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Kinda amusing that the general sentiment so far, in a forum filled with technology expertise, is that there is certainly waste in these budgets. But, when discu

Kinda amusing that the general sentiment so far, in a forum filled with technology expertise, is that there is certainly waste in these budgets. But, when discussing the overall trend of cutting programs in other fields where the majority doesn't have that expertise, the conclusion is the opposite.

foota 2y ago
I think part of it's probably that the military is the largest discretionary spending in the US, and it's not especially popular, unlike say NASA or the NPS.
- jghn 2y ago
  Yes, the scale is a huge part of it. If some program has a $1mil budget and you were to tell me that 25% of it was wasted. Well who cares? $250k in the US budget is a rounding error on a rounding error. But if you were to tell me that 25% of the Pentagon's budget was waste? That's a big deal. Yet somehow a certain segment of our population tends to focus on the small fries.
  - Ekaros 2y ago
    25% waste on single million is not bad. 25% waste on all millions spend is very bad... And that 25% is likely under estimated in many cases. Or at least some more from 75% is inefficiently used. I admit probably not 25% of all millions is wasted. But even if that is half that would be 12.5% wasted... Or fourth 6.25%. Fixing of which would still be huge long term effect. So my take is that this needs to be fixed on all levels and on all places.
    - jghn 2y ago
      Sure. But the point is that the people who advocate cutting the waste never propose going after the big wins first. Instead we cut all the little things that actually helps people and use arguments to the effect that the waste was adding up in the aggregate. OR, we could just not spend a trillion dollars on the military.
      - rtkwe 2y ago
        And/or they decide on cuts by ^F "diversity" or "transition" cutting of programs like the US seed vault which stores a lot of different crop seed varieties so we can restart our agriculture if there's a blight that knocks out our massive monocultures but it's getting axed now because it protects crop _diversity_... and that's suddenly a kill word for funding because we're being run by ideologues and idiots.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      There's ways to do that that aren't the mindless slash and burn that's happening right now. If it were done thoughtfully I'm sure there's places that some fat could be trimmed. (And if you're looking for places to do that look at the Pentagon who hasn't passed an audit in living memory...) Would it be worth the extra hurdles required to actually catch that waste/fraud though? My bet is on probably not, it's like the many many attempts to drug test welfare recipients, they all wind up costing far more than they save because the actual rate is pretty low so catching those is far more expensive than what you save.
      - whimsicalism 2y ago
        i think we are approximately 30T beyond "slow and thoughtful approach to cutting". if you want your program to be considered carefully, pass it with the necessary tax increases to fund it. don't just punt the tax receipts problem to the next guy. of course, if Trump is doing this all so he can pass his tax cuts as seems almost certain, he is no better. but frankly yes, the US needs deep cuts and concordant tax receipts increases to maintain a sustainable debt trajectory and price stability/productivity for the middle/working class.
        rtkwe 2y ago
        You have to absolutely think about what you're actually cutting loads of programs and spending end up with positive net effects. If you just demand across the board cuts you're killing those positive EV programs which leave you worse off than before. The debt boogey man is exactly that a nearly imaginary number, most US debt is held by Americans or US companies in the end too.
        whimsicalism 2y ago
        > The debt boogey man is exactly that a nearly imaginary number, most US debt is held by Americans or US companies in the end too. I agree that the problem with debt is not that there are foreign holders of US treasuries. But higher debt crowds out private investment & borrowing in the repo markets, which harms productivity, makes goods more expensive, hurts aggregate supply in the long run, and makes the poor even poorer. It also means that the US has to pay increasingly high amounts of money on interest financing and the Fed has far less room to effectively maneuver to combat inflation and ensure sustainable employment levels, as we've been seeing in the last few years. Debt is absolutely not an imaginary number and anyone who is telling you that perhaps doesn't understand the economic weight. The marginal dollar of US govt spending is generally not more welfare enhancing than the alternative of not having that debt, not crowding out private investment, etc. - particularly when we are in expansionary times (as we have up until very recently). With our current debt trajectory, we should be raising non-distortionary taxes and aggressively limiting spending that is not obviously growth enhancing or with strong social justice justification. We are starting to see real structural problems already emerging from our current debt trajectory.
  - kenjackson 2y ago
