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.
If you didn't have 4-5 years worth of non-securities like bonds to start off your retirement year you are just an idiot. An idiot loses their money in a variety of ways, none of which is exclusive to the market going down and affecting a 401k
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
In most countries, certainly the UK where I live social security payments in are made from workers to the government. At the same time the government pays out social security to those in need. There is no fund, payment in approximately matches payment out. It is not a ponzi scheme, it's normal government taxing those with money and paying out to those in need. It's nice the US has a fund but it's not necessary.
My point is that its not a scheme and no damn politician is going to take social security away from us. And I and most others disagree with changing it to not be universal
Social security is already being cut. Elon is slashing their budget, removing offices while requiring more visits for services. They're starving the beast so they can claim it doesn't work, which means they'll have cause to eliminate or destroy it. Social Security is about to bottle neck to the point they can't fulfill their mandate. This is by design.
It doesn't matter what you or most others think. The US Govt is being held hostage by like 4 people right now and they don't care what you want.
Look, I am not even opposed to treating Social Security like a Pension, where the money is invested. I might even support a slow switchover (it would take decades) to a real pension fund. But would I trust these clowns to do it? HELL NO.
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.
It's not literally, definitionally one because a ponzi scheme is first and foremost a scheme -- fraud. Social security is literally, definitionally not a scheme; it's legal, audited, and fully transparent.
> new entrants are forced in.
Yes and that makes it materially different from a ponzi scheme.
The scheme can just mean "plan". For the first "difference", ~nobody studies the terms of how social security operates before starting to pay into it. Would you say that if I run a ponzi scheme but put a bit of fine print somewhere the investor will not read when joining, admitting it is in fact a ponzi scheme, it is suddenly not a ponzi scheme? I can even make it audited to warn the investors when it runs out of money decades later, no recourse though! Still a ponzi scheme.
For the 2nd one, indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme! In the above example, if I somehow read the disclaimer and refuse to participate, the ponzi scheme operator now points a gun at me and forces me!
And of course, this "material difference" only makes a real difference as long as demographics are favorable.
So yeah, it's a thinly-disguised ponzi, combined with forced labor.
Not really. Social security (and medicare) specifically makes promises of future returns to current payers, based on the assumption new entrants will provide the money to pay for those returns. To underscore the point, they are even structured separately.
Normal social services (from schools to even medicaid) merely transfer money between individuals in the present.
> if I run a ponzi scheme but put a bit of fine print somewhere the investor will not read when joining, admitting it is in fact a ponzi scheme
No, in the case of "ponzi scheme", it cannot just mean "plan". Yes that is a dictionary meaning of "scheme" but that's not the one referred to in the phrase. Putting a bit of fine print somewhere in hopes people will miss it is not being transparent, it's also deceptive and manipulative.
"Scheme - make plans, especially in a devious way or with intent to do something illegal or wrong."
A key aspect of the Ponzi scheme is that the person running it does not actually have a legitimate investment opportunity. Lying profusely to everyone involved about the potential outcome is what makes it work. The only outcome is that they will lose their money.
This is not true with SSA, as people have been getting social security payments regularly for 90 years. No one is deceived about what SSA is.
Can you point to any literal ponzi scheme that is as transparent as SSA, and has consistently paid back investors for 90 years?
> ~nobody studies the terms of how social security operates before starting to pay into it.
Yes, but upon learning the truth, most people understand its purpose, how it works, and agree with it. And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law.
> indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme!
Why? Ponzi schemes collapse because they run out of new entrants to the scheme. If it's a societal-wide forced Ponzi scheme they're not going to run out of new entrants, and the pool of participants is larger than just suckers who are fooled by ponzi schemes.
You simply assert, without proof, this is worse. But to me this sounds like so many systems we have like insurance, and capitalism as a whole.
Forcing everyone to participate means everyone has incentive for it to not fall over.
--
Let's cut to the chase here. There are more difference between SSA and Ponzi schemes than similarities:
- Ponzi schemes are lies; SSA is transparent
- Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years
- Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating
- Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law
- Ponzi schemes are the brainchild of conmen; SSA is the brainchild of elected representatives and administered by career civil servants
- Ponzi schemes fail when the law catches up and it's dismantled or runs out new people; SSA has yet to fail and predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven.
