Two things can be bad at once. The IT consulting can be too expensive. Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences.
Rash moves like this are things politicians and corporate ladder climbers alike love to do, but then they run far away from the consequences. They know they can convince enough people that their bold move was a good thing and that the consequences will diffuse throughout the years on to other people.
This very well could become more expensive to cancel abruptly when you consider the second and third order effects.
Destroying everything because you don't know how to fix it or work within the system is an amateur move. Weakness masquerading as tough guy strength.
I think this part is overestimated. It will get fixed.
But that won't make the news in any meaningful way, and the destitute will often be too busy to make loud noises. And the populous at large will sigh and shake their head and say "what a shame", but the loss can be *enormous*.
I thought we were talking about firing IT consultants? Let me know when that happens.
> But that won't make the news
I think that would make the news immediately. The media is very interested in DOGE and its shortcomings.
I read this whole thread as being about the broader 'cutting' trend,
OOP: when discussing the overall trend of cutting programs in other fields where the majority doesn't have that expertise, the conclusion is the opposite.
Parent: Rash moves like this are things politicians and corporate ladder climbers alike love to do, but then they run far away from the consequences.
Programmers that work on critical systems are actively trained to take into consideration every contingency to not increase the death rate of their systems, to the best of their abilities.
Aggressive, comprehensive and non-robust axing of systems when literal lives are on the line - especially when it's government systems and those lines maintain any semblance of some people's ability to literally be alive - touch and impact more lives than any single Boeing plane or NASA space shuttle's crash. They are even more critical than those systems - though not as flashy when they fail.
Computer problems are fixable, and they are secondary, and there are many people and services who can be hired to fix them.
> Two things can be bad at once. The IT consulting can be too expensive. Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences.
> The contracts "represent non-essential spending on third party consultants" for services Pentagon employees can perform
That's the goal. The whole conservative ideology for the past 40 years has been to make the government inefficient so it can complain about government inefficiencies.
What we are seeing is the end game of this idea - turn the government itself into an gigantic inefficient corporation designed to siphon as much money as possible from people.
In this specific situation, these expensive contractors will be replace with even more expensive "AI contractors" that work for companies founded by the Global Elite Tech Bros. So more money spent on on less outcomes. Destroying the system first ensures that there's no direct performance comparisons that can be made between the old expensive, but functional system and the new even more expensive, disfunctional one they created.
People say things like this, but then have trouble explaining California, where the left has had a supermajority for almost as long.
Also, I don't know if you can really credit the left's supermajority for the success of SV... CA's politics have pivoted over the years. Look at an election map of CA in 1980 and you'll see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_presidentia...
Are you sure about that?
You can disagree with some services but that’s because the state does so much, for example I think there is too much wasted on the carceral and military side.
IT consultants, particularly from the large firms, are very overpriced for the value they provide. Blindly cutting NIH grants (even some of the ones that sound silly on paper) and funding for research institutions is doing great harm to progress in modern medicine.
Multiple things can be true at once.
It’s not usually the type of work, it’s the specific commercial model and mode of engagement with them that’s generally at fault, often aided and abetted by procurement processes.
A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away' number and they took it, and then i had to deal with the insanity of F500 business...
If I had to break down how consulting contracts are actually priced, it'd be:
- 50% work
- 35% requirement ambiguity
- 15% customer management overheadBut I’m loath to defend the big firms. Generally, quality plus the ever push for expanding scope leaves a sensation of waste. The solution is just going to need more than simply tossing them out.
I have enough friends who work in University systems and government roles (both similarly heavy in red tape) to know that many of these institutions would also spend an order of magnitude doing it in house.
It’s misleading to compare to an idealistic efficient organization with no red tape, because government jobs are very heavy on red tape. That’s where most of the inefficiency gets spent, whether it’s done in house or by consultants.
The general rule that employees good, contractors bad still holds. Even though people seem obsessed with the belief that firing public employees and replacing them with private contractors will make the government more “efficient”.
But if you were to tell me that 25% of the Pentagon's budget was waste? That's a big deal.