    What is waste in this context? Is it the delta from perfect efficiency? Is it working on things that have no value regardless of efficiency? I worry that we’re not that good at measuring these things. And I suspect the measurement of waste is often considered waste.
barnabee 2y ago
Having observed and been part of contracts involving these companies, it would take a lot to convince me that at least 80% of them don’t cost an order of magnitude (or more) more than they should. It’s not usually the type of work, it’s the specific commercial model and mode of engagement with them that’s generally at fault, often aided and abetted by procurement processes.
- calvinmorrison 2y ago
  they're a order of magnitude higher for some reasons though. I work in consulting, and occasionally larger enterprises approach our firm. We almost always decline because their requirements from vendor screening, to change review boards, to just the amount of sheer meetings it takes to enact a change to a title change on the website home page - its not worth it. A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away' number and they took it, and then i had to deal with the insanity of F500 business...
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    This ^ and uncertainty If I had to break down how consulting contracts are actually priced, it'd be: - 50% work - 35% requirement ambiguity - 15% customer management overhead
    - icedchai 2y ago
      Based on my experience with a smaller contractor, I think your overhead number is low. ;)
    - calvinmorrison 2y ago
      Basically, but with big companies with on hand lawyer litigation is much more likely. They want things like contingency plans, licensing information, even asking what our own financials look like. We just walk and focus on clients who don't have so much risk
  - curiouscavalier 2y ago
    Yep, the procurement process (and related) requires a lot be baked into pricing. I’d also be curious what the fully burdened rate of in-house staff is compared to consultants. I’ve seen situations in the gov (not DoD) where despite high consulting rates, the full cost of hiring was even higher per hour. But I’m loath to defend the big firms. Generally, quality plus the ever push for expanding scope leaves a sensation of waste. The solution is just going to need more than simply tossing them out.
mlinhares 2y ago
Because we shouldn't be cutting research, healthcare and social security if we want to have a future as a society.
- whimsicalism 2y ago
  well we need to find a way to make these programs sustainable then. frankly, medicare is extremely friggin expensive because it encourages overutilization - which raises costs a ton for everyone. we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation.
  - miltonlost 2y ago
    You know nothing. Absolutely nothing. Medicare is EXTREMELY CHEAP compared to private insurance. You're comparing Medicare in a vaccuum when you should look at private insurance. > we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation Oh wow, we can't raise taxes on the rich? only significantly the middle class? Why not the rich?
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      Medicare is extremely expensive from the perspective of the government/taxpayer. That it is extremely cheap and allows people to bid up the price of care on the consumer side is part of the problem, there is no triage or disincentive from overutilization because of how little cost share there is.
      - miltonlost 2y ago
        Lol so yeah, you're not comparing it to private insurance which is what TAXPAYERS actually pay themselves. You're just a right-wing hack. "Medicare is BAD because it costs money and is cheaper than private insurance. Private insurance is GOOD because it costs even more money than we'd pay with Medicare!!" Your position is "medicare is too expensive" but expensive compared to what??
wormlord 2y ago
Public health research is good. Bombing civilians in the third world is bad. Do you get it now?
- grandempire 2y ago
  > Public health research is good. This is basically a tautology. The question is what’s actually being funded in the name of public health. Wasting money in pursuit of public health which doesn’t help the public is bad actually,
  - wormlord 2y ago
    > Wasting money in pursuit of public health How do you define waste? If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? Are inconclusive results wasteful? What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? What about the benefits of effectively subsidizing your biotech sector by keeping biologists in-demand? There is more upside (globally) to public health spending than maintaining a global empire that deals death and destruction. Trying to nitpick is missing the point entirely.
    - grandempire 2y ago
      > If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? It’s certainly worse that research that does produce results. We should try to optimize for research that works. And yes, in the extreme example of spending a lot of money and never getting anything of public utility, that would be a waste. > What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? I wouldn’t use abstractions like “public health” and “public utility”. Which specific projects are funding or losing funding and what’s the impact? > There is more upside (globally) to public health spending Look inside the abstraction.
      - wormlord 2y ago
