Yes, it is theft of the US Treasury, pure and simple. DOGE is salivating to get their hands on the Social Security Trust Fund, a fund all US people paid into over the past ~80 years.
I'm not defending DOGE here but the Social Security "Trust Fund" is more of an accounting gimmick than a real fund. It's not like a regular individual trust fund with a named account beneficiary. Excess Social Security taxes that weren't immediately needed to pay current benefits were used to buy Treasury bonds (or bills). All of the funds are co-mingled. One branch of the government owes money to another branch of government but there are no real assets.
Correct, and a great example of this is "Greenspan's Bait and Switch" back in the Reagan years - basically a bunch of measures put in place to increase how much was being paid into FICA (which notably has a cap on how much income it applies to, so it's regressive) and slow outgo.
Any overage beyond current needs is put into a "trust fund" which is required by law to be kept in US Treasury Bonds, aka loaned to the US Government. For the truly cynical, think about it as years of loaning a bunch of money to your uncle, and around the time that money starts needing to be paid back your uncle starts looking for contract assassins (aka "privatization"). If Social Security can be killed then oh my! Guess all that money owed to it just doesn't need to be paid back.
If the money "borrowed" in that way had been spent in ways that would make providing the services it's for easier and more cost effective that would be one thing, but that's not how it works out because the best ROI for private capital is purchasing politicians and policy.
By that standard, isn’t any cash I hold in treasuries also an accounting gimmick?
Sure, in one case the parties are me and the US Department of the Treasury and in the other case it’s the SSA and the US Department of the Treasury, but I don’t really see how this matters.
The sooner we can get America off of relying on Social Security and into a real investment program, the better.
SS is literally a ponzi scheme disguised as a social insurance program. Everyone would be much better off if you were forced to invest the same amount of money into a personal 401k and some % of returns was skimmed off to be redistributed to low income earners. At least then we'd all be honest about what the programs goals are and how much money is redistributed.
I prefer to have universal enrollment in a safe old age payment system like social security so that even if people do fall for ponzi schemes they will be protected by social security
What is your definition of a ponzi scheme? It is literally, definitionally one. The only difference from other ponzi schemes where newe entrants pay out unsustainable amounts to old entrants is that new entrants are forced in.
You're doing that thing where you are creating a plausible justification of their goals and methods that they have not in fact presented and that is not real. The fact that someone could have a good reason for wanting to change social security does not mean that musk does, or that any good result can come from this one.
They are doing this illegally, these are crimes. Stop propagandizing in support of them.
Give people an option of taking a refund of all their SS payments so far and roll over to an IRA/401K. No more SS. I'm sure some people will be interested in that. Government doesn't need to collect from everyone to reallocate. Govt can print money to give to the poor, doesn't need anyone's permission to print money, which they do by trillions.
They're not CPAs, they have zero auditing experience, and the federal government is one of the largest entities on Earth. What could possibly go wrong? It's insane that the Republican Congress allows this to continue, but here we are.
From now on, whenever you hear "DOGE did this" or "DOGE did that", or "Trump did this" or "Trump did that" - just remember they're doing it with the blessings of this Republican Congress, because they can put a stop to this at any time of their choosing.
Not only that but they're feeding all of this data into their "AI" and letting it make the decisions on hiring/firing and cutting programs, as well as detecting "fraud". They're absolute charlatans.
They still gave the Reps enough vote to pass their godawful law, thereby "blessing" what DOGE & friends are doing to the state. Republicans alone didn't have enough vote.
So far they've been showing principled opposition at best. They should be on the news/socials 24/7 exposing Republican bullshit, but you hardly hear of them. Oftentimes they're even bending the knee, like Newsom's new podcast whose first guests were Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. A masterclass in dick sucking if I've ever seen one.
I'd expect better from the opposition than to sit on their asses all day claiming "but what can be done?". They should easily win the battle of ideas but instead they are still losing popularity, and are even lower that the party that's doing illegal shit everyday and throwed the country in a recession in less than a fucking month.