At some point, these difference have to matter, and they certainly mean SSA is not "literally, definitionally a Ponzi scheme"
1) The only real difference I can concede is about lies. Again, it seems to me like nitpicking, as SS operates instead on vast ignorance, but sure - let's say "SS /operates like/ a literal ponzi scheme". EDIT: based on going from ponzi + lies to ponzi + force, maybe we should call it a "ponzi racket"
2) When I said it's "worse" in the 2nd paragraph I meant morally. It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years"
That is just because you can force people in. If Madoff could point a gun at Bill Gates and force him to keep investing for 50 years, it wouldn't make it not a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating" Nowhere it says the group has to be small, there were huge ponzies. Also there's an unjustified moral contrast here. To treat both sides equally, you'd say "relies on forcing lots of mostly gullible people to participate"
"And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law"
It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest, having already paid in but not received benefits. Don't take it from me, FDR himself said “I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” I.e. people specifically "buy in" and it would be a political suicide to take their return back - regardless of the fact of how it's internally run.
And in fact, this works with ponzi schemes too - when the giant MMM ponzi collapsed in Russia and the operator was in legal trouble, there were massive protests in his support - because the participants were either gullible enough to assume he would have repaid them if not interrupted, or desperate to let it run a little more so they could get some of the money out. He even had a run in politics iirc.
"Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law" and "brainchild of elected representatives" I don't even know what to say. So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs, war in Iraq. Speaking of FDR, so were internment camps. In 1850, would defenders of SS be saying "it's totally unlike kidnapping and forced labor, cause kidnapping is illegal and slavery is the law"
"they are not going to run out of new entrants" ... "predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven" you cannot prove a negative. They actually have official (iirc), public models that indicate quite clearly when it will run out of money to make previously-promised payments in full without additional forced labor.
How is it nitpicking when the fraud is a crucial element? You’re the one calling them “literally, definitionally” the same, and being a fraud is a key part of the literal definition of a ponzi scheme.
When you say “literally, definitionally”, do you actually mean “figuratively and in a hand waving rhetorical way”?
> It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
You have yet to prove SSA is a ponzu scheme so you’re jumping the gun saying forcing people into it makes it worse.
If forcing everyone into it is what makes it work, then how is it morally wrong if the outcome is a social safety?
> That is just because you can force people in.
lol right. So it’s exactly the same as a ponzi scheme, except in all the ways that it’s not, and these crucial difference make it operate in ways ponzi schemes don’t. How do you go from there, to them being literally, definitionally the same?
> It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest,
They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme. You are arguing against yourself now. No one except the people running the ponzu scheme have an interest in it.
What you’re actually saying is that people support ssa and don’t want to change it because it works for them.
If it didn’t work, there would be ore support to change it.
> So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs,
You are changing the subject. You said ssa was “literally, definitionally” a ponzi scheme, but in this crucial way they are different. Does your definition of sameness allow for differences? Mine does not.
These other things you bring up being legal have no bearing on ponzu schemes being illegal, differentiating them from ssa.
> you cannot prove a negative.
Yeah exactly. So you can’t say ssa is the same as a ponzi scheme, because it doesn’t behave like one, it’s not constructed like one, and it hasn’t failed like one.
You cut out parts of my previous arguments that contradicted your new assertions:
1) "They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme ... people support ssa and don’t want to change"
First I actually already gave you a /specific example/ where it did happen for a ponzi scheme, from real life, and people thought it "works for them". Then it's simply incorrect, ponzi scheme works out for a person as long as they get out before the organizers run out of more entrants. So the participants clearly have a vested interest in it running a little longer, at least until the latter becomes impossible.
2) On "prove a negative" => "hasn't failed like one" - you twisted my words and ignored the rest of the argument. There's a study by non other than Social Security Trustees that tells you when Social Security will stop being able to make promised payments. So yeah, it's already projected to partially fail (although normally someone is delinquent on debt whether they stop paying completely or partially). Of course secondarily it's also nonsense, by that criteria Madoff's only became a ponzi when it failed, not before. Failing now or later is immaterial
Also, you yourself offered a "one is legal, one is not" argument, but when I try to explore the implications that show the argument is at best vacuous and at most can justify anything ever done by a government ("in 1850, kidnapping and forced labor are illegal, but slavery is legal, so taking someone 'eligible' into slavery is not literally like kidnapping and forced labor") you claim I'm changing the subject.
