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| ▲ | lowercased 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Agreed. Show the check numbers, mailing dates, bank transfers, etc. If there's actually really tens of billions flowing out to dead people monthly... demonstrate that. Should NOT be hard at all. | | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Should not be hard... if it exists. Which is why I'm 99% sure it doesn't. But the lie will go twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on, as always. | | |
| ▲ | freedomben 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | For sake of testing your position, let's assume the fraud is true and he does what you want and publishes the details like that. What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial? As a statistical anomaly who is often that corner case, I'm glad you're not the one making the policy. I wish Elon wasn't as well, and I'm sure there's going to be a giant mess at the end, but using government power (which Elon has, whether rightly or wrongly) to publish personal information about people (which they get by force giving their monopoly on government power) especially without trial or due diligence is very wrong IMHO. | | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This is what courts and process and testimony are for. Doing this reliably in the face of bad actors with minimal stepping-on-fingers is a solved problem. Unless you don't actually care about the truth and want to send a convenient lie twice around the world before the truth gets its pants on. Then you should act like Elon is acting. | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | cheema33 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > What about the corner-case person who actually is legitimate and now has incredibly private information out there to make stealing their identity trivial? Elon usually has doesn't have any compunction about throwing innocent people under the bus if he thinks he gains something even if indirectly. But that aside, you can show evidence of massive fraud, without revealing private information to general public. Can certainly reveal it to relevant authorities. | | |
| ▲ | kristianbrigman 2 days ago | parent [-] | | To relevant authorities who are properly vetted? Feels like ouroboros… | | |
| ▲ | mbrumlow 2 days ago | parent [-] | | You would have to quantify what properly vetted is a unelected bureaucrat is. I guarantee vetting for three positions are probably little more than validating you don’t have outstanding warrants. |
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| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | BuyMyBitcoins 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I understand that these 140/150 year old recipients are actually the results of incomplete birthdate data. To steelman the argument though, it seems reasonable to audit these recipients so that we can get their true birthdate entered. The number of recipients who lack a valid birthdate because they found a way to fraudulently claim benefits is likely non-zero, but probably low. But in any event, cleaning up the data can’t be a bad thing. | | |
| ▲ | jghn 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | If something costs more to fix than it costs to leave sitting around, fixing it is less efficient. In this case it's already been investigated prior to DOGE, and deemed not worth the effort to clean up [1]. [1] https://oig.ssa.gov/assets/uploads/a-06-21-51022.pdf | | |
| ▲ | mbrumlow 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | You fix the system not because of the cost today but because the cost it will eventually cause. Poor record keeping and bad policies about data validation tied to sending money to people if not today will eventually result in massive fraud. Furthermore the notion you put forth is trash lazy thinking. Cost or no cost you do things the right way. But I don’t even buy you can calculate the cost of doing it wrong correctly to even have a sound conjecture that fixing it is more costly. | | |
| ▲ | Brybry 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Your point is also covered in the audit report linked by the parent. Cost was not the only factor. They seem to be trying to handle missing data the right way rather than use a kludge. They did not want to add inaccurate death data to Numident records, for a variety of reasons, one being that it could cause release of information for living people when they're accidentally added to dead people records.
The SSA also thought adding annotations would legally require a new regulation and would have impacts on other consumers of the data (ie. states, etc). How to handle missing death data in this case does not appear to have a clear and simple solution. But it also does not appear to be evidence of poor record keeping for modern records or a major cause of concern for "eventual massive fraud". | | |
| ▲ | mbrumlow 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Missing data means == no payments until data is updated. This creates a driver, somebody who is motivated to get it fixed. If the person does not exist they won’t be calling for their check, or if the entry fraudulent, fraudster will run the risk of exposing them self in the process of trying to get the checks flowing again. |
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| ▲ | jf22 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | But what if the right way is judging the pros and cons of perfection and doing what makes the most sense? |
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| ▲ | rincebrain 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think the problem they should be considering more acutely is, eventually the number of people trained in that specialized knowledge will go to 0, and they will then be paying the cost to either train more (and the increased risks of less familiar people) or replace the whole thing with no backup plan. Given the age of the COBOL programmers I know, that window is rapidly shrinking... | |
| ▲ | adolph 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | OIG Response: We acknowledge that almost none of the numberholders discussed in the
report currently receive SSA payments. However, SSA issued each of these
individuals a valid SSN and these SSNs could allow for a wide range of
potential abuse.
[...]
We also note we initiated our 2015 review upon the receipt of information
that a man opened several bank accounts using SSNs belonging to
numberholders born in the 1800s who had no death information on the
Numident. In addition to being used to obtain employment or open bank
accounts, identity thieves can potentially use these SSNs to create
synthetic identifies, obtain credit, government benefits, or private
insurance.