You defending them is doing a disservice to everyone.
If the govt shut down then repubs could put everything they want to ax on the table and hold the entire govt hostage repeatedly on every individual issue.
If they don't allow repubs to hold the govt hostage they're traitors.
No winning for Dems in that situation besides grandstanding, which only works if Dems are united and they aren't.
Right now the dem strategy seems to be to let Republicans do whatever they want and see how bad it gets in the hope that voters reject Republicans next time around.
Everyone wanted the democrat to let the shutdown happen, according to the polls. That could have given them bargaining power. But the republicans found enough traitors to vote for their law with no debate whatsoever.
As I mentioned in my previous comment (did you read it?) that strategy of doing nothing doesn't work, as they are losing popularity faster than the republicans. People see them idling and smiling while the GOP destroys the country and they don't like that, at all.
True. Democrats don't have to make it easier on them, though. If the Democrats want to stop Trump, then when a Republican in Congress votes against Trump, don't vote for Trump. Let the fact that a Republican voted against Trump matter.
Regan and Clinton already cut everything to the bone (aside from the military), so everything Doge is doing is just gimmicks to justify going after important programs like medicaid and social security because the conservative project is to return the united states to the 1890s.
Even the military. 1990s military cuts were pretty severe and set us up for some of the profiteering that happened during Iraq and Afghanistan by private companies.
This article is completely missing the point (as intended). DOGE has nothing to do with money or "efficiency".
It's a pure ideological dismantling of the Federal government aimed at eliminating oversight, regulations, assistance and entitlements as envisioned by ultra-conservatives for decades.
This isn't speculation, it's specifically laid out in their published plans: By hobbling or outright eliminating federal agencies responsible for executing the laws passed by Congress, the administration can circumvent the democratic process and impose their extreme vision of limited government on the country, regardless of popular support.
The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law. Conservatives realized that they can ignore precedent with impunity if they had an executive willing to do so. They then spelled out exactly how, and are now enacting that plan.
SCOTUS's most recent decision that only Congress can hold the President legally accountable means executive power is essentially unchecked if the legislature is unwilling or unable to Impeach and convict. This decision turbo boosted the conservative agenda, since the president can now also confidently ignore the law and judicial orders as well, knowing there is little to no legal risk.
DOGE is just the first of many similar efforts to come to permanently alter how our country works modeled on the right wing worldview.
(The fact that all this just so happens to benefit Russia after their decade long campaign to destabilize their opponents in the West is a topic for speculation.)
Weird how so many techies cannot fathom how a business-as-usual approach to cutting government waste is not going to work anymore. We literally have to bring out AIs and geniuses to unravel the mess of government fraud, waste, and abuse because of how complex and opaque it is -- and then blame them for not having the "right credentials". As an ex-military person, still working for this broken Federal government, I say: lead, follow, or GTFO the way to those who just want to cling to this broken system.
if the “proper way” was effective we wouldnt be here. theres deep rooted careers propping up the corruption. the fed can no longer be allowed to indebt every citizen for the “greater good”. have to face the reality of numbers.
Actually auditors do allow you to face the reality of numbers.
Of course, historically speaking, kleptocratic conservatives and liberals then promptly ignore the auditors and keep doing whatever they please.
Now in this case, the kleptocrats are just cutting out the auditors altogether since they had no intention to face the reality of numbers in the first place.
The honesty and openness with which this particular group of kleptocrats approach the practice of their corruption is praiseworthy in a certain sense. /s
I hope this stays up and we can have some quality discussion about what is ostensibly a historical moment in time: the autophagy of a formerly democratic government.
Long term (and short term, looking at the stock market) this can't be good for business right?! Who benefits?
The honest answer is that other autocratic regimes, who were enemies of the US until a couple months ago, greatly benefit from this.
But it is bad for business, and once the entire business community in the US figures that out, I honestly do predict that this experiment in anti-Americanism is going to fail.
It is good for business, just one level more abstracted.
You might look at the economy and think that it's an engine that uses capital to produce goods and services for the combined benefit.