Viewing the previous thread without assuming argument in good faith, I'd actually like to retract even what I conceded about fraud/lies.
The distinguishing feature of "ponzi scheme" is not "scheme", it's "ponzi". Hence when people shorten it they typically leave out scheme, not ponzi. The distinguishing characteristic they want to indicate, is that the new entrants are paying the returns promised to the previous entrants. In that way, social security is internally constructed exactly like a ponzi. That is what I meant originally.
Obviously, nobody would invest in such a product. So, in case of an illegal ponzi, participants are duped into joining. In case of a legalized ponzi, participants are forced to join (and/or do it by default without understanding, as one does with most govt coercion). The participant acquisition method is secondary to the internal construction. And, while that is the only argument that I see where you can claim "see, not /literally/ a ponzi scheme!", if anything use of force makes it morally worse.
For lack of better terms we can call it "ponzi racket", where racket can be fraud OR coercion; or just a "ponzi".
Everything else - vested interest vs works for them, legal vs illegal, failed already/projected to fail, etc. - is ancillary and/or vacuous and/or not different between them.
EDIT:
Oh and claiming it's moral to force people to join because it creates social safety is I think (again uncharitably) your real argument; but is a separate argument I don't want to even start. Whether it even works long term, whether forced charity is moral high-level, whether it cannot be done without force, whether it can be done with force but differently (why help old people via a ponzi? just help poor people regardless of age via normal transfers!), whether it's good for society to prefer old people to e.g. children, etc.. But you are conflating "ends justify the means" argument (that can be valid) with "means are actually not the means you say they are!" because nothing bad can apparently be said about the means as long as ends are good.
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.
Polls don't matter. Dems made a "which is worse" decision. They chose the less crappy option.
A govt shutdown is far, far worse for everyday Americans than some polling. What Trump and Co are doing now is nothing compared to what they can do if they can hold every single budget item hostage. The "traitors" understand this and made the less bad decision. By keeping the govt open it takes a huge amount of power away from MAGA.
Things are already going to get real bad. Why let Republicans have absolute control over the budget too?
What? How is letting the Republicans pass their bill as-is with no revision whatsoever taking "a huge amount of power from MAGA"?
A shutdown may have forced the Republicans to make concessions, but instead they'll continue to do whatever they want in the foreseeable future, and now with the Democratic party's blessings.
Don't fool yourself, the Dems that voted for the bill didn't do it with the American people in mind, nor even their own party. It was purely out of self-interest and to catter to the new king.
The same polls that said Kamala was going to win the election?
No, chneu is right. We know the stock market is crashing, and a recession is coming. No point giving the Republicans a government shutdown as an excuse. The Democrats have simply forced the Republicans to lay in the bed they've made.
After all, Trump keeps saying he has a mandate, right? Let the voters experience the consequence of their vote. Things have to get worse before they're going to be able to get better.
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.
I GUARANTEE the MAGAts and conservative media wouldn't blame Rand Paul for the ensuing market crash and recession. They'd blame it all on the government shutdown caused by the Democrats. This way the MAGAts are forced to wallow in their shit with no one else to blame but themselves.
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.)
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.
"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.
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.
I mean, it's hard not to read it as an attempt to convert the US into a Russian-style mafia state, tbh.
So, "who benefits" would generally be those oligarchs who manage to avoid lethal encounters with stairs, windows, etc., traditionally.
It's somewhat unclear to what extent this will be allowed to continue. I kind of suspect that the Supreme Court is not actually as beholden to Trump as he perhaps thinks it is, and will pull the plug at some point. I also suspect that, if the market turmoil gets bad enough, Trump may dump Musk; if you look at his previous term, few of his people got through the whole term, and of course nothing is ever Trump's fault.
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
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.
Treasury bonds are not real assets? People buy our debt because it is (was?) considered a safe asset.
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.
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.
If you issued the treasuries yourself it would be.
The government issues money as well.
It would not be. The Social Security Trust Fund is called that because money is held in trust for the person who paid into it.
It’s the same concept as a trust, but essentially at scale for multiple parties.
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.
> 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.
If you didn't have 4-5 years worth of non-securities like bonds to start off your retirement year you are just an idiot. An idiot loses their money in a variety of ways, none of which is exclusive to the market going down and affecting a 401k
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.
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.
