Discussing DOGE cuts

 So, Andrew Yang talked a bit about DOGE on his podcast today, and as someone who believes in a very similar ideology as him on the concept of government efficiency, I wanted to give my thoughts. So, Yang doesn't seem fully against DOGE, but he has the same issues everyone else does. he does believe in cutting things, making government more efficient, but he seems to think Musk is moving too fast, and probably cutting useful things, and making too many promises he can't keep. I agree. However, I feel like my own stance on DOGE is harder than Musk's is.

Here's the thing. Yang did mention this a little himself, but republicans here are driven by ideology. They fundamentally do not believe in government. They believe in cutting government to the bone. They are right wingers. They believe in cutting government in a reflexive, ideological way, and don't care about what the government does and if the cuts hurt people. Because they believe government shouldn't be doing these things. Many small government types are actually minarchists. They believe in cutting government as much as possible and making it as limited as possible. They dont believe in safety nets. They dont believe in government agencies. Cut it all. They don't care. They dont even know what these agencies do. They just see it as waste reflexively and just wanna hacksaw the whole thing away. People like Elon might even go further. Dark Enlightenment ideology is functionally anarcho capitalism. That dude who gave Musk the chainsaw the other day? That's Javier Milei who is the president of Argentina. He's an ancap. He doesnt believe in government. he also believes in cutting the whole thing. There's a reason Argentina currently has a poverty rate over 50%. Argentina ain't as rich as the US in the first place, but cutting all government will do that. 

I also don't believe that much waste in the government exists. I've looked into the government budget for things to cut to fund UBI. There isn't that much to cut. Most of what I cut are tax credits and welfare programs that UBI replaces. There isn't a ton that CAN be reasonably cut. The government's biggest expenditures are things like social security, medicare, medicaid, and the military. There's very little waste there, outside of maybe the military. Social security, that's old and disabled people. They can't work. Cutting off their checks is a death sentence. Medicare is healthcare for old people. Medicaid is healthcare for poor people. I know some wanna cut medicaid and make people get healthcare through their jobs, but how well is that working out? Businesses don't wanna pay for peoples' healthcare, and the robber barons in the healthcare industry are taking people for all they're worth. I do cut some of that stuff to fund universal healthcare, but that's because...i want the government to provide healthcare for more people. And if you cared about efficiency, you would probably do that because we lose hundreds of billions of dollars to crooked contracts and administrative bloat as a result of our for profit healthcare system. Again, it might not make much sense to a right winger, but the best way to make government efficient is to make government do more things and take over healthcare entirely. I take the same approach with UBI. Normally, I wouldnt touch welfare. You cut welfare, you're dooming millions of people to poverty. Musk doesn't care. He's a billionaire robber baron. Him being so rich is why everyone else is so poor. Where do you think the money's going? To the rich! All this talk of cuts is cutting YOUR stuff so HE gets richer. Perhaps we should talk about Musks's tesla contracts if you wanna touch waste. But back to welfare. I wouldnt touch that stuff UNLESS we do a UBI. And even then, the answer is a scapel not a FRICKING CHAINSAW. You wanna cut things in a way to make sure the net effects are better. You can't just cut everything, that's insane! Of course, Musk and Trump ARE insane, and don't care about the consequences of their actions, and that's bad. 

At the end of the day, DOGE is floating giving taxpayers checks to give them their money back. They're literally floating $2 trillion in cuts. That's NEVER gonna happen unless you cut the stuff I just mentioned and screw people over. And at that point, getting $5k back is insulting. Imagine losing, say, $25k in social security, but oh wait, you get $5000 back from DOGE. F off with your checks elon. I don't even want them, and I'm the UBI guy. I mean, this is exactly the kind of crap that many on the left fear UBI for. Because they fear we're gonna cut the entire safety net, screw millions of people, and then, oh wait, here's a couple thousand dollars. Gee. Thanks...jerk. 

Honestly, the only thing of the above things that might yield any significant economic benefit is cutting defense spending. I know the military is bloated as fudge. They regularly fail audits. I know people who were military who mentions that yeah they just throw away money because if they save it, their budget gets cut the next year. Still, how much is waste? Probably not a ton ton. Maybe a couple hundred billion or something. That's it.

So...all of this talk of cutting stuff is just...blowing smoke. There is very little waste, fraud, and abuse in government. Maybe you can cut 2% of the budget or something, so, say, $130 billion of a $6.5 trillion budget, but that's the numbers we're talking about. Any more than that and you're cutting into useful functions that actually help people and screwing over people on our safety nets. of course, that might be the point. The right doesnt believe in safety nets. They've been wanting to undo the new deal for going on 90 years now. Trump explicitly stated America was great before 1913 at this point. He wants to go back to the freaking gilded age! He wants to screw over millions and millions of people. 

When you want to talk about DOGE, that's what we're talking about. When I talk about say, modern and effective government. I'm talking in a "yeah, instead of having these bloated piecemeal programs why dont we have universal healthcare? Instead of having all of these alphabet soup government agencies and welfare programs, why don't we replace a lot of that with UBI? We would spend MORE actually, but we would also have BETTER programs. The way elon's doing things it's gonna end one of two ways, either he cuts very little as there's little to actually cut, or he's gonna take a hacksaw to the government, cutting away useful functions that he simply doesnt believe in because he's some crazy dark enlightenment inspired robber baron who wants to implement tech feudalism on America and go back to the gilded age. You're not actually going to find much waste fraud and abuse, and you're probably hurting more people than you help. 

Really, this entire DOGE thing is insane. The worst thing is, I don't think anyone actually voted for this. They voted to bring the cost of eggs down, not this crap. Most people like government. And among the ones who did, most are just ignorant of what the government does, or like musk, dont care. They just want lower taxes. Screw you I got mine.