility was required to administer the land, and that nobility eventually turned into a structure that could keep the king somewhat in check, lest they carry out a coup. They became the administrative state. Today, we have legislative, judicial and executive bodies that - at least ostensibly - need to win election in order to do the same thing, thus replacing the nobility.

That's the ultimate goal here: the dismantling of the administrative state. The administrative state carries out laws made by a body - in this case, Congress - that, at least in theory, puts society's desires at the center.

A number of these laws directly impact the ability of capital holders to generate more capital. Since the people holding this capital think that the only reason humans do anything is to create more capital, they go to any lengths to keep society's "unprofitable" desires at bay.

Since the accumulation of capital can result in monopoly, you will, at some point, have someone controlling all of the capital again. This is a return to feudalism. You won't be swinging a scythe in a field in a toque and tunic, but the structure will be the same.

This did have the interesting effect of making some of his positions cross-party populist, like his neoliberalism- and free-trade-skepticism. Normal republican voters hate that stuff and will tell you so, as do lots of left-wingers, but both parties (from about 1980 to 2016) loved all of it. He also talked some weirdly leftist talk, a few times, about healthcare, but with no specifics or clear plan, and that wasn't something he ended up taking action on. Same reason, though: Republicans have been told to hate "Obamacare", so they do, but lots of them also hate our existing healthcare system and insurance companies especially. Another gap between the voters and what their own party's officials were delivering, for him to exploit. They'd 100% eat up universal healthcare if a Republican promoted it, it's all in the letter next to the name.

It's why I figured he'd at least get the R nomination, if not win the whole thing, well before most folks considered him anything but a joke candidate.

more realistically, it's "if i wanted america to fail, i would..."

Farmers who produced food that was sent abroad by USAID are not getting paid, and will have stock piling up that they don't have a buyer for.

Scientific and health agencies have been muzzled during a time when we are fighting bird flu (millions of flocks dying), there has been human transmission and there is a high risk of another pandemic (bird flu or anything else) coming along. People will die who wouldn't otherwise have to.

The agency which protects Americans from predatory bank fees has been shuttered, so we can expect our banking (like $35 late fees) to get more expensive.

I could go on and on, but our country is not Twitter; it's not even comparable, on almost any level.

Well, our inflation rose to 3% in a month, a few people have died over all these illegal spending freezes, we had a repeat of the Saturday Night Massacre[0] where 6 or 7 judges resigned due to Trump wanting to basically hold blackmail over a corrupt Mayor's case to be temporarily dropped. Those are the most immediate and obvious effects seen after one month off the top of my head.

>Elon took over there and took a radical stance, and it just didn't. I'm curious if this will be similar.

I don't know why people say this when Twitter had clear changes to day to day use. Let alone to anyone investing in Twitter. Smaller content creators get even less organic engagement, celebrities are harassed more because of blocking changes, commenters get worse, more toxic community.

The effects only aren't felt if you use Twitter to get news and you avoid comments, or an account. Even then Twitter makes it harder to view stuff without an account. The fall of Rome took years, if not decades. If you're just expecting anything software to collapse like a demolition project you need perspective on how people define "drastic".

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On topic: no, don't compare this to Twitter that no one needs in a day to day. The US economy will get noticeably worse, jobs will be harder to find and more people will be let go, The GDP will fall, and if March goes horribly a lot of old people will be on the the street dying. It's not going to all happen in one day, but lives will be lost over these reckless changes. The US isn't exactly doing too well with foreign policy either so that'll be the most obvious effect for you. Our country will probably shift to rely less on us goods.

[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre

https://bsky.app/profile/jrothst.bsky.social/post/3liin7up3c... It seems almost unavoidable at this point that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.

Higher unemployment leads to lower consumer spending - the USA economy is built on consumer spending.

If I were to bet on it, yes it will be similar. My guess is that things will over all be better 3/4 years from now, after some initial pain.

The effects have started to be felt, but nowhere near the lecel they will be if things continue much longer this way; as well as the directed impacts, a generale economic slowdown is expected as a fairly near-term second ordee effect. Lots of direct job losses plus people holding off spending because of a cloud of uncertainty is a great way to make a recession.

https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/18/impact-of-trump-federal-...

They've already damaged research/education, even if somehow it all gets undone. There's absolutely no reason to cause a brain drain in a country that has historically attracted students from all over the world.

The expanded ACA tax subsidies are very unlikely to be renewed. This will result in about 5.6 million Americans (26% of the people with marketplace insurance) who can no longer afford healthcare and are left to rely on emergency rooms, which is a cost we all end up bearing anyway.

Our allies have lost all trust for us. They already hated Trump in his first term because he was stupid and confrontational and transactional in a truly ignorant way, and him getting re-elected after some pretty obvious poor governing means that our allies no longer trust not just our government, but the actual people who voted him in. The ignorance and pettiness and hatred of the American voter means investing in the US as an ally has become a very stupid thing to do.

I'm cancelling a vacation outside the US because I have no interest in interacting with border agents who feel empowered and vindictive. I already cannot travel to certain US states where a pregnancy scare can become a crime.

Our state economy has been buoyed nicely by the shitload of Asylum seekers from all over the world who are educated and just want to work, but are often not allowed to for dumb reasons. Lack of funding and a hostile immigration environment will only hasten the death of our state, which has a very old population.

Three large parts of our economy are: Lumber trade with Canada, Tourism with a lot of that coming from China, and selling lobster to China. With another trade war, that's all fucked. Before China became a buyer of our lobster, the industry was dying because they were catching too much and they had to keep selling lobster for cheaper than ground beef.

The farmers up state who grow potatoes will be fine, since it's been industrialized since before I was born. Everything else we grow is going to get a lot more expensive with less migrant labor, so I hope you don't like broccoli. Alternatively, we replace migrant labor with chain gang workers from the local prisons and enjoy the (literal) fruits of slavery.

There is no other way to do it fast enough to blame the recession on previous administration than to up the unemployment rate fast.

Please continue to disentangle Canada's economics from the US; it's much more likely your kids starve then are shot.

https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-ends-many-twitter-...

> Twitter will no longer be covering several costs or paying for a number of perks made available to employees, some for many years, for example. And the maximum amount allotted for work-related trips has been limited, as those trips are also set to become rarer.

> The allowance for a mobile phone bill is now $50 per month and the daily allowance for food while on a work trip is now $75... Meanwhile, the overall limit on expenses for any kind of work-related travel has been "revised" by seniority level

Searched for things like "expenses," "cards," "subscriptions," etc.

"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work"

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...

You can enumerate the failures of Dems if you'd like but casting both sides as the same is utter nonsense.

And your little dig of "without any hint of self awareness" makes me think that you think you know better.

Larger than $1 is in this case zero, there's nothing one can buy for $1 on a credit card. I'm not sure why they chose this amount and didn't just set it to 0. Not sure when this is coming but soon government employees will need to bring their own paper and other needed officeware from home, unless they'll have to bring toilet paper and soap as well if the cut is too deep. At the same time the billionaire class has nearly doubled their wealth and nobody is batting an eye for it. Strange times we're living indeed.

So now instead the red tape is causing inefficiency in an area that was already efficient as applicable to the risk.