In most countries, certainly the UK where I live social security payments in are made from workers to the government. At the same time the government pays out social security to those in need. There is no fund, payment in approximately matches payment out. It is not a ponzi scheme, it's normal government taxing those with money and paying out to those in need. It's nice the US has a fund but it's not necessary.
I get the "joke"
My point is that its not a scheme and no damn politician is going to take social security away from us. And I and most others disagree with changing it to not be universal
Social security is already being cut. Elon is slashing their budget, removing offices while requiring more visits for services. They're starving the beast so they can claim it doesn't work, which means they'll have cause to eliminate or destroy it. Social Security is about to bottle neck to the point they can't fulfill their mandate. This is by design.
It doesn't matter what you or most others think. The US Govt is being held hostage by like 4 people right now and they don't care what you want.
Nope! I would not.
Look, I am not even opposed to treating Social Security like a Pension, where the money is invested. I might even support a slow switchover (it would take decades) to a real pension fund. But would I trust these clowns to do it? HELL NO.
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.
It's not literally, definitionally one because a ponzi scheme is first and foremost a scheme -- fraud. Social security is literally, definitionally not a scheme; it's legal, audited, and fully transparent.
> new entrants are forced in.
Yes and that makes it materially different from a ponzi scheme.
The scheme can just mean "plan". For the first "difference", ~nobody studies the terms of how social security operates before starting to pay into it. Would you say that if I run a ponzi scheme but put a bit of fine print somewhere the investor will not read when joining, admitting it is in fact a ponzi scheme, it is suddenly not a ponzi scheme? I can even make it audited to warn the investors when it runs out of money decades later, no recourse though! Still a ponzi scheme.
For the 2nd one, indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme! In the above example, if I somehow read the disclaimer and refuse to participate, the ponzi scheme operator now points a gun at me and forces me!
And of course, this "material difference" only makes a real difference as long as demographics are favorable.
So yeah, it's a thinly-disguised ponzi, combined with forced labor.
Why stop at social security? All societal benefits derived from taxation can be said to be a ponzi scheme if you're determined enough.
I feel that lots of people do actually think that way, either by ideological conviction or ignorance.
Not really. Social security (and medicare) specifically makes promises of future returns to current payers, based on the assumption new entrants will provide the money to pay for those returns. To underscore the point, they are even structured separately.
Normal social services (from schools to even medicaid) merely transfer money between individuals in the present.
> if I run a ponzi scheme but put a bit of fine print somewhere the investor will not read when joining, admitting it is in fact a ponzi scheme
No, in the case of "ponzi scheme", it cannot just mean "plan". Yes that is a dictionary meaning of "scheme" but that's not the one referred to in the phrase. Putting a bit of fine print somewhere in hopes people will miss it is not being transparent, it's also deceptive and manipulative.
A key aspect of the Ponzi scheme is that the person running it does not actually have a legitimate investment opportunity. Lying profusely to everyone involved about the potential outcome is what makes it work. The only outcome is that they will lose their money.This is not true with SSA, as people have been getting social security payments regularly for 90 years. No one is deceived about what SSA is.
Can you point to any literal ponzi scheme that is as transparent as SSA, and has consistently paid back investors for 90 years?
> ~nobody studies the terms of how social security operates before starting to pay into it.
Yes, but upon learning the truth, most people understand its purpose, how it works, and agree with it. And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law.
> indeed, that is a material difference. Of course, that makes it worse than just a regular ponzi scheme!
Why? Ponzi schemes collapse because they run out of new entrants to the scheme. If it's a societal-wide forced Ponzi scheme they're not going to run out of new entrants, and the pool of participants is larger than just suckers who are fooled by ponzi schemes.
You simply assert, without proof, this is worse. But to me this sounds like so many systems we have like insurance, and capitalism as a whole.
Forcing everyone to participate means everyone has incentive for it to not fall over.
--
Let's cut to the chase here. There are more difference between SSA and Ponzi schemes than similarities:
- Ponzi schemes are lies; SSA is transparent
- Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years
- Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating
- Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law
- Ponzi schemes are the brainchild of conmen; SSA is the brainchild of elected representatives and administered by career civil servants
- Ponzi schemes fail when the law catches up and it's dismantled or runs out new people; SSA has yet to fail and predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven.