But one level higher, it's a way for the already rich and powerful to gain additional capital and power.
From that point of view, temporarily depressing the stock market, real estate, dollar denominated assets, etc. is highly beneficial if you are properly positioned. You can permanently acquire lots of capital and annuities.
Private equity can buy up US commercial and residential real estate. They can buy shares of stock at decreased prices. They can line themselves up to buy the federal government's real and liquid assets for pennies on the dollar, and further enrich themselves by entering new lines of business, like privatising public benefit programs, the USPS, etc.
They do benefit a lot. They may have a smaller amount of money relative to what they could have had, but they have a LOT more power than they had before.
If the comment had said "the five most powerful people", I wouldn't have quibbled with it. But the overlap between the richest and the most powerful is not perfect, and the rich people outside that overlap are gonna be pissed.
>They don't benefit though! This is bad for them too! Elon Musk is way poorer today than he was on inauguration day.
If the end goal is to become authoritarian shithole, then no, he isn't, as the government he captured will be buying teslas and space launches from him at a price he sets, quantity he (co)decides and quality that nobody oversees. That's a pessimistic take.
We'll see! That might be the goal. I'm pretty skeptical that is going to work. And a big part of the reason why is that there are a lot of wealthy businesspeople in the US, and that would be bad for most of them.
"Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven" I guess. In terms of wealth they may have lost some, but they absolutely gained power. Fascism is only about power, it doesn't care about anything else. Especially not stability or rationality.
Are these the same auditors that led to U.S. citizens' tax dollars funding transgender surgery shops in India? Two million dollars to understand the psychological effects of losing rock-paper-scissors? If so I don't put too much stock in their opinions.
these sound fine to me. what isn't fine is sending 2000 lb bombs to annihilate Gaza.
EDIT: I support destroying USAID for exactly the reasons stated in the thread below. However, I think they are simply reorganizing it under the state dept. to have more executive control over its programs.
I don't think that this is the main target of their cuts tbh. I think they are eyeing social security and medicaid.
Yes, it is theft of the US Treasury, pure and simple. DOGE is salivating to get their hands on the Social Security Trust Fund, a fund all US people paid into over the past ~80 years.
I'm not defending DOGE here but the Social Security "Trust Fund" is more of an accounting gimmick than a real fund. It's not like a regular individual trust fund with a named account beneficiary. Excess Social Security taxes that weren't immediately needed to pay current benefits were used to buy Treasury bonds (or bills). All of the funds are co-mingled. One branch of the government owes money to another branch of government but there are no real assets.
Correct, and a great example of this is "Greenspan's Bait and Switch" back in the Reagan years - basically a bunch of measures put in place to increase how much was being paid into FICA (which notably has a cap on how much income it applies to, so it's regressive) and slow outgo.
Any overage beyond current needs is put into a "trust fund" which is required by law to be kept in US Treasury Bonds, aka loaned to the US Government. For the truly cynical, think about it as years of loaning a bunch of money to your uncle, and around the time that money starts needing to be paid back your uncle starts looking for contract assassins (aka "privatization"). If Social Security can be killed then oh my! Guess all that money owed to it just doesn't need to be paid back.
If the money "borrowed" in that way had been spent in ways that would make providing the services it's for easier and more cost effective that would be one thing, but that's not how it works out because the best ROI for private capital is purchasing politicians and policy.
By that standard, isn’t any cash I hold in treasuries also an accounting gimmick?
Sure, in one case the parties are me and the US Department of the Treasury and in the other case it’s the SSA and the US Department of the Treasury, but I don’t really see how this matters.
If you issued the treasuries yourself it would be.
The government issues money as well.
It is closer to trading cash today for IOUs with your name on it.
>Sure, in one case the parties are me and the US Department of the Treasury.
It would be the same situation if the DOT taxed you when the T-bills come due.
Trade 1$ for a treasury today. Tomorrow get taxed $1.1 and paid back with your own money.