        I get that there's a discussion here over the minutae to be had in good faith. I am not qualified enough for that discussion. My point is that funding a genocidal empire is inherently bad whereas public health funding can have inefficiencies but is overall a net good. The discussion is moot however because the agencies aren't being gutted over concerns of efficiency, but because of an ideological commitment to free market shock therapy. It's like arguing if you should order the fish or chicken while the Titanic is sinking. Sure there's an argument to be had, it's just not relevant right now.
yuppii 2y ago
It is unfortunate but most users here are just partizans fueled with propaganda. I do not remember this place being such an echo chamber 10 years ago...
bgirard 2y ago
The opinion here isn't homogenous. You'll find a wide range of opinion. It will shift based on which posters are active at a given time, or even from minor nuances in the story.
- reciprocity 2y ago
  I, too, find it bothersome when people refer to an opinion written in a post and generalizes as if it were the opinion of an entire community. HN is not one person and it's incorrect to refer to it as if it is.
splitrocket 2y ago
"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses." - Major General Smedley Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." - President Eisenhower Military Spending and Tax Cuts for the wealthy have some of the lowest economic multipliers of all government activities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics) * Education spending: 2.4 (Federal Reserve research) Source: Federal Reserve * Medicaid/healthcare: 2.0 Source: Congressional Budget Office Cbpp * Food stamps (SNAP): 1.73-1.74 Sources: Mark Zandi/Moody's Analytics, Americanprogress, Manhattan Institute * Unemployment insurance: 1.61-2.1 Sources: Blinder & Zandi; Urban Institute, Americanprogress * Infrastructure spending: 1.0-2.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress * Military spending: 1.5 (average) Source: Federal Reserve * Middle-class tax cuts: 0.6-1.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress * Upper-income tax cuts: 0.2-0.6 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Americanprogress * Permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts: 0.35 Source: Moody's Analytics model, Cbpp Dollar-for-dollar, social program spending consistently produces higher economic returns than military spending or tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the wealthy. $1 billion spent on education or transit creates more than twice as many jobs (17,687-19,795) as the same amount spent on defense (8,555). -Cigionline In fact, military spending can actually slow economic growth over time; a 1% military spending increase can reduce economic growth by 9% over 20 years. Zandi's analysis of 2010 tax legislation found that 90% of economic growth and job creation came from unemployment insurance extensions and targeted tax credits, while high-end tax cuts had "only very small economic impacts." - Cbpp Jack Ma was completely correct: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-says-the-us-wasted-trillions-on-warfare-instead-of-investing-in-infrastructure.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-...
whalesalad 2y ago
Part of existing in society is being pragmatic, reasonable, and not having black or white thinking.
mikeocool 2y ago
I have experience in technology and biomedical research. IT consultants, particularly from the large firms, are very overpriced for the value they provide. Blindly cutting NIH grants (even some of the ones that sound silly on paper) and funding for research institutions is doing great harm to progress in modern medicine. Multiple things can be true at once.
- next_xibalba 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    And they got caught by the system already... You can't just snap your fingers, destroy the entire apparatus of academia and get it back again on a whim. It'd be a century or more to rebuild fully if you really did try to start over again. The impulse to cheat is even exacerbated by thinner funding not fixed by it because you're pressed extremely hard to get results to justify the next grant, and your tenure board in 5 years, and there's basically no grant money for replication and no prestige at all.
    - rahimnathwani 2y ago
      What do you mean 'they were caught by the system already'? Claudine Gay is still employed by Harvard. According to her Wikipedia page, she is the "Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University". And she wasn't exposed by folks in academia, but by people outside that system.
      - next_xibalba 2y ago
        Tessier-Lavigne only resigned from Stanford’s presidency and remained on the faculty. His case was far worse in my opinion. His research consumed millions of dollars and resulted in the misdirection of further millions downstream. Everyone knew Gay’s work was useless BS, it just also turned out to contain plagiarism.
kshri24 2y ago
It is called the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Coined by author Michael Crichton: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”
- bitmasher9 2y ago
  I read the news to judge what the propagandist want me to know, not to actually learn things. I find skimming NYT’s and FOX’s headlines are perfectly satisfactory. If anything peaks my interest I do independent analysis, putting weight on primary sources. I often try to listen in on experts discussing the matter among themselves.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    When do you have time to work?