At some point, these difference have to matter, and they certainly mean SSA is not "literally, definitionally a Ponzi scheme"
1) The only real difference I can concede is about lies. Again, it seems to me like nitpicking, as SS operates instead on vast ignorance, but sure - let's say "SS /operates like/ a literal ponzi scheme". EDIT: based on going from ponzi + lies to ponzi + force, maybe we should call it a "ponzi racket"
2) When I said it's "worse" in the 2nd paragraph I meant morally. It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes are difficult to maintain for long; SSA has been going 90 years" That is just because you can force people in. If Madoff could point a gun at Bill Gates and force him to keep investing for 50 years, it wouldn't make it not a ponzi.
"Ponzi schemes rely on fooling a small group of gullible people; SSA relies on everyone participating" Nowhere it says the group has to be small, there were huge ponzies. Also there's an unjustified moral contrast here. To treat both sides equally, you'd say "relies on forcing lots of mostly gullible people to participate"
"And crucially, if they didn't, they could change the law" It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest, having already paid in but not received benefits. Don't take it from me, FDR himself said “I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.” I.e. people specifically "buy in" and it would be a political suicide to take their return back - regardless of the fact of how it's internally run.
And in fact, this works with ponzi schemes too - when the giant MMM ponzi collapsed in Russia and the operator was in legal trouble, there were massive protests in his support - because the participants were either gullible enough to assume he would have repaid them if not interrupted, or desperate to let it run a little more so they could get some of the money out. He even had a run in politics iirc.
"Ponzi scheme is illegal; SSA is the law" and "brainchild of elected representatives" I don't even know what to say. So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs, war in Iraq. Speaking of FDR, so were internment camps. In 1850, would defenders of SS be saying "it's totally unlike kidnapping and forced labor, cause kidnapping is illegal and slavery is the law"
"they are not going to run out of new entrants" ... "predictions that it will fail in the same way Ponzi schemes fail have yet to be proven" you cannot prove a negative. They actually have official (iirc), public models that indicate quite clearly when it will run out of money to make previously-promised payments in full without additional forced labor.
> Again, it seems to me like nitpicking
How is it nitpicking when the fraud is a crucial element? You’re the one calling them “literally, definitionally” the same, and being a fraud is a key part of the literal definition of a ponzi scheme.
When you say “literally, definitionally”, do you actually mean “figuratively and in a hand waving rhetorical way”?
> It's worse to run a ponzi combined with force than to merely to run a ponzi.
You have yet to prove SSA is a ponzu scheme so you’re jumping the gun saying forcing people into it makes it worse.
If forcing everyone into it is what makes it work, then how is it morally wrong if the outcome is a social safety?
> That is just because you can force people in.
lol right. So it’s exactly the same as a ponzi scheme, except in all the ways that it’s not, and these crucial difference make it operate in ways ponzi schemes don’t. How do you go from there, to them being literally, definitionally the same?
> It is specifically structured so that it would be extremely difficult because the previous participants have vested interest,
They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme. You are arguing against yourself now. No one except the people running the ponzu scheme have an interest in it.
What you’re actually saying is that people support ssa and don’t want to change it because it works for them.
If it didn’t work, there would be ore support to change it.
> So was slavery, so is civil forfeiture, war on drugs,
You are changing the subject. You said ssa was “literally, definitionally” a ponzi scheme, but in this crucial way they are different. Does your definition of sameness allow for differences? Mine does not.
These other things you bring up being legal have no bearing on ponzu schemes being illegal, differentiating them from ssa.
> you cannot prove a negative.
Yeah exactly. So you can’t say ssa is the same as a ponzi scheme, because it doesn’t behave like one, it’s not constructed like one, and it hasn’t failed like one.
You cut out parts of my previous arguments that contradicted your new assertions:
1) "They wouldn’t have a vested interest if ssa was a ponzi scheme ... people support ssa and don’t want to change" First I actually already gave you a /specific example/ where it did happen for a ponzi scheme, from real life, and people thought it "works for them". Then it's simply incorrect, ponzi scheme works out for a person as long as they get out before the organizers run out of more entrants. So the participants clearly have a vested interest in it running a little longer, at least until the latter becomes impossible.
