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.”

  • Kompressor @lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

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

  • Goodmorningsunshine@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    It was always about accomplishing the decimation, and he got trillions in the process. It’s idiotic as fuck to still be taking these things at their word and acting like they just didn’t succeed at it.

  • SkavarSharraddas@gehirneimer.de
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    3 months ago

    His goal was to get rid of regulators who dared regulate his companies, and suck up all the data for AI-BS (and possibly extortion). Quit accepting his framing and look at what he really did.

  • Optional@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    The only people who thought he was “saving money” or “making things more efficient” were fooling themselves or others.

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    3 months ago

    To put it into perspective…if Elon Musk were working paycheck-to-paycheck, he found enough money in the couch the night before payday to buy a pack of smokes.

    • fossilesque@mander.xyz
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      3 months ago

      With the damage done, it would be like he got a hernia while looking for the change only to find out how shitty his health insurance is.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      3 months ago

      he found enough money in the couch the night before payday to buy a pack of smokes

      Relatively speaking, did he even find that much? I live in a poor, red state and cigarettes are almost $10 a pack (which is only a bit more than what they cost in NY in 2005). If I hadn’t quit almost over a decade ago, I’d for sure be quitting now.

      Edit: I quit in 2013 and am now realizing that’s over a decade.

      • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        When a friend of mine told me a pack of Marlboros cost like $15 in RI I was amazed. How the fuck are people paying almost $1/cig?

        • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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          3 months ago

          Speaking from experience, it’s a hard habit to break. But you’d think the mental image of rolling up a $1 bill and lighting it on fire would push some people away.

          • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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            3 months ago

            …honestly, I probably should buy some cigars or cigarettes from Wish or something. The way America is going, those will buy a lot of food and things when the American Dollar implodes from all of the fuckery.

  • fox2263@lemmy.world
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    3 months 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?

        • Tryenjer@lemmy.world
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          3 months 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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    3 months 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?

  • anon6789@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    I’m possibly more worried about what he didn’t destroy at this point. What’s gone will at least be rebuilt largely from scratch by people that care about restoring those institutions.

    My huge worry now is what backdoors are now in systems like social security that impacts us all and we may not find out about for a long time. How much identity theft and scamming will go on now that outside actors likely have access to some or all of that data?

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Yes, exactly, and once I read this yesterday I allowed myself to rule out that I was just thinking the worst.

        Daniel Bertulis appeared on The Lead, joined by his attorney Andrew Bakaj, and explained the details of how he apparently uncovered a massive amount of missing data from the NLRB following DOGE’s efforts. He ostensibly mocked a White House statement touting the transparency at play, noting that none of the code used by DOGE technicians has been shared publicly.

        But the most shocking allegations came from Bakaj, who not only claimed that accounts based in Russia were using newly created DOGE usernames and passwords to access sensitive data, but also directly tied the effort to Elon Musk and his Starlink concerns, which has a relationship with the Kremlin.

        “There are two data points that I wanna point out that should give everybody pause,” Bakaj said. “The first thing, what Dan witnessed was that within 15 minutes of DOGE employees creating user accounts, i.e. Usernames and passwords, within 15 minutes of those accounts being created, somebody or something from Russia tried to log in with the right username and right passwords — that is to say — the right credentials. And that happened over 20 times.”

        “The second data point, which is really critical, is that DOGE has also been using Starlink as a means to exfiltrate data,” he continued. “What that means is that, from our understanding, Russia has a direct pipeline of information through Starlink, which means that anything going through Starlink is going to Russia.”

        I think I got this link from some Lemmy post yesterday, and I don’t like that I don’t know the source, but it seems to fit what is being talked about in regular mainstream reporting.

    • SabinStargem@lemmy.today
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      3 months ago

      We will need a whole new SSA computer system, just to kill this question dead. Same goes for EVERY department. Some 20 years from now, I guess DOGE would have fulfilled its original mission of updating American computer infrastructure, in the most stupid and malicious way possible.

    • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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      3 months ago

      They increased the budget of the Pentagon. You should be worried about where the funds are being moved-to

      • anon6789@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        The military budget doesn’t seem to have gone up by anything that hasnt been trending the last decade or 2, and despite all the talk about going to fight other countries, I don’t think there is enough support for anything other than Iran, and even that I dont think would be done directly by the US military.

