- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
You must log in or register to comment.
Lost.
Not saved. Lost. Elon and the Musketeers lost this nation half a trillion dollars.
So far.
You’re spinning it wrong. “With the doge cuts, we saved you half a trillion dollars in taxes”
…that’s not what happened.
This is like a fuck off huge gas turbine generator spinning at full chat and then just starting to take parts off of it and snipping fluid lines. One of the features of turbines is that they will continue to run for a bit even when they’re heading in the direction of catastrophic failure, since it’s all angular momentum and no reciprocation. But it IS going to catastrophically fail.
This is the system just eating itself and money being - at best - siphoned into someone’s pockets, or more likely, just being outright wasted. The USAID cuts, for instance, basically locked an absolute shitload of consumables and perishables in warehouses to spoil. That’s what we’re talking about. And that’s only the most obvious example.
I’m not sure where they expect the loss, but I’m sure it’s not regular people whose paychecks have taxes withheld, and who file their taxes without major fraud.
They’ll lose money off people like the mango Mussolini whose corporate shell game is so complex that he used to brag the IRS couldn’t afford to hire enough people to audit his taxes
And don’t forget the 10 trillion in lost war plane sales due to "toning them down in case our allies turn on us’, just like he has turned on Canada and Europe.
Another 4 months and they could have lost enough to forgive all student loans. :/
Trump did say he’s only just getting started.
Well April 2nd is our supposed “national day of prosperity”. Which analysts think means he is going to enact global tariffs as well as all the retaliatory tariffs he is planning.
Such doublespeak. So stupid.
It should be blatantly obvious to anyone paying attention that the “Department of Government Efficiency” isn’t really about efficiency.
Just like the “ministry of truth” isn’t about the truth.
And now the “environmental protection agency” is about extracting profit at the expense of the environment
Environmental Plundering Agency
To their credit they’re destroying government to pave the way for oligarchy very efficiently
They are already an oligarchy, they are paving the way for an authoritarian dictatorship now.
Does it seem stupid only to me to destroy the environment they thrived in?
They are not smart. They are just pathologically greedy people born to wealth.
The thing is that the environment they thrive in just isn’t sustainable.
Food & water scarcity is going to really hurt in 20 years time.
Trump doesn’t care because he will be long dead. He just likes signing executive orders because it demonstrates how powerful he is.
Musk knows that in troubled times the wealthy are held accountable. Billionaires will only be able to exist in a dystopian hellscape.
They know a climate apocalypse is coming, so they all have doomsday bunkers and shit. They see themselves as the future neo-feudal rulers of whatever remains.
If the population is culled in some way or another, prior to said climate apocalypse, then maybe it can be mitigated or averted. And they see themselves as the future neo-feudal rules of whatever remains.
This is how they think. Some of them are just preparing for the former. Others are actively trying to bring about the latter.
I saw someone here a while back refer to it as “Immortan Joe fantasies” if you’re familiar with Mad Max: Fury Road.
It makes the government more efficient at increasing waste, fraud, and abuse perhaps.
(Judging by the downvotes, it seems some people think DOGE actually decreases waste?)
It’s the TSA of efficiency
From what I hear…elon, thief and their cronies are specifically wrecking government to push a corporate takeover…jeeze. it’s like robocop.
And/or destabilizing the country’s economy and political power worldwide so our enemies like Russia can do whatever they want without the US interfering. The complete destruction of US soft power via things like USAID and the blatant attempts to destroy any collaboration with our allies seems to point more in that direction.
Different groups, different motivations, but they’re headed in the same direction more or less so they’re working together. Trump is working to install himself as a dictator under orders from Putin. He wants to be for the US what Lukashenko is for Belarus. Ultimately he’ll be Putin’s puppet but he’ll largely have free reign within the US which is the only thing he cares about. He’s destroying all the US soft power and doing everything he can to turn all the US allies against it. Domestically he’s painting targets on the backs of as many minorities as he can in order to keep the useful idiots that elected him distracted.
Musk meanwhile is working to establish an oligarchy and to steal or destroy as much of the US government as he can manage. Ultimately his goals are fairly transparent as he’s motivated entirely by naked greed. Since his efforts hurt US foreign relations as much as the domestic situation he’s a useful tool to Trump in his efforts to neuter the US for Putin.
Then you’ve got the Christian nationalists in the GOP that don’t really care about what’s going on as long as they’re allowed to trample all over the first amendment and declare Christianity as the official US religion with all the associated bigotry and discrimination. Since that plays to Trump’s efforts to distract his supporters he’s perfectly fine with it, but likely keeping a close eye on that group lest any of them think about usurping his crown, particularly when he still hasn’t really gotten to go full dictator yet.
I would disagree on your Musk-analysis. He and the other techbros are not after the money but after the power and influence that being in these positions nets them. The monetary gain is a side-effect. The goal is to enforce their unrealistic ideas about how to reshape society. Look up ‘Longtermism’ and the ridiculous ideas of one Curtis Yarvin. Remember MAGAts are fond of yammering about the World Economic Forum and the Gates, Soros etc? How these are supposedly trying to reshape society into some big brother-esque dystopia?
That is what the tech-oligarchs are facilitating.