Treasury bonds are not real assets? People buy our debt because it is (was?) considered a safe asset.
Yes, but it's an important accounting gimmick.
The sooner we can get America off of relying on Social Security and into a real investment program, the better.
SS is literally a ponzi scheme disguised as a social insurance program. Everyone would be much better off if you were forced to invest the same amount of money into a personal 401k and some % of returns was skimmed off to be redistributed to low income earners. At least then we'd all be honest about what the programs goals are and how much money is redistributed.
Counterpoint: No thank you!
You're welcome to invest your own money into ponzi schemes. I just ask that you don't force me to do so as well, or to bail you out.
Would you support such a change?
I prefer to have universal enrollment in a safe old age payment system like social security so that even if people do fall for ponzi schemes they will be protected by social security
The joke is that social security is a ponzi scheme.
Because it basically is one.
Nope! I would not.
A lot of people wouldn't be able to manage it personally if they had a 401k even if they had the best of intentions.
> Everyone would be much better off if you were forced to invest the same amount of money into a personal 401k
Try telling this to people whose target retirement year was 2008.
And I'm sure the people relying on 401ks to retire in 2026 are feeling a bit on edge right now.
It's not a ponzi scheme, stop buying into the privatization lies. No thank you.
What is your definition of a ponzi scheme? It is literally, definitionally one. The only difference from other ponzi schemes where newe entrants pay out unsustainable amounts to old entrants is that new entrants are forced in.
This is a crazed scheme from wall street. No thanks.
The money is redistributed from your pocket, via taxes, to the pockets of primarily billionaires who don't need more money.
Social Security payout is the same whether you make $176,100 a year or $50 million a year.
I mean, I work labor so I don't have a set pay, but it's not even nearly half of your first figure.
And its also not really my point. You could consider tax cuts on the rich irrelevant since the money was going directly to them anyway.
In other words: welfare is only considered trash if you're poor.
You're doing that thing where you are creating a plausible justification of their goals and methods that they have not in fact presented and that is not real. The fact that someone could have a good reason for wanting to change social security does not mean that musk does, or that any good result can come from this one.
They are doing this illegally, these are crimes. Stop propagandizing in support of them.
Give people an option of taking a refund of all their SS payments so far and roll over to an IRA/401K. No more SS. I'm sure some people will be interested in that. Government doesn't need to collect from everyone to reallocate. Govt can print money to give to the poor, doesn't need anyone's permission to print money, which they do by trillions.
> Govt can print money
Exactly, why pay taxes at all? We can just print the money. /s
They're not CPAs, they have zero auditing experience, and the federal government is one of the largest entities on Earth. What could possibly go wrong? It's insane that the Republican Congress allows this to continue, but here we are.
From now on, whenever you hear "DOGE did this" or "DOGE did that", or "Trump did this" or "Trump did that" - just remember they're doing it with the blessings of this Republican Congress, because they can put a stop to this at any time of their choosing.
Not only that but they're feeding all of this data into their "AI" and letting it make the decisions on hiring/firing and cutting programs, as well as detecting "fraud". They're absolute charlatans.
Don't forget the few Democrats that voted for the Republican budget bill a few days ago and allowed it to pass. This country is fucked.
The Democrats aren't a majority in either chamber. The power to stop Trump rests solely with the Republicans.
They still gave the Reps enough vote to pass their godawful law, thereby "blessing" what DOGE & friends are doing to the state. Republicans alone didn't have enough vote.
So far they've been showing principled opposition at best. They should be on the news/socials 24/7 exposing Republican bullshit, but you hardly hear of them. Oftentimes they're even bending the knee, like Newsom's new podcast whose first guests were Charlie Kirk and Steve Bannon. A masterclass in dick sucking if I've ever seen one.
I'd expect better from the opposition than to sit on their asses all day claiming "but what can be done?". They should easily win the battle of ideas but instead they are still losing popularity, and are even lower that the party that's doing illegal shit everyday and throwed the country in a recession in less than a fucking month.
You defending them is doing a disservice to everyone.