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| ▲ | milesvp 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | To quote patio11, “The optimal amount of fraud is non-zero He was talking about the banking system. But he was also hinting at something bigger. There is a game theory problem often referred to as the meter maid problem. What is the optimal amount of meter maids in a city, where optimal can be defined in at least a few different ways, but roughly means the cost to revenue optimal. You end up with a couple of obvious extremes, no parking enforcement means no cost, but no revenue (plus parking may end up out of control if charging for parking is more than just revenue generating). The other extreme is thay you have enough people policing parking that no one ever fail to comply, this is the highest cost, but not the highest revenue, because you don’t get revenue from ticketing. So the answer is that the optimal number lies somewhere where the number of meter maids allows some percentage of people get away with failing to comply with parking rules (whether deliberate or accidental can further complicate the problem since both will happen). So back to your steelman. Cleaning data is most certainly a desirable thing, but it is likely not the optimal thing, especially if the cost is high. And unauditable access to systems is a very high cost. Seems to me much of this auditing could be done in a much more acciuntable way. | | |
| ▲ | spankalee 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | On top of that, there's an assumption that there's no existing cleaning effort. I'm sure there is and it's just a difficult problem. The cases left must be either in progress, hard to track down, or not actually meaningfully active. Or, as is really common with the federal government, the agency is actually underfunded and hasn't been able to modernize because the Republicans in congress have been trying to starve the administrative capacity the classic, slow way until now. Like with the IRS. I've made mistakes in filing, and gotten a notice from the IRS about it, but sometimes years later (!). In the meantime, if you "audited" the IRS records, you'd see that my records are out of compliance and could claim "See, there's fraud!". In reality, the IRS just has slow antiquated systems, and is barred from giving taxpayers direct access to their records. Which is by design from the rich and anti-government. | |
| ▲ | a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Why spend money chasing people who aren't collecting checks? That sounds like waste to me. | | |
| ▲ | Terr_ 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Also those identities can't collect checks, because if they tried it would set off alarm bells and reviews because they're over a standard "assume they're already dead" limit. Imagine the brouhaha these same folks would be raising about "wasting your tax dollars hiring historians" if that other direction was in their self-interest. | | |
| ▲ | jacurtis 2 days ago | parent [-] | | This is also the same argument made against IRS audits on lower tax brackets. Basically, its not generally worth audits of low income citizens. Because the manpower required to perform the audit exceeds the revenues recovered. Yet audits of individuals making < $25k per year is over 5.5 times higher than those in all other income brackets (1.27% vs 0.25%). So we chase down citizens when likely they probably don't even had a tax burden anyway. Maybe they misfiled some taxes and should be taxed a few hundred or even a thousand dollars more. But the manpower to chase down these little checks is a net negative on the department. Sure, it is possible you find fraud in some of these low income cases. Someone claims to only make $25k but really they run a cash business and make $80k. But these are likely so limited thanks to other validations the IRS has access to, that the number of cases that reveal this is extremely tiny. So back to another argument on here, there an expectations that fraud is non-zero, and we accept that because getting fraud to zero is not worth the cost. |
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| ▲ | JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > these 140/150 year old recipients What is the evidence these exist? |
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| ▲ | mjevans 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Show us the (public) Court Filings. The formal start of education to evaluate if there is truth, if there is a guilty party, and to legally render a verdict. The check numbers and other PII can be evaluated by the courts. We the People can know the numbers; the scale per case and in sum, of the 'fraud' identified. | |
| ▲ | bak3y 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident. If that DB is the source of truth for SS payouts elsewhere, clean up the data. There's no reason for it to be there. | | |
| ▲ | snowwrestler 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Social Security receives payments as well as makes them. SSNs are keys for both. The “super old person” SSN numbers are in the DB mostly because non-citizens are using them to pay into the system. If you delete those numbers, the next payroll run will inject them right back in. And you would remove important accounting metadata for each payment. Metadata that is consumed by the systems that prevent fraudulent payments from going out. The only way to stop the fake/bad SSNs is to go into the field and address each instance with employers. This is time-consuming and expensive, which is why no one has done it much. | |
| ▲ | Brybry 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The reason given that the SSA does not clean up the data is it would cost too much for little to no administrative benefit. They also don't want to add new inaccurate data to the system. The no administrative benefit bit checks out with napkin math. Of the 18.9 million entries for people age 100 or older they are paying out benefits to 44,000. The total number of people in the US age 100 or older is around 90k to 100k, depending on time period for comparison. There's an Inspector General audit report in a nearby comment for source. | |
| ▲ | Terr_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > Presence in the DB allows for downstream fraud, even by accident. That's like saying null columns in a particular database table must be filled in (or have the row entirely erased) because someone, somewhere, somehow, might infer the wrong thing about them, if they completely ignore all the other tables and business rules. ___ "Hello, I am Oldy McOldperson. Give me money." "...Sorry sir, but that person would be almost 150 years old now, and that's well past our Impossibly Old threshold of 115 years. Furthermore, one our other databases says that person was reported as missing 90 years ago." "But Oldy's--I mean, my precise confirmed date of death is still blank, therefore I'm alive, so give me money!" "Sir, only a complete moron would believe that's how it works." |
