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It’s a position of inconsistency. The biggest fish in the Waste/fraud/abuse category are in welfare and entitlements. In fact at least a two-thirds of our budget goes to mandatory entitlements, social security, Medicare, Medicaid, without getting into welfare payments. To talk about cutting the waste in government spending without touching those things is inconsistent. It’s like having a family budget, and saying you’ll make big changes to protect yourself from too much debt, and never getting around to asking if you’re spending too much on housing. No, that’s not serious. It’s not something as inessential as the makeup buying, but if you’re really needing to cut spending, it all has to be on the table.
I'm not happy about it, and agree it is unserious but the other unserious position in this fight is the idea that anyone actually thought Trump was going to cut Medicare, social security and welfare, regardless of how much waste him and Musk claimed they would take care of. And while I understand why people who support Trump or conservative goals would be annoyed, I can't imagine why anyone who thinks Trump is a buffoon would want him to go after Medicare and social security unless they wanted more outrage.
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"Hardcore fiscal conservatism deeply unserious" looks fairly consistent to me. Maybe they've just lost control of the party and nobody cares.
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This is very common, though?
Hence all the back and forth about "you're accusing me of eating too much avocado toast, but I can't rent a tiny apartment for less than $3,000 a month." Or people with 30 year mortgages -- they aren't usually just going to sell their home and move to a cheap house in the rust belt.
In the case of home economies, the solution is often more earners -- move in with their SO, crowd more roommates in, AirBNB the casita. In the US economy, the main thing coming up is increased automation, and I'm a bit surprised that after hearing so much about US economic policy changes, and so much about AI driven economic changes looming, that there seems to be so little overlap in the conversations as of yet. Or perhaps I've just missed them?
I mean taking in another roommate, renting out an unused room, or the like are dealing with the cost of housing in that example. But I guess it’s a poor choice for the situation. My point is that about half or more of our federal budget goes towards entitlements enacted decades ago when our demographics were vastly different and we steadfastly refuse to adjust them for the reality we’re in now. Sure, in 1960, we could probably afford to have seniors retire at 65 and we had a glut of 20-30 something people entering their prime earning years. Especially since most people didn’t live much past 70. Now, we have retirees drawing out their SS, Medicare and so on for something like 20 years at a time when there are not nearly as many young people to prop up the system. Seniors comfort themselves that they’re only getting what the6 put in, but really if you live 20 years post retirement and get colas on top of your earned benefits, then you’re taking more than you ever put in. And we’ve refused to do anything substantial about it. The retirement age, if we were to keep it in line with what the age of retirement was in 1950 would be nearly 80.
Another way to put this (and more important, given that Medicare is a bigger problem than Social Security.) is that retiring people today mostly paid for 1970s-2000s healthcare and expect 2020s healthcare in return.
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