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PaperclipPerfector  12d ago (text post)   33243 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 10, 2025

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There are some indications that the amount of fraud in the larger programs such as SSI, Medicare/caid, and defense might be significant. If so, the savings could easily amount to $1 trillion per year. I guess we'll see.

SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense amount to amount to $3.5T. do you really believe that "easily" 30% of that is waste?

They've cut $100 billion so far.

Have they cut or have they just put a temporary stop on expenditures? How many programs have actually been durably cancelled, either by the executive or by Congress?

SS, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense amount to amount to $3.5T. do you really believe that "easily" 30% of that is waste?

The US is definitely getting as least bang for their buck with military contracts. Any reason to believe that the other are different?

The military presumably wastes money on slow rolling procurement and other things of that nature. A full quarter of defense spending is salaries, and perhaps there are people drawing a salary that don't need to be there.

SS is a cash transfer program that spends less than one percent on administrative overhead, so savings from firing useless employees would be minimal. The only possible avenue for waste would be actual fraud on the part of the recipients. I doubt that this is anywhere near 30%, but I don't expect either of us could convince the other on this point. However, the longer DOGE goes on without announcing finding this fraud, the more skeptical we should be.

A full quarter of defense spending is salaries

I would go the other way. Salaries should be a bigger fraction of the military budget.

There could be massive savings also in Medicare and Medicaid if they only stomp their feet and use their massive scale to cut costs.

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