Dems were in a no-win situation.
If the govt shut down then repubs could put everything they want to ax on the table and hold the entire govt hostage repeatedly on every individual issue.
If they don't allow repubs to hold the govt hostage they're traitors.
No winning for Dems in that situation besides grandstanding, which only works if Dems are united and they aren't.
Right now the dem strategy seems to be to let Republicans do whatever they want and see how bad it gets in the hope that voters reject Republicans next time around.
Everyone wanted the democrat to let the shutdown happen, according to the polls. That could have given them bargaining power. But the republicans found enough traitors to vote for their law with no debate whatsoever.
As I mentioned in my previous comment (did you read it?) that strategy of doing nothing doesn't work, as they are losing popularity faster than the republicans. People see them idling and smiling while the GOP destroys the country and they don't like that, at all.
True. Democrats don't have to make it easier on them, though. If the Democrats want to stop Trump, then when a Republican in Congress votes against Trump, don't vote for Trump. Let the fact that a Republican voted against Trump matter.
Regan and Clinton already cut everything to the bone (aside from the military), so everything Doge is doing is just gimmicks to justify going after important programs like medicaid and social security because the conservative project is to return the united states to the 1890s.
Even the military. 1990s military cuts were pretty severe and set us up for some of the profiteering that happened during Iraq and Afghanistan by private companies.
No-bid sole-source contracts.
This article is completely missing the point (as intended). DOGE has nothing to do with money or "efficiency".
It's a pure ideological dismantling of the Federal government aimed at eliminating oversight, regulations, assistance and entitlements as envisioned by ultra-conservatives for decades.
This isn't speculation, it's specifically laid out in their published plans: By hobbling or outright eliminating federal agencies responsible for executing the laws passed by Congress, the administration can circumvent the democratic process and impose their extreme vision of limited government on the country, regardless of popular support.
The U.S. system of government relies on established norms as much as it does law. Conservatives realized that they can ignore precedent with impunity if they had an executive willing to do so. They then spelled out exactly how, and are now enacting that plan.
SCOTUS's most recent decision that only Congress can hold the President legally accountable means executive power is essentially unchecked if the legislature is unwilling or unable to Impeach and convict. This decision turbo boosted the conservative agenda, since the president can now also confidently ignore the law and judicial orders as well, knowing there is little to no legal risk.
DOGE is just the first of many similar efforts to come to permanently alter how our country works modeled on the right wing worldview.
(The fact that all this just so happens to benefit Russia after their decade long campaign to destabilize their opponents in the West is a topic for speculation.)
The "Real Federal Auditors" should go on a game show and play against the "Real Billionaires."
[dead]
Weird how so many techies cannot fathom how a business-as-usual approach to cutting government waste is not going to work anymore. We literally have to bring out AIs and geniuses to unravel the mess of government fraud, waste, and abuse because of how complex and opaque it is -- and then blame them for not having the "right credentials". As an ex-military person, still working for this broken Federal government, I say: lead, follow, or GTFO the way to those who just want to cling to this broken system.
Govt is confusing so let's let unqualified idiots be in charge of unconfusing it.
Yeah, that makes total sense.
So you want incompetent corrupt people to undermine and sabotage our government? Why?
As for fraud and waste those are core parts of DOGE. They literally fired the people in charge of going after corruption
if the “proper way” was effective we wouldnt be here. theres deep rooted careers propping up the corruption. the fed can no longer be allowed to indebt every citizen for the “greater good”. have to face the reality of numbers.
>if the “proper way” was effective we wouldnt be here
Music of l'internationale start's playing. This is supposed to be the conservative party of the status quo, procedures and caution right?
I mean doge is a literal corruption scheme to fire honest bueracrats and replace them with incompetent supporters. Its the return of the corrupt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoils_system
It has nothing to do with reality of numbers and regularly lies and makes shit up
Actually auditors do allow you to face the reality of numbers.
Of course, historically speaking, kleptocratic conservatives and liberals then promptly ignore the auditors and keep doing whatever they please.