Yet somehow a certain segment of our population tends to focus on the small fries.
I admit probably not 25% of all millions is wasted. But even if that is half that would be 12.5% wasted... Or fourth 6.25%. Fixing of which would still be huge long term effect.
So my take is that this needs to be fixed on all levels and on all places.
Would it be worth the extra hurdles required to actually catch that waste/fraud though? My bet is on probably not, it's like the many many attempts to drug test welfare recipients, they all wind up costing far more than they save because the actual rate is pretty low so catching those is far more expensive than what you save.
of course, if Trump is doing this all so he can pass his tax cuts as seems almost certain, he is no better. but frankly yes, the US needs deep cuts and concordant tax receipts increases to maintain a sustainable debt trajectory and price stability/productivity for the middle/working class.
The debt boogey man is exactly that a nearly imaginary number, most US debt is held by Americans or US companies in the end too.
I agree that the problem with debt is not that there are foreign holders of US treasuries. But higher debt crowds out private investment & borrowing in the repo markets, which harms productivity, makes goods more expensive, hurts aggregate supply in the long run, and makes the poor even poorer.
It also means that the US has to pay increasingly high amounts of money on interest financing and the Fed has far less room to effectively maneuver to combat inflation and ensure sustainable employment levels, as we've been seeing in the last few years. Debt is absolutely not an imaginary number and anyone who is telling you that perhaps doesn't understand the economic weight.
The marginal dollar of US govt spending is generally not more welfare enhancing than the alternative of not having that debt, not crowding out private investment, etc. - particularly when we are in expansionary times (as we have up until very recently). With our current debt trajectory, we should be raising non-distortionary taxes and aggressively limiting spending that is not obviously growth enhancing or with strong social justice justification. We are starting to see real structural problems already emerging from our current debt trajectory.
I worry that we’re not that good at measuring these things. And I suspect the measurement of waste is often considered waste.
For me, I wouldn't have objected to Musk / DOGE going in and actually doing an audit of everything to look for waste, fraud and abuse. And if actual waste, fraud and abuse are found, where evidence and details are provided, I'd personally celebrate that.
It turns out that there is generally waste in all operations; it doesn't follow that all operations should be terminated.
This is basically a tautology. The question is what’s actually being funded in the name of public health. Wasting money in pursuit of public health which doesn’t help the public is bad actually,
How do you define waste? If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? Are inconclusive results wasteful? What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? What about the benefits of effectively subsidizing your biotech sector by keeping biologists in-demand?
There is more upside (globally) to public health spending than maintaining a global empire that deals death and destruction. Trying to nitpick is missing the point entirely.
It’s certainly worse that research that does produce results. We should try to optimize for research that works.
And yes, in the extreme example of spending a lot of money and never getting anything of public utility, that would be a waste.
> What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending?
I wouldn’t use abstractions like “public health” and “public utility”. Which specific projects are funding or losing funding and what’s the impact?
> There is more upside (globally) to public health spending
Look inside the abstraction.
The discussion is moot however because the agencies aren't being gutted over concerns of efficiency, but because of an ideological commitment to free market shock therapy. It's like arguing if you should order the fish or chicken while the Titanic is sinking. Sure there's an argument to be had, it's just not relevant right now.
And we would like to see a measured approach to reducing waste, with some findings released to the people about what the plan is going forward and why the cuts make sense, rather than "just fire every probational employee" or "just 50% slash the SEC" or whatever else they are doing currently.
This is a subset - the one the media choose to highlight and that’s occupying your mindshare.
EDIT: Also, should anyone with a criminal background be in charge of what they're currently doing? I'd say no. That's just me
You could get an oncologist to admit that the patient had some cells that needed to be removed, due to the advanced cancer. But the layman chose to get rid of a couple of perfectly healthy, cancer-free limbs.
Coined by author Michael Crichton:
“Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them.
In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know.