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      Fwiw, I listen to sports talk radio whenever I’m not in meetings or otherwise physically interacting with someone else at work. The actual “news” stopped being productive to read, watch, or listen to when the term “pregnant chads” was coined. Been downhill ever since.
Bukhmanizer 2y ago
Seems pretty consistent to me. People were also upset when IT employees got fired. The general rule that employees good, contractors bad still holds. Even though people seem obsessed with the belief that firing public employees and replacing them with private contractors will make the government more “efficient”.
aprilthird2021 2y ago
This is a misframing of the sentiment. No one believes there isn't waste in government. We just don't believe 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds, others whose only qualification is Elon Musk likes them, are good at identifying what's waste and what's important. And we would like to see a measured approach to reducing waste, with some findings released to the people about what the plan is going forward and why the cuts make sense, rather than "just fire every probational employee" or "just 50% slash the SEC" or whatever else they are doing currently.
- grandempire 2y ago
  > 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds, This is a subset - the one the media choose to highlight and that’s occupying your mindshare.
  - aprilthird2021 2y ago
    What's occupying my mindshare is that we are firing hundreds of thousands of Americans, disproportionately veterans, while at the same time raising prices of everything artificially. Welcome to stagflation. EDIT: Also, should anyone with a criminal background be in charge of what they're currently doing? I'd say no. That's just me
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
cbsmith 2y ago
There's a presumption in the logic of your statement here that if there is any waste in a program, it must be cut. It turns out that there is generally waste in all operations; it doesn't follow that all operations should be terminated.
Aurornis 2y ago
The internet comment section “pick a side and deride the other” doesn’t work on these situations. Two things can be bad at once. The IT consulting can be too expensive. Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences. Rash moves like this are things politicians and corporate ladder climbers alike love to do, but then they run far away from the consequences. They know they can convince enough people that their bold move was a good thing and that the consequences will diffuse throughout the years on to other people. This very well could become more expensive to cancel abruptly when you consider the second and third order effects.
- grandempire 2y ago
  > Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences. I think this part is overestimated. It will get fixed.
  - tclancy 2y ago
    By whom?
    - grandempire 2y ago
      This comment by saying it will be disastrous. Remember all the twitter predictions?
      - const_cast 2y ago
        [dead]
      - t-writescode 2y ago
        Underfunding and breaking of, for example, unemployment benefits systems causes real harm, real loss of medication, real loss of house, etc. But that won't make the news in any meaningful way, and the destitute will often be too busy to make loud noises. And the populous at large will sigh and shake their head and say "what a shame", but the loss can be *enormous*.
Molitor5901 2y ago
To be fair, no one wants their job to go away. The government contracting gravy train is massive and has been seemingly never ending for a very long time.
deleted 2y ago
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yibg 2y ago
I don't think the majority view is so much there is no waste in the other areas. With most people I talk to, the objection is mostly with the methods employed and the lack of accountability. For me, I wouldn't have objected to Musk / DOGE going in and actually doing an audit of everything to look for waste, fraud and abuse. And if actual waste, fraud and abuse are found, where evidence and details are provided, I'd personally celebrate that.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  Ditto. Without proof claiming that 50% of some department or other is waste, doesn't convince anyone
meindnoch 2y ago
Gell-Mann amnesia in action.
grandempire 2y ago
Yep, the image portrayed of every other government department is scientists in white coats looking at cancer cells in a microscope, or doctors bandaging soldiers coming off the battle field.
silexia 2y ago
Yes, I agree. The consultants are certainly wasteful, but I am personally aware of many employees for the government who literally have to do nothing and are actually not allowed to do any real work. We need to clean up the waste everywhere.
keybored 2y ago
Amusing that a newly minted federal department of tech-bro adjacent yahoos declares that there is waste but clearly does not have any of the expertise—which would probably need to be wide-ranging—to be able to actually get rid of the waste itself and not just cut indescriminately. You could get an oncologist to admit that the patient had some cells that needed to be removed, due to the advanced cancer. But the layman chose to get rid of a couple of perfectly healthy, cancer-free limbs.
fundad 2y ago
Yep. The budget for the Department of War has been too bloated for too long and needs to be more efficient. Let’s not privilege a series of pet projects for a bunch of bureaucrats over the reset of government.