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| ▲ | UltraSane 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Elon has been operating in bad faith since he called that hero diver a pedo | | |
| ▲ | SrslyJosh 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Elon has been operating in bad faith since he came to the US on a student visa and then illegally worked for a startup. | | |
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| ▲ | basscomm 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The reason I still give them benefit of the doubt on their intentions is...because they did come out and say that 20% of the savings should go back to taxpayers as a refund and that 20% should go directly to reducing the debt. That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention. 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. | | |
| ▲ | rzz3 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I feel like people lose sight of exactly how ridiculously much money a trillion dollars is. You’re mentioning a bunch of desirable things you’d like the federal government to do, while ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings. You can simultaneously want the government to reduce waste and provide these services. Lately it feels like folks are getting too carried away and becoming “pro government waste” as some type of political flex. Really, the problem is _who_ is doing the reduction and _how_, not _that_ we’re doing it. | | |
| ▲ | basscomm a day ago | parent | next [-] | | > ignoring the millions wasted on everything from a $90,000 bag of bushings to $1,300 coffee cups to $150,000 soap dispensers to billons on empty government buildings 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. | | |
| ▲ | rzz3 a day ago | parent [-] | | In the case of one of my examples, it took someone dragging a bag of bushings to congress. And though these specific examples may have been addressed, the point is there are likely many more in every corner of the government. It needs to be systematically reviewed and prevented; waste like this should never have happened and should never happen again. I’m not at all saying I support DOGE’s methods here, but I do want to eliminate government waste, and I don’t think the existing methods have worked. The national debt is out of control, and I think the reality is 25% of government spending could be eliminated without anyone even noticing a reduction in service. | | |
| ▲ | basscomm a day ago | parent [-] | | I guess the question that should be asked if the examples of waste presented thus far are exceptions or if there's just rampant waste everywhere that nobody has been able to find. We have (well, had) a Government Accountability Office that's supposed to be empowered to audit the federal government's spending, and should be able to catch fraud and waste on the scale of billions of dollars. If they're not able to find it, then I can only think of three reasons why that might be: fraud and waste on that scale doesn't exist despite certain outlets constantly insisting that it must be there, it does exist but they're either understaffed or otherwise not empowered to adequately remediate what they do find, or it exists and they're complicit in hiding it. 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. |
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| ▲ | EnergyAmy a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | Musk doesn't give a shit about any of that waste. People aren't pro government waste, they're anti political grandstanding about meaningless crumbs as a distraction while a literal nazi-saluting fascist eats the rest of the pie. | | |
| ▲ | rzz3 a day ago | parent [-] | | That’s really the reason for my comment—there’s a fine line, and the person I responded to said something (IIRC) along the lines of “take my money, I don’t care, I just want good government services”, and that can’t be the message. Everyone should be in favor of reducing waste and increasing accountability, and where and how our tax dollars are spent _does_ matter. This just isn’t the way we should be doing it, and the way we were doing it before wasn’t the best answer either. I’m scared that people are going to start being anti-waste-reduction simply because we hate Trump and he’s (claiming to be) pro-waste-reduction. | | |
| ▲ | basscomm 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I assume you're talking about me. I said that I want the government to keep the money I paid them to provide services that I and 340-odd million other people rely on. You seem to think that means that I want the government to spend as much money as possible. I've never heard anyone argue in good faith that they want the government to spent limitless amounts of money to do those things, but it needs to spend some amount of money to provide services. Providing services for every American is expensive. 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 |
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| ▲ | scottyah 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I think that addresses the root issue here- the money is not efficient in getting those things done. It's not even hidden and the freeloaders really seemed to feel no shame since covid (maybe social media is the cause?). It happens all over the world in every organization. Usually companies die off, but the budget just increases for the government. 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. | |
| ▲ | gadflyinyoureye 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Should the government get a blank check? If there is waste and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged. | | |
| ▲ | John23832 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > and removing it won’t reduce efficacy, it should be purged. 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. | | |
| ▲ | intended 2 days ago | parent [-] | | >This is the load-bearing idea that is made of toilet tissue. Needed to save that line, |
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| ▲ | xorcist 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Be careful what you wish for, as the saying goes. I have seen so many times (in private organizations) clearly inefficient processes getting ripped out, only to be replaced with much more inefficient ones. 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. | |
| ▲ | basscomm 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Jumping into a complex system and trashing big swathes of it without taking the time to understand why it's there, what it does, and the consequences for destroying it will be, is one of the worst possible ways to 'reduce waste' that I can think of. | | | |