Well it’s kind of both. While I agree that is a goal it’s ultimately about hoarding wealth to them. Power is wealth and wealth is power. The only reason they care about the peasants is because control over them ensures they can continue to harvest wealth and that nobody can become wealthier. Their goal isn’t any specific amount of wealth but rather they treat it as a game they’re competing in. They don’t care if they have a million dollars or a hundred trillion as long as nobody else has more.
Everything they do is in service to acquiring more wealth for themselves and denying wealth to others including the accumulation of power. They’ll spend money to acquire power but only if that power then allows for the accumulation of more money. That’s their current play with the US government. They’re destroying the US in order to carve it up and add it to their personal hoard of wealth.
Worse than RoboCop, we don’t have a cool robot cop shooting dicks off to show for it
Yet.
That we know of.
Let’s qualify this more accurately. It’s not lost. It’s “lost.”
Let’s all keep an eye out for the shiny new upgrades to putin’s war crimes in Ukraine.
It’s not lost. The people who wanted to keep it for themselves got to keep it. They know exactly where it is.
That’s my point.
putin is probably straight up annexing what he already got of ukraine.
I think we should organize and go demand everyone working for DOGE… stop. And not demand like with funny signs and chants, but like with 2nd amendment arms.
Wait till you see how much we loose from killing the Department of Education. Education is like the easiest ROI
It’s not the quickest though. ROI timeline is 18 years minimum for tax from non-degree level jobs, 22/23 years for degree level, and 26 to 30 years for post doctoral.
It’s sad. The quarterly pressure to generate value is one of the worst economic forces of capitalism which drives enshitification, job-instability from the “fire bottom performing 10%” so that you can post more “profits” from cost cutting, and the general short-term thinking that pervades all aspects of the culture.
It’s the reason “nobody” builds things to last or metaphorically plants something now for the future: it’s not profitable quick enough.
Totally agree. Was talking to my brother who worked for the US Corps of Engineers. He said they have a decades long outlook for their projects. So if they want to remove a dam or something, studies are done to make sure that is the smartest move not just for the next few years, but the next several decades.
So refreshing vs the typical “new CEO wants to fire x% of the workforce to generate 1% more profit this year (ignore the fact that customers will leave when it’s that much shittier here… That’s next year’s (and next Ceo’s) problem)”.
(corps)
Haha thanks. I don’t know why that particular word does not work right in my brain.
That’s what is so sad to see - whole lotta young dumbasses with the same kind of short-term thinking dunking on “boomers” and things like Social Security. As well as unions, the post office, and public schools. Even worse when the framing of it is accompanied with some blather about “my generation” and so on, yadda yadda.
They are probably so filled with Dunning-Kruger that it hasn’t even occurred to them that prior “generations” were told the exact same hokum and that their “generation” is not magically any different…
Just like in corporate america, the savings hit this quarter so bonuses all around. Then the CEO jumps ship and it’s someone else’s problem next quarter.
The article doesn’t explain how, where the money went, or how the IRS knows this.
Cutting staff thereby reducing the IRS’s ability to find and go after weakthy tax cheats.
Thanks! I wasn’t doubting the article, just wanted more info.
The fourth sentence of the article explains it
The Post reports today that the IRS’s internal projections estimate that the DOGE-driven disruptions to the IRS since the inauguration are on track to have reduced tax receipts by more than $500 billion by April 15th. This, to be clear, is not a final tally. It’s not April 15th yet. It’s a projection based on historical data, the number of people who’ve filed, paid owed amounts of tax etc.
For every dollar spent on IRS staffing, etc, it’s estimated to be at least a 7x return. Any disruptions are going to cost a lot with that in mind. Also, I find it a little misguided to question the IRS, an agency that shows its work’s opinion on DOGE, an “agency?” Which has failed to show its work and has been caught lying frequently.
Yeah the article is just rehashing a wapo article that’s linked, the original one is much clearer
If only it weren’t paywalled
Download the “latest” .xpi file from here and install it in your browser. Bypasses almost all paywalls.
.ru no thank you
deleted by creator
I usually try archive.org 's wayback machine to see if they have any archived site images
Oh so sad. Elect a clown expect a circus.
Install an unelected billionaire, expect theft.
I think DOGE should send out stimulas checks because of all the money that is going to be saved.
This would be more than reasonable if they were actually doing what they said.
In real life, they’re costing the US an insane amount of money, and working class taxpayers will carry the burden of paying for it as usual.
It could easily set a new record for largest transfer of wealth from the workers to the rich in human history.
they’re costing the US an insane amount of money
How exactly does that work? Seriously don’t think you’re right about that.
So this sounds like a number they won’t be able to easily cover up.
You must be new here. They just say it didn’t happen and poof it didn’t happen
And should you insist that it did, this gentleman from the Ministry of Love would like to talk to you about your apparent delusions.
deleted by creator
It all depends how you count saved and lost.
If a govt program costs $1m to run but saves $1t in, say, mental health services, then you can just turn that off and save $1m right?
Henry Davis Thoreau smiles on us this day
Much efficient.
Very saved.
The stupid “doge” thing was never about balancing the budget anyway. That’s all bullshit red meat for the dumbasses that voted for donvict.
Yes! Baby! We did it!
By we, I mean like you know… They. They did it!
We’re number 1 at loosing 1 trillion!!!
Imagine being so fucking dumb you use IRS data to go after immigrants who are paying taxes, thus ensuring no immigrant ever pays taxes again.