Now in this case, the kleptocrats are just cutting out the auditors altogether since they had no intention to face the reality of numbers in the first place.
The honesty and openness with which this particular group of kleptocrats approach the practice of their corruption is praiseworthy in a certain sense. /s
Without paywall: https://archive.ph/sJcvp
I hope this stays up and we can have some quality discussion about what is ostensibly a historical moment in time: the autophagy of a formerly democratic government.
Long term (and short term, looking at the stock market) this can't be good for business right?! Who benefits?
The honest answer is that other autocratic regimes, who were enemies of the US until a couple months ago, greatly benefit from this.
But it is bad for business, and once the entire business community in the US figures that out, I honestly do predict that this experiment in anti-Americanism is going to fail.
> it is bad for business
It is good for business, just one level more abstracted.
You might look at the economy and think that it's an engine that uses capital to produce goods and services for the combined benefit.
But one level higher, it's a way for the already rich and powerful to gain additional capital and power.
From that point of view, temporarily depressing the stock market, real estate, dollar denominated assets, etc. is highly beneficial if you are properly positioned. You can permanently acquire lots of capital and annuities.
Private equity can buy up US commercial and residential real estate. They can buy shares of stock at decreased prices. They can line themselves up to buy the federal government's real and liquid assets for pennies on the dollar, and further enrich themselves by entering new lines of business, like privatising public benefit programs, the USPS, etc.
Actually no, this is 4d chess bullshit. It's actually just bad for business.
That's assuming they figure it out fast enough.
Only the, like, top 5 people by wealth in the country. Which coincidentally are the ones holding power today.
They don't benefit though! This is bad for them too! Elon Musk is way poorer today than he was on inauguration day.
What's going on right now is, truly, only good for nations that benefit from a week United States.
But that realization is not (yet) evenly distributed.
They do benefit a lot. They may have a smaller amount of money relative to what they could have had, but they have a LOT more power than they had before.
If the comment had said "the five most powerful people", I wouldn't have quibbled with it. But the overlap between the richest and the most powerful is not perfect, and the rich people outside that overlap are gonna be pissed.
>They don't benefit though! This is bad for them too! Elon Musk is way poorer today than he was on inauguration day.
If the end goal is to become authoritarian shithole, then no, he isn't, as the government he captured will be buying teslas and space launches from him at a price he sets, quantity he (co)decides and quality that nobody oversees. That's a pessimistic take.
We'll see! That might be the goal. I'm pretty skeptical that is going to work. And a big part of the reason why is that there are a lot of wealthy businesspeople in the US, and that would be bad for most of them.
"Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven" I guess. In terms of wealth they may have lost some, but they absolutely gained power. Fascism is only about power, it doesn't care about anything else. Especially not stability or rationality.
Not all of them have gained power in exchange for the wealth.
Doge isn't out uo audit, afaict, it's out to stop spending.
The US economy is more dependent on government spending now than just about any time in its history, and that should worry anyone
Are these the same auditors that led to U.S. citizens' tax dollars funding transgender surgery shops in India? Two million dollars to understand the psychological effects of losing rock-paper-scissors? If so I don't put too much stock in their opinions.
No.
these sound fine to me. what isn't fine is sending 2000 lb bombs to annihilate Gaza.
EDIT: I support destroying USAID for exactly the reasons stated in the thread below. However, I think they are simply reorganizing it under the state dept. to have more executive control over its programs.
I don't think that this is the main target of their cuts tbh. I think they are eyeing social security and medicaid.
Or, presumably, allowing foreign governments to kidnap or kill US citizens without repercussions?
Well, if the bombs bother you, wait until you hear about the string of destabilizing efforts in support of color revolu ...
Er, I mean "capacity building" in support of "democracy" via hundreds of oxymoronic NGOs.
Anyway, that's where the majority of cuts are being made, and why we're seeing such pushback, including here.
Two million dollars? Conservatively less than a penny per taxpayer? This is what you’re worried about?