2) On "prove a negative" => "hasn't failed like one" - you twisted my words and ignored the rest of the argument. There's a study by non other than Social Security Trustees that tells you when Social Security will stop being able to make promised payments. So yeah, it's already projected to partially fail (although normally someone is delinquent on debt whether they stop paying completely or partially). Of course secondarily it's also nonsense, by that criteria Madoff's only became a ponzi when it failed, not before. Failing now or later is immaterial
Also, you yourself offered a "one is legal, one is not" argument, but when I try to explore the implications that show the argument is at best vacuous and at most can justify anything ever done by a government ("in 1850, kidnapping and forced labor are illegal, but slavery is legal, so taking someone 'eligible' into slavery is not literally like kidnapping and forced labor") you claim I'm changing the subject.
Viewing the previous thread without assuming argument in good faith, I'd actually like to retract even what I conceded about fraud/lies.
The distinguishing feature of "ponzi scheme" is not "scheme", it's "ponzi". Hence when people shorten it they typically leave out scheme, not ponzi. The distinguishing characteristic they want to indicate, is that the new entrants are paying the returns promised to the previous entrants. In that way, social security is internally constructed exactly like a ponzi. That is what I meant originally.
Obviously, nobody would invest in such a product. So, in case of an illegal ponzi, participants are duped into joining. In case of a legalized ponzi, participants are forced to join (and/or do it by default without understanding, as one does with most govt coercion). The participant acquisition method is secondary to the internal construction. And, while that is the only argument that I see where you can claim "see, not /literally/ a ponzi scheme!", if anything use of force makes it morally worse.
For lack of better terms we can call it "ponzi racket", where racket can be fraud OR coercion; or just a "ponzi".
Everything else - vested interest vs works for them, legal vs illegal, failed already/projected to fail, etc. - is ancillary and/or vacuous and/or not different between them.
EDIT: Oh and claiming it's moral to force people to join because it creates social safety is I think (again uncharitably) your real argument; but is a separate argument I don't want to even start. Whether it even works long term, whether forced charity is moral high-level, whether it cannot be done without force, whether it can be done with force but differently (why help old people via a ponzi? just help poor people regardless of age via normal transfers!), whether it's good for society to prefer old people to e.g. children, etc.. But you are conflating "ends justify the means" argument (that can be valid) with "means are actually not the means you say they are!" because nothing bad can apparently be said about the means as long as ends are good.
This is a crazed scheme from wall street. No thanks.
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.
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.
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.
Polls don't matter. Dems made a "which is worse" decision. They chose the less crappy option.
A govt shutdown is far, far worse for everyday Americans than some polling. What Trump and Co are doing now is nothing compared to what they can do if they can hold every single budget item hostage. The "traitors" understand this and made the less bad decision. By keeping the govt open it takes a huge amount of power away from MAGA.
Things are already going to get real bad. Why let Republicans have absolute control over the budget too?
What? How is letting the Republicans pass their bill as-is with no revision whatsoever taking "a huge amount of power from MAGA"?
A shutdown may have forced the Republicans to make concessions, but instead they'll continue to do whatever they want in the foreseeable future, and now with the Democratic party's blessings.
Don't fool yourself, the Dems that voted for the bill didn't do it with the American people in mind, nor even their own party. It was purely out of self-interest and to catter to the new king.
The same polls that said Kamala was going to win the election?
No, chneu is right. We know the stock market is crashing, and a recession is coming. No point giving the Republicans a government shutdown as an excuse. The Democrats have simply forced the Republicans to lay in the bed they've made.
After all, Trump keeps saying he has a mandate, right? Let the voters experience the consequence of their vote. Things have to get worse before they're going to be able to get better.
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.
I GUARANTEE the MAGAts and conservative media wouldn't blame Rand Paul for the ensuing market crash and recession. They'd blame it all on the government shutdown caused by the Democrats. This way the MAGAts are forced to wallow in their shit with no one else to blame but themselves.
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.)
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.
"Temporarily" is in no way certain here.
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.
"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.
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.
But they will become considerably less rich while beconing no more powerful.
>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.
I mean, it's hard not to read it as an attempt to convert the US into a Russian-style mafia state, tbh.
So, "who benefits" would generally be those oligarchs who manage to avoid lethal encounters with stairs, windows, etc., traditionally.
It's somewhat unclear to what extent this will be allowed to continue. I kind of suspect that the Supreme Court is not actually as beholden to Trump as he perhaps thinks it is, and will pull the plug at some point. I also suspect that, if the market turmoil gets bad enough, Trump may dump Musk; if you look at his previous term, few of his people got through the whole term, and of course nothing is ever Trump's fault.
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
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?