        I do worry more about a more internally agro surveillance state, but with facial recognition and a camera on every doorbell, I think we’ve already long traded privacy for security. I keep learning about previous rebellions and having covert places to gather, plan, and stage have really been crucial, and I don’t know how one does that in the modern world.

        • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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          3 months ago

          You’re being defeatist. There’s not cameras everywhere. There are loads of blind spots, even in major cities.

          It’s a fact that the majority of square feet in the US has places where there are no cameras compared to where there are cameras.

          There are groups that map this. You can help identity the cameras on OSM.

          • anon6789@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I don’t feel defeatist. I think my feelings on America as a whole are higher than many I’ve been seeing here. But tech has come a long way since a lot of these types of movements have taken place.

            I love getting inspiration from people like the Maroons the bands of people hiding out in huge areas of Appalachia before the Civil War and others, but stuff like thermal optics and night vision and whatever other stuff the military and even local police likely have these days is pretty intimidating. It’s also way quicker and stealthier to deploy. There’s license plate readers that can grab the plates of anyone driving to a protest and databases of faces, etc.

            I’m not as tech savvy as maybe a lot of you are so I don’t know real life limitations of all this stuff or how to avoid it, and I just keep it in mind.

            • jagged_circle@feddit.nl
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              3 months ago

              Use drones. Use public transportation. Use cash. Use Tor.

              The power has always been asymmetric, but many advancements in technology actually help resistance of the oppressed more than the oppressors.

  • altphoto@lemmy.today
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    3 months ago

    And we let him. I propose a sea burial. But let him try to explain fir…nah get in the box!

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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    3 months ago

    150 billion

    Yeah and if you actually believe that to be true then I have a bridge to sell you. These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion

    I’d be surprised if it’s even close to 15 billion

    • andz@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It’s probable that it’s way less than that, and that’s not factoring in whatever it’ll cost to unfuck everything he’s done. Not that that’s likely to happen anytime soon.

      Also not counting in the brain-drain that is already happening.

      I hope it’ll be better for all you normal human beings in the US at some point in the future, I really do, but fuck me if this shit isn’t scary all the way on the side of the Atlantic, and that’s coming from someone living right next door to Russia. I’m way more scared of what’ll happen when the US goes full 4th Reich.

      I guess one could argue you’re already there to be fair, but I still hope it went too far too fast and a backlash is incoming.

    • schema@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      It also completely ignored the cost of the consequences, which is likely going to easily outpace any money “saved”.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Oh inwasnt even gonna go there. Once you start pulling those threads it just becomes an absolute Avalanche of shit

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      Also they lost like 500Bn according to the IRS due to cutting IRS staff alone, not including revenue lost as a result of cutting services that the government provided and revenue lost as a result of other nations no longer doing business with the USA such as arms sales, energy, rocketry, hospitals, and other transactions.

      By all accounts DOGE is losing money.

      • Phoenixz@lemmy.ca
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        3 months ago

        Same answer as the other reaction: if i start pulling on those threads then there is no end

    • PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works
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      3 months ago

      These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion

      Even aside from stuff like this, things they claim to be saving tend to be cut contracts. Contracts that have already been paid, but will no longer have to provided what they’d been paid for.

  • blacklisted@lemmy.org
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    3 months ago

    He did the absolute reverse of saving. He destroyed and cost the US TRILLIONS of dollars. The IRS alone will not collect an additional +$500 billion in revenue this year and every year going forward. Over ten years, that’s $5 trillion in extra uncollected revenue, and I’m sure this is a conservative estimate.

    • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.org
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      3 months ago

      You mean the IRS alone will not steal an additional +$500 billion from the poor, helpless billionaires this year, right? /s

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
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        3 months ago

        for half a second I thought this comment was just poor because of how late the billionaires part came in the sentence.

      • grue@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Actually, I’m not sure he does mean that. Is he taking about destroying the IRS’ efficiency collecting taxes from billionaires, or is he talking about destroying the entire US economy so the billionaires never earn capture that money in the first place? It genuinely could be either.