That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”
I find skimming NYT’s and FOX’s headlines are perfectly satisfactory. If anything peaks my interest I do independent analysis, putting weight on primary sources. I often try to listen in on experts discussing the matter among themselves.
The actual “news” stopped being productive to read, watch, or listen to when the term “pregnant chads” was coined. Been downhill ever since.
It’s small potatoes for time, most people spend way more on television and social media.
we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation.
> we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation
Oh wow, we can't raise taxes on the rich? only significantly the middle class? Why not the rich?
"Medicare is BAD because it costs money and is cheaper than private insurance. Private insurance is GOOD because it costs even more money than we'd pay with Medicare!!"
Your position is "medicare is too expensive" but expensive compared to what??
I think you struggle with civil discourse and doubt this conversation will be productive, so have a nice day.
Your current fiscal situation is only right-wing talking points.
https://www.kentclarkcenter.org/surveys/taxes-and-mandatory-...
They also vary widely in their comments on what they agree with. Even if you think I’m uncharitably reading your words, you’re entirely misreading the poll and the site you posted. You’re putting your words in their mouths.
“Long run fiscal sustainability in the US will require some combination of cuts in currently promised Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits and/or tax increases that include higher taxes on households with incomes below $250,000.”
This poll question is biased and doesn’t include anything about whether taxes on those above $250k need to be increased. You’re, again, misreading the question that asked and adding in your own words about wealthy tax. There is nothing in that question that allows you to posit these polled economists don’t believe “that we can reach a fiscally sustainable path solely by raising taxes on the wealthy.”
You keep saying this - it’s a form of ad hominem.
Also last I checked the Trump administration is not exactly full of free market healthcare advocates. You may be remembering Paul Ryan from 2012.
I’m open to proposals about what to do about social security because it MUST change.
How about instead we have a forced savings account that you cannot withdraw from. And the government has some matching component.
Senior centers also seem to be a low cost community investment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler
"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. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." - President Eisenhower
Military Spending and Tax Cuts for the wealthy have some of the lowest economic multipliers of all government activities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics)
* Education spending: 2.4 (Federal Reserve research) Source: Federal Reserve
* Medicaid/healthcare: 2.0 Source: Congressional Budget Office Cbpp
* Food stamps (SNAP): 1.73-1.74 Sources: Mark Zandi/Moody's Analytics, Americanprogress, Manhattan Institute
* Unemployment insurance: 1.61-2.1 Sources: Blinder & Zandi; Urban Institute, Americanprogress
* Infrastructure spending: 1.0-2.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress
* Military spending: 1.5 (average) Source: Federal Reserve
* Middle-class tax cuts: 0.6-1.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress
* Upper-income tax cuts: 0.2-0.6 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Americanprogress
* Permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts: 0.35 Source: Moody's Analytics model, Cbpp
Dollar-for-dollar, social program spending consistently produces higher economic returns than military spending or tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the wealthy.
$1 billion spent on education or transit creates more than twice as many jobs (17,687-19,795) as the same amount spent on defense (8,555). -Cigionline
In fact, military spending can actually slow economic growth over time; a 1% military spending increase can reduce economic growth by 9% over 20 years.
Zandi's analysis of 2010 tax legislation found that 90% of economic growth and job creation came from unemployment insurance extensions and targeted tax credits, while high-end tax cuts had "only very small economic impacts." - Cbpp
Jack Ma was completely correct: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-...
I am saying that support for Ukraine is pretty different from the kinds of behaviors that make people say "the USA shouldn't be the world police!"
Then why are you arguing with me? I was pointing out the contradiction of people who do that. I feel like you think I'm saying the US shouldn't support Ukraine. I'm all on board with the US supporting Ukraine. I'm saying the US needs a powerful military if you want it to support Ukraine, which is at odds with people who are fully behind the quotes that come from Butler and Eisenhower's farewell address.
> I am saying that support for Ukraine is pretty different from the kinds of behaviors that make people say "the USA shouldn't be the world police!"
And yet, to even consider helping Ukraine in any meaningful way, the US needs an extremely strong, modern military.