foota 2y ago

I think part of it's probably that the military is the largest discretionary spending in the US, and it's not especially popular, unlike say NASA or the NPS.

jghn 2y ago
Yes, the scale is a huge part of it. If some program has a $1mil budget and you were to tell me that 25% of it was wasted. Well who cares? $250k in the US budget is a rounding error on a rounding error. But if you were to tell me that 25% of the Pentagon's budget was waste? That's a big deal. Yet somehow a certain segment of our population tends to focus on the small fries.
- Ekaros 2y ago
  25% waste on single million is not bad. 25% waste on all millions spend is very bad... And that 25% is likely under estimated in many cases. Or at least some more from 75% is inefficiently used. I admit probably not 25% of all millions is wasted. But even if that is half that would be 12.5% wasted... Or fourth 6.25%. Fixing of which would still be huge long term effect. So my take is that this needs to be fixed on all levels and on all places.
  - jghn 2y ago
    Sure. But the point is that the people who advocate cutting the waste never propose going after the big wins first. Instead we cut all the little things that actually helps people and use arguments to the effect that the waste was adding up in the aggregate. OR, we could just not spend a trillion dollars on the military.
    - rtkwe 2y ago
      And/or they decide on cuts by ^F "diversity" or "transition" cutting of programs like the US seed vault which stores a lot of different crop seed varieties so we can restart our agriculture if there's a blight that knocks out our massive monocultures but it's getting axed now because it protects crop _diversity_... and that's suddenly a kill word for funding because we're being run by ideologues and idiots.
  - rtkwe 2y ago
    There's ways to do that that aren't the mindless slash and burn that's happening right now. If it were done thoughtfully I'm sure there's places that some fat could be trimmed. (And if you're looking for places to do that look at the Pentagon who hasn't passed an audit in living memory...) Would it be worth the extra hurdles required to actually catch that waste/fraud though? My bet is on probably not, it's like the many many attempts to drug test welfare recipients, they all wind up costing far more than they save because the actual rate is pretty low so catching those is far more expensive than what you save.
    - whimsicalism 2y ago
      i think we are approximately 30T beyond "slow and thoughtful approach to cutting". if you want your program to be considered carefully, pass it with the necessary tax increases to fund it. don't just punt the tax receipts problem to the next guy. of course, if Trump is doing this all so he can pass his tax cuts as seems almost certain, he is no better. but frankly yes, the US needs deep cuts and concordant tax receipts increases to maintain a sustainable debt trajectory and price stability/productivity for the middle/working class.
      - rtkwe 2y ago
        You have to absolutely think about what you're actually cutting loads of programs and spending end up with positive net effects. If you just demand across the board cuts you're killing those positive EV programs which leave you worse off than before. The debt boogey man is exactly that a nearly imaginary number, most US debt is held by Americans or US companies in the end too.
        whimsicalism 2y ago
        > The debt boogey man is exactly that a nearly imaginary number, most US debt is held by Americans or US companies in the end too. I agree that the problem with debt is not that there are foreign holders of US treasuries. But higher debt crowds out private investment & borrowing in the repo markets, which harms productivity, makes goods more expensive, hurts aggregate supply in the long run, and makes the poor even poorer. It also means that the US has to pay increasingly high amounts of money on interest financing and the Fed has far less room to effectively maneuver to combat inflation and ensure sustainable employment levels, as we've been seeing in the last few years. Debt is absolutely not an imaginary number and anyone who is telling you that perhaps doesn't understand the economic weight. The marginal dollar of US govt spending is generally not more welfare enhancing than the alternative of not having that debt, not crowding out private investment, etc. - particularly when we are in expansionary times (as we have up until very recently). With our current debt trajectory, we should be raising non-distortionary taxes and aggressively limiting spending that is not obviously growth enhancing or with strong social justice justification. We are starting to see real structural problems already emerging from our current debt trajectory.
- kenjackson 2y ago
  What is waste in this context? Is it the delta from perfect efficiency? Is it working on things that have no value regardless of efficiency? I worry that we’re not that good at measuring these things. And I suspect the measurement of waste is often considered waste.

