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Comment by almosthere | Hacker News Reader

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Assuming your general lifestyle when employed is around $100k of expense, the US saving $10m against a $6.9T budget would be the equivalent of you saving $0.14.

Even in the straits you’re in (and I sincerely hope the very best for you), how much effort would you put into saving $0.14? It just doesn’t seem like the best use of effort?

Considering DOGE is ~100 people and the American labor force is 168 million, in your example, I would be willing to expend 0.000000675% of my time and energy to save 14 cents. That’s the difference between saying keep the change or putting it in my pocket.

Before anyone asks, no I don’t round up for the Boys and Girls Club at Taco Bell. I sometimes feel bad about it though.

But you wouldn’t brag about how you took a chainsaw approach to your financial situation after saving those 14 cents now, would you?

Correct. No one is denying that Elon loves attention. Everyone knows Elon is really an acronym for 'Elon Loves Ostentatious Notice'. Its GNU'd and everything.

I think you misunderstand the metaphor. The expenditure, here, isn't the time/attention of 100 people; It's the things that have been cut/defunded and the consequences of the way those changes have been implemented.

If DOGE is paying the salary and benefits of 100 people, the net savings on $10m of cuts may not even be one million.

Hold on, what savings? They said they're giving the "$10M" back to the people in the form of cheques.

So instead of them giving that money to Americans to pay for productivity (USAID buying corn from farmers, tens of thousands of employees paid to promote American standing on the global stage, paid to look after parks, paid to monitor fraud in the US financial system, paid to collect taxes, etc).. they want to send those people home and distribute their would-be salaries to every American for free.

> They said they're giving the "$10M" back to the people in the form of cheques.

They have said that 20% will be distributed directly to the population, 20% will be paid to the national debt, and the remaining 60% will simply not be spent.

A trillion is a million millions. A million to a trillion is like a tenth of a cent to a thousand.

That's not true in common English usage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion

You might want to reread that page.

“1,000,000,000,000, i.e. one million million, or 1012 (ten to the twelfth power), as defined on the short scale. This is now the meaning in both American and British English.”

You're very right. I was confusing trillion and billion.

500 dollars when you have 10,000 in the bank is equivalent to roughly 200 billion to a governmental budget. The DoED budget last year is about 50 billion , for reference.

I hope that puts some of these plans in perspective. Musk's millions is wandering the street for loose pennies. Trumps plan to dismnantle the DoED is "saving" the equivent of paying some energy bill, while the US is going into more debt to pay rent.

For those close to the current executive, killing DoEd ultimately is a cultural quest, not a fiscal one.

Edit: and so are a lot of their other efforts

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