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DOGE I like - certainly on principle but also many of the criticisms seemed bad-faith and nonsensical to me -, but I've never been a fan of tariffs. If they were actually reciprocal / 2 I'd understand somewhat - a country can hardly complain about a new tariff if it's just half of what they charge - , but automatically classifying all trade deficit as equivalent to a tariff is pretty crazy, and then also giving a 10% tariff floor anyway to countries against which you have trade surplus is hypocritical. Or, as it seemed plausible early in his presidency, if they were used primarily as a threat / leverage.
Sigh. So many people are really, justifiably pissed at the current left/green administrations running most of the western states, but it seems we haven't found what can plausibly replace it.
I'm on board with the idea of a department dedicated to ensuring governmental efficiency. I'm a minarchist, with the caveat that I think there's an optimal size and scope for governments (and little evidence that we're already there).
Even the politically motivated firings, I understand, if not condone. Trump's first term was plagued with malicious compliance, obstruction and outright and blatant ignoring of orders.
The execution? All kinds of programs that most people think are laudable are catching strays. The administration doesn't seem to be particularly on the ball when it comes to rolling back the most obviously negative changes. And the savings figures they tout are frankly speaking, worthless.
Gotta say I'm interested in talking to a minarchist who isn't sure our government is big enough yet! Although come to think of it maybe that describes the non-anarchist left in general?
Oh dear. I very much didn't mean to imply that the US government isn't big enough, my gut feeling is that it's quite the opposite. At least that's what I feel is directionally correct, even if I don't think I'm qualified to offer an authoritative opinion on how large the ideal government is, and what it does.
If I had to answer:
Number 4 captures things like NASA, DARPA, the NIH and the like. Government expenditure has outsized returns here. Some expenses, like the size of the military, depend greatly on what other nations are up to. Even the IRS is, I'm told, extremely cost effective and makes about $10 back from additional revenue for every dollar spent on their budget.
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Yes. It's not nice, but I don't see how they could get anywhere without them.
I still find it very hard to judge whether the allegedly-laudable programs really are strays. All the ones I've personally looked into seemed fishy at best, and they almost universally have pretty bad transparency. When in doubt, cancel spending. Not to mention the multiple cases where the media just pushed blatant lies yet again, which is also one of the prime reasons why they are reluctant to rolling back anything - if they were responsive, they'd end up rolling back almost everything, because the media will always find a convenient sob story. The savings figures is just Elon doing Elon things - wildly overpromising, but even the estimates by critics seem quite OK for such a small team in such a small time. Especially considering how rare it is for a government to meaningfully cut spending at all.
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Everyone who is paying attention knows that the worst waste/fraud/inefficiency in the US government is in Medicare and defence. DOGE hasn't touched Medicare and has barely touched defence. Ergo they are not serious about reducing waste/fraud/inefficiency.
My heuristic for figuring out whether DOGE is actually motivated by getting rid of waste involves seeing whether they are willing to cut military spending. Republicans tend to love the military for all sorts of reasons, and are usually very happy to spend a lot of tax money on it, so DOGE being willing to touch the military budget will go a long way to telling us whether or not they actually care about efficiency. My guess is, no.
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