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I’m confused by the contradictions coming in fast from the DOGE critics. On one hand, they argue that no money is really being saved or it’s just a paltry amount. On the other hand, the cuts are severe and devestating and will send us into recession
Clearly only one can be true, but which is it? Who is being dishonest?
These aren't contradictions to me. All things considered, DOGE is cutting peanuts from the federal budget and is unlikely to make even a small dent in the annual deficit. They big leagues don't start until they start cutting Social Security, Medicare, and the defense budget.
At the same time, these cuts may end up being fairly devastating. I don't know that they will be devastating enough to send us into a recession, but they may really gum up the works for people who truly rely on government services. The other thing is with all these cuts to the IRS, it seems likely to me that tax receipts will be much lower this year than in years past, thus contributing even more to the deficit.
That’s not what the critics are claiming though. They say we are headed towards economic catastrophe because welfare recipients may miss a cheque or two
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it is possible for something to be very cheap and at the same time bad to get rid of
Give an example of something like that doge cut
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I don't see the contradiction. Some of the cuts (NIH indirect costs, firing thousands of employees) are real and likely to be devastating. Other cuts (a purported $8B DHS contact) are fake or wildly overstated. There is only a contradiction if one is talking about the same cut.
Even then, the same thing can be inexpensive (as government programs go) and worth keeping. Dropping such a thing wouldn't be likely to cause a recession, but barring cases where they specifically say that, there's nothing wrong with that logic.
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They're just throwing crap at the wall and hoping something sticks. For instance there was some post on dailykos proclaiming that the 150-year-olds on Social Security were there because that's how a missing birthdate was represented in COBOL -- 20 May 1875, the beginning of the international Gregorian Epoch. The article contains howlers like "Early versions [of COBOL] used the standards set in ISO 8601:2004." LOL; that 2004 is a year. That would be a very recent version of COBOL (which dates back to around 1959) indeed. The first version of ISO 8601 was from 1988, still far too new for Social Security. A little Internet research revealed that versions of COBOL which had an epoch usually used January 1, 1601. And if the epoch was a custom one, they sure would have picked something before 1875, since when Social Security was computerized, people older than that were still alive. And then data was released showing no, the records of very old living people didn't all have the same birthdate.
Did anyone change their mind? No, they just found other reasons Elon was "obviously" wrong.
Okay, but the cobol bullshit notwithstanding, there aren't any 150 year olds on SS, to say nothing of the table Elon posted claiming 1.3M of them.
That's a long and excellent post. The executive summary is...
Being marked "alive" in the data doesn't mean they're collecting benefits. It just means they have no evidence that this person is dead.
Though nowadays funeral homes outright report deaths to SSA which immediately terminates benefits.
There are separate processes to follow up on people that are long lived and collecting benefits. One kicks in at 100 and a more aggressive one at 115. There's also periodic audits that kick in if someone does things like draws benefits but hasn't used their Medicare benefits in awhile (since dead people don't go to the doctor).
There's lots of garbage data in the database due to migrations over the years and some records are unfixable due to layers of kludges, but separate systems exist to stop them from getting payments.
There have been proposals to fix all of the records but they've determined the cost outweighs the benefits, which sounds plausible for a government to say (not that I would agree).
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It's not a contradiction; there are plenty of things like this. Just last night, a friend of mine's temperature light went on. She was low on coolant. $5 worth of coolant later she was back on the road, no harm done. Had she not spent this five dollars, she could have overheated her engine, rendering a $20,000 car unrepairably useless and leaving her without transportation indefinitely. Deciding against spending the $5 would have been saving a paltry amount and risking severe and devastating consequences.
What in your opinion will have the most devastating effects on the economy (from the cuts - not other trumpian policies like tariffs/foreign policy)
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