| ▲ | daveguy 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Deeming things as waste within days of gaining access to the info is 100% in bad faith. There is no possible way that musk and his minions took the time to find out why anything is the way it is. Nevermind the fact that you don't have to shut anything down to perform an audit. He is going through with a bulldozer and saying "oops" when he destroys institutional knowledge and capabilities. The damage is the point. | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are both correct. It's not an either-or. | |
| ▲ | EnergyAmy a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is not how to accomplish that. Musk is looting the government for personal gain and installing lackeys that are loyal to him. |
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| ▲ | dTal 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You are not paying attention if you believe that a crack team consisting of the world's richest man and half a dozen tween interns physically invading government offices and dismantling entire departments fast enough to make your head spin is anything other than "ill intent". | |
| ▲ | spott 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You realize that the entire executive branch excluding defense is like 10% of the federal budget. There isn’t enough money to be saved to give you back anything. | | |
| ▲ | ModernMech 2 days ago | parent [-] | | People don’t understand scale. They will cut spending $800B, cut taxes by $4T and people will say that action is budget neutral. |
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| ▲ | johnmaguire 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You're giving them the benefit of the doubt because they made a vague promise to give you a bigger tax refund? | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Did you read the entire post you are responding to? I clearly said this at the end: "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. | | |
| ▲ | lowercased 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > 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'. | |
| ▲ | malcolmgreaves 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It is in my nature to give the benefit of the 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. | |
| ▲ | watwut 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt. 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. | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [deleted] |
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| ▲ | ketzo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You give them the benefit of the doubt because they tell you exactly what you want to hear? | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | It is in my nature to give the benefit of the doubt, but as my post clearly says at the end: "That being said, these are nice things that people would want to hear so I too am paying attention." | | |
| ▲ | jtgeibel 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Do you give the same benefit of the doubt to the 10s of thousands of civil servants who have already been abruptly fired without cause? Do you assume that they are capable and productive members of their departments who have been making good faith efforts to improve the lives of their fellow Americans? If so, then shouldn't the administration take a bit more than 30 days of careful analysis and deliberation before declaring their jobs wasteful and fraudulent? | |
| ▲ | 28304283409234 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I appreciate that nature, but not when the stakes are _this_ high. | |
| ▲ | doublerabbit 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | So you do give them the benefit of the doubt because they tell you exactly what you want to hear. What will you do when they break your benefits of the doubt. Wait for the next time
for more of the same words? | |
| ▲ | ludsan 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Post your bank account number here. Give us the benefit of the doubt. | | |
| ▲ | intended 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Typically i would agree with the harsh tone, but this person is being clear about their position. Perhaps I sympathize since I may also have a habit of being too credulous. | | |
| ▲ | ludsan 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Credulity is a fine default for human interaction. It is gift of assumed sincerity. 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"
I've seen enough of on-line conversations to understand the "I'm just asking questions" type -- the kind who
only grows in power as response after response is parried with "my goodenss, how rude?!" aplomb.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. | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | My position is very clear and I maintain it. DOGE should be audited by CAT and CAT should operate alongside DOGE to review all changes. DOGE should also be on a leash, even quarantined, while reviews are ongoing as to ensure sustainable changes and accesses. 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. |
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| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | What feature on HN requires a premium membership? | | |
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| ▲ | barbazoo 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Did they mention which tax payers those 20% will be going back to? | | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Small temporary income tax cuts, big permanent capital gains tax cuts. Always has been, always will be. | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | So far they said 20% refunds, 20% against the debt, and the rest...presumably they are determining to what extent to put that into tax cuts and the other two buckets some more. This way everyone wins, assuming their savings so far are sustainable and annualized. | | |
| ▲ | smallmancontrov 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | No, loudly broadcasting the heavy-handed implication that you have found $100B in fraud without having found $100B in fraud is still bad, even if the 1/1000th that they did find (I'm being generous here) is real and goes into tax cuts / debt. 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. | | |
| ▲ | larkost 2 days ago | parent [-] | | While I agree with you on the opinion that capital gains taxes are low (I should not be paying less on my winnings from bets on the stock market than I am on the income from my work). I think you need to justify the opinion that income taxes are high. 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... |
