Summary

$150 billion: that’s the grand total of savings Elon Musk revealed last Thursday that he and his DOGE team are “expecting” to make after months of ruthless and often mindless cuts.

To call this a monumentally unimpressive number doesn’t do it justice. Musk’s “savings” here — which are already error-ridden and inflated in the first place, created by totaling up spending that never actually existed or that was, alternately, either already cut or never actually was — represent just 15% of the trillion dollars he originally promised he would slash.

In fact, government spending so far under Donald Trump has actually gone up compared to the last two years under Joe Biden.

“Musk will have effectively crippled the modern American state and ripped vital services away from ordinary Americans in order to pay for more waste at the Pentagon.”

  • BigMacHole@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    NOT True! NOW that we saved a couple Million we can Afford BILLIONS in Contracts for Elon Musk and El Salvador and Greenland and my Kids is Starving because they Cut his Funding!

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Doesn’t matter to the supporters. They believe he has streamlined government and saved gazillions. And if you don’t like DOGE there must be something wrong with you. Why wouldn’t you want a more efficient government without fraud and waste? Do you want waste?

  • meep_launcher@lemm.ee
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    2 days ago

    I mean I’ve been told this is the year to fudge on your taxes since the IRS is fucked so I mean maybe there’s some silver lining. Frankly Elon isn’t as bad as- hold on someone’s knocking on my door, I’ll be back in a bit.

    • huppakee@lemm.ee
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      2 days ago

      Might not be the year to break laws though, considering even judges can’t save you

    • Turret3857@infosec.pub
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      2 days ago

      just FYI, its easier to audit a poor/middle class person because they dont pay 600 lawyers to play with where the money is for tax loopholes. Unless youre a multimillionaire you’ll probably end up regretting fudging anything unfortunately.

        • Tryenjer@lemmy.world
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          2 days ago

          That’s not true at all, even if you want to restrict yourself and only consider direct democracies as true democracies, you have at least Switzerland as an example.

          In Sweden and Denmark, workers can even choose representatives to sit on the board of directors of the companies where they work (however, only for companies with more than 25 or 35 employees).

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    I’m also concerned with the “fraud, waste and corruption “ that was the infrastructure bill. It’s becoming more and more clear we’re sitting on a timebomb of infrastructure built over a century ago and that we’ve ignored for at least half a century. It’s going to keep getting worse and worse , keep getting more expensive to repair: we’re way past time to invest in infrastructure and that was only the start toward getting back in a decent state of repair.

    … just watching a video where they were debating whether it’s worth to rebuild a 137 year old tunnel in heavy use. How is that even a question?

  • moitoi@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 days ago

    People don’t understand that a state isn’t a private company, and you can’t manage the state like in the private sector.

  • 13igTyme@lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    The US budget is $7 trillion. Even if we pretend he saved $150 billion, that’s 2% of the budget.

  • Kompressor @lemmy.world
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    2 days ago

    Yes but he was able to direct the blank checks to himself and his buddies so the day is saved actually.