Comment by apical_dendrite | Hacker News Reader

Comment by apical_dendrite | Hacker News Reader

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apical_dendrite

You're joking right?

You realize that website has become a national laughing stock because they keep making multibillion dollar errors?

[edit] to explain further - there were lots of different errors, but a big one is that many contracts have high max values because they can't always predict how much they'll need to spend over ten years but they want a contract in place in case they need to spend money quickly (say for spare parts). So in many cases the number DOGE says they cut was just a placeholder, not an actual reflection of money that was ever going to be spent. So if you have a contract for spare parts for MRI machines for VA hospitals with a max value of, say, $1B over ten years, but you actually spend $100M over ten years, then DOGE will say they saved $1B, when actually they will have only saved $100M. That does not include the downstream effects of not having a contract for spare parts for MRI machines. If the MRI machines have more downtime, then the VA has to spend more money sending patients elsewhere, but DOGE has no way to account for that in their wall of receipts.

Let's assume it is correct, are the savings a bad thing?

How about you give a position instead of asinine "just asking" questions? Because you give strong troll vibes otherwise

The savings are good, assuming they're correct. The correctness part seems to be in question. Also, I don't know whether the hypothetical benefit is more or less than the things that were being paid for.

Cutting costs are not inherently good.

Junk food can be cheaper than healthy food, it's not good to save on money now at the cost of spending thousands on medical care and insulin in the future.

Or to paraphrase Terry Pratchett: "boots at $10 dollars that last a month are more expensive than $50 dollar boots that last a year" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

It's the difference between being cheap and being frugal...

There's also the allegation that Elon's Doge cuts were to prevent various agencies from pursuing legal action against him.

If you can get the same healthy food for less cost, that's inherently good.

But often, "you get what you pay for". I addressed that also in my short comment.

Let’s assume a frog has wings…now he doesn’t bump his ass when he hops!

Something that doesn't exist can't be a bad thing.

Savings isn't inherently a good thing. I can save a lot of money if I stop paying my mortgage. I can save money if I stop buying my meds. I can save money if I stop paying my utility bills. Things won't go well for me in the end though.

If we as a society choose to stop investing in ourselves, we'll have bad outcomes in the end.

If I stop paying rent for my apartment and interest for my loans I will make significant savings. For a few months, until the repo man shows up.

Those "savings", if they are correct (serious doubts have been raised about that) looks to me like a set of short-term gains for long-term pains.

I don't think that's an accurate analogy.

It's like if I stop commuting by car to work every day and rent a helicopter. I'm going to save a ton of money by selling the car and not buying gasoline. Of course I spent a ton of money with the helicopter method but we're not going to list _new_ expenses on the website are we?

The US spends twice what it collects in taxes, and has been doing so for so long that its ability to service its debts is mathematically jeopardized.

Spending massively more than you make is just fine, until the repo man shows up.

Sounds like maybe we should also increase revenues instead of also cutting those then, right?

It’s not necessarily that clean cut. Money saved today can easily be many times as much lost further down the road when factoring in long tail effects, and none of the cuts were given any such consideration. Even if the numbers were correct as of the time of posting, they could ultimately end up contributing to the deficit in the long run.

Exactly! A lot (most?) of this spending has very obvious multiplier effects.

Tax enforcement is a trivial and almost immediate example. Spending $X on compliance seems to recover about $5X in evaded taxes. On top of that, there are knock-on effects: if it becomes easier to cheat on your taxes, more people may cheat.

Vaccines and other forms of preventative healthcare fall into this bucket too. Even completely ignoring the moral aspect of letting people (mostly kids!) fall unnecessarily ill, it often makes economic sense to pay a little bit to avoid having to potentially pay much more down the road. One ER visit can cover a lot of flu or COVID vaccines; a few nights in the ICU even more.

Research grants are maybe less obvious, but they have a huge multiplier too: the human genome project had something like a $120x return(!). This is not just big breakthroughs, but also all the work along the way. A lot of grant money goes to training people or supports small businesses making their equipment. I saw an interesting article claiming that the Air Force essentially bootstrapped the use of more exotic materials: military contracts covered the initial investment in (e.g.,) machinery for working with titanium, and once those fixed costs are covered, it was feasible to dip a toe into the consumer space and see if there's demand. Thus, titanium golf drivers.

Let's assume they are made up (a very conservative assumption, given there's been so much evidence for it already) - is making up numbers good for the economy?

Also, if we are going to make up numbers, be more bold. Trump got 17 trillion dollars from foreigners to spend in the US. That's more like it!

he stopped 7 wars! including star wars.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the “grant cancellations” alone cost dramatically more (measured as NPV today of lost future tax revenue) than the entire reported DOGE savings.

Here's a report[1] arguing that $1 spent on an NIH grant generates $2.56 of economic activity---and these grants largely aren't even meant to have short-term payouts. Block grants for (e.g.,) preventative care or education probably have huge returns too: the ER and prison are expensive!

[1] https://www.unitedformedicalresearch.org/annual-economic-rep...

We don't have enough information to determine that, in many cases. Because it depends on what the costs of those cuts will be. DOGE is in many cases cutting things without doing a proper impact analysis.

There are many documented instances of DOGE cutting things that they later realized were needed -- leading to unnecessary switching costs and other consequential costs.

Second: deferring costs in the short term are often a bad choice that can cause higher costs over the long term.

Third: some cuts can exchange monetary costs for non-monetary costs. These will make a number look good but can cause impacts that are bad.

Every transaction has two parties. If I save, you lose income. If you save, I lose income. Well, if the government saves, the private citizens LOSE INCOME. Read about the Accounting Identity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accounting_identity

For these savings to be good, they need to be good for everyone. And that's not clear.

Is this what being "serious about the debt or government efficiency" looks like? Thought expiriments that assume liars are telling the truth?

Let's assume they aren't correct - is the massive cost DOGE is incurring to taxpayers while destroying essential government services and weakening our national security a good thing?

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