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| ▲ | pqtyw 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > 20% against the debt That seems insignificant when their other proposed policies are intended to massively increase that debt? | |
| ▲ | SmirkingRevenge a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | The rampage isn't going to save money on net, and even if it did, it would amount to a fart in a hurricane. 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. |
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| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Not yet as far as I've seen. | | |
| ▲ | lesuorac 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Here you got then - https://docs.house.gov/meetings/BU/BU00/20250213/117894/BILL... 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). | | |
| ▲ | SrslyJosh 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Yep, and even if they weren't planning on just ignoring the deficit (as republicans always do when they're the ones doing the spending), any money "saved" by these assholes was going to go straight into the pockets of Musk, Trump, and their assorted superrich cronies. |
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| ▲ | madeofpalk 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Do you think they can be trusted to tell the truth? | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | lowercased 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding and data and then recalibrate as more information becomes available. Perhaps you should simply announce an investigation, then deliver findings of the investigation and recommendations. They're starting with the end in mind - the dismantling of the administrative state - then making cuts. Then finding out what the impact might be, then continuing cuts. There is no good faith here, and there is nothing in 'doubt' that someone should benefit from. | |
| ▲ | whymeogod 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > I don't consider this to be a lie, per se, is because they make promises around goals with incomplete understanding They didn't even try to formulate an understanding. All of their actions show willful and deliberate disregard for how the system works. That's not "incomplete understanding" or a good faith effort. | |
| ▲ | lucasyvas 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Trust is objectively bad for systems design and processes, especially without audit and oversight! Everything should be trustless whenever it can be. They have broken every best practice in the book. | |
| ▲ | Smeevy 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Even if you believe that trust shouldn't be earned, it is inadvisable to believe anything that Elon Musk says is in good faith. How many more examples do you need after the Hyperloop debacle? Here's an expanding list: https://elonmusk.today How many times do you need to be lied to by the exact same person before you realize that facts don't mean anything to them? At this point, I'm surprised when I hear something from Musk that is verifiably true. | |
| ▲ | pqtyw 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >I've seen was an offer of 8 months Wasn't that actually "if you agree to resign and leave next September we'll continue paying your salary until then and you wont have to RTO if you work remotely" rather that actually 8 months of severance? > then recalibrate as more information becomes available. So you are waiting until they will start actually lying when they have more information (instead of "just" being incompetent)? Giving someone who has proven time and time again to be exceptionally dishonest (Trump but also arguably Musk) the benefit of the doubt seems unwise. Why would they suddenly stop lying? The fact alone that they have promised a huge tax cut to high income earners will will inevitably outweigh any potential savings by DOGE means that any claims about reducing public debt are inherently dishonest. | |
| ▲ | no_wizard 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | >with unemployment benefits as well, perhaps that ends up getting close enough It won't be, unemployment benefits are a fraction of what the severance benefits are. Its disingenuous to bundle them together due to that fact alone. |
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| ▲ | SmirkingRevenge 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | This is Clientelism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clientelism 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. | |
| ▲ | ojbyrne 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I did have a question about that. Where does the other 60% go? Isn’t the whole point to reduce the debt? | | | |
| ▲ | financetechbro 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | I’m sorry but the naivety of your comment is absolutely hilarious. Good luck getting your refund when the IRS is being ran by a handful of angsty young adults | | |
| ▲ | 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time. I don't think they'd renege on it. I'm certainly not naive! You can see that I've been contradicting DOGE on things since they became a thing. (@cyrsbel on X) | | |
| ▲ | intended 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Hi, I’ve read a lot of your comments, and you are going to get short shrift for it. 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. | |
| ▲ | recursive 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm still waiting on orange to release his tax returns like he promised from his first presidential debate. That audit's gotta be almost complete by now, right? | |
| ▲ | Sohcahtoa82 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > DOGE and POTUS are incentivized to follow through on this type of thing because it would increase good-faith in the masses big time. 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. | |
| ▲ | lowercased 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | How are those public contradictions going? > 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. | |
| ▲ | hobs 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I am not reading your twitter history to say that assuming Elon and Trump wont renege on something is the worst bet of your entire life. | | |
| ▲ | CyrsBel 2 days ago | parent [-] | | The point of that comment was to show that I am not naive about these matters. They need to be called out for reneging so that they stop doing it. |
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| ▲ | EnergyAmy a day ago | parent | prev [-] | | This is a Wikipedia article about you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_information_voter Sadly, there were enough people like you to enable a fascist coup. |
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