barnabee 2y ago

Having observed and been part of contracts involving these companies, it would take a lot to convince me that at least 80% of them don’t cost an order of magnitude (or more) more than they should. It’s not usually the type of work, it’s the specific commercial model and mode of engagement with them that’s generally at fault, often aided and abetted by procurement processes.

calvinmorrison 2y ago
they're a order of magnitude higher for some reasons though. I work in consulting, and occasionally larger enterprises approach our firm. We almost always decline because their requirements from vendor screening, to change review boards, to just the amount of sheer meetings it takes to enact a change to a title change on the website home page - its not worth it. A couple times we made the mistake of giving a 'go away' number and they took it, and then i had to deal with the insanity of F500 business...
- ethbr1 2y ago
  This ^ and uncertainty If I had to break down how consulting contracts are actually priced, it'd be: - 50% work - 35% requirement ambiguity - 15% customer management overhead
  - icedchai 2y ago
    Based on my experience with a smaller contractor, I think your overhead number is low. ;)
  - calvinmorrison 2y ago
    Basically, but with big companies with on hand lawyer litigation is much more likely. They want things like contingency plans, licensing information, even asking what our own financials look like. We just walk and focus on clients who don't have so much risk
- curiouscavalier 2y ago
  Yep, the procurement process (and related) requires a lot be baked into pricing. I’d also be curious what the fully burdened rate of in-house staff is compared to consultants. I’ve seen situations in the gov (not DoD) where despite high consulting rates, the full cost of hiring was even higher per hour. But I’m loath to defend the big firms. Generally, quality plus the ever push for expanding scope leaves a sensation of waste. The solution is just going to need more than simply tossing them out.

mlinhares 2y ago

Because we shouldn't be cutting research, healthcare and social security if we want to have a future as a society.

whimsicalism 2y ago
well we need to find a way to make these programs sustainable then. frankly, medicare is extremely friggin expensive because it encourages overutilization - which raises costs a ton for everyone. we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation.
- miltonlost 2y ago
  You know nothing. Absolutely nothing. Medicare is EXTREMELY CHEAP compared to private insurance. You're comparing Medicare in a vaccuum when you should look at private insurance. > we simply cannot afford to be yeeting historically unheard of levels of money at the elderly without raising taxes significantly on the middle-class, that is the rub of our current fiscal situation Oh wow, we can't raise taxes on the rich? only significantly the middle class? Why not the rich?
  - whimsicalism 2y ago
    Medicare is extremely expensive from the perspective of the government/taxpayer. That it is extremely cheap and allows people to bid up the price of care on the consumer side is part of the problem, there is no triage or disincentive from overutilization because of how little cost share there is.
    - miltonlost 2y ago
      Lol so yeah, you're not comparing it to private insurance which is what TAXPAYERS actually pay themselves. You're just a right-wing hack. "Medicare is BAD because it costs money and is cheaper than private insurance. Private insurance is GOOD because it costs even more money than we'd pay with Medicare!!" Your position is "medicare is too expensive" but expensive compared to what??

wormlord 2y ago

Public health research is good. Bombing civilians in the third world is bad. Do you get it now?

grandempire 2y ago
> Public health research is good. This is basically a tautology. The question is what’s actually being funded in the name of public health. Wasting money in pursuit of public health which doesn’t help the public is bad actually,
- wormlord 2y ago
  > Wasting money in pursuit of public health How do you define waste? If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? Are inconclusive results wasteful? What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? What about the benefits of effectively subsidizing your biotech sector by keeping biologists in-demand? There is more upside (globally) to public health spending than maintaining a global empire that deals death and destruction. Trying to nitpick is missing the point entirely.
  - grandempire 2y ago
    > If research isn't harmful, but doesn't produce results, is that waste? It’s certainly worse that research that does produce results. We should try to optimize for research that works. And yes, in the extreme example of spending a lot of money and never getting anything of public utility, that would be a waste. > What ratio of public utility to cost would you consider non-wasteful spending? I wouldn’t use abstractions like “public health” and “public utility”. Which specific projects are funding or losing funding and what’s the impact? > There is more upside (globally) to public health spending Look inside the abstraction.
    - wormlord 2y ago
      I get that there's a discussion here over the minutae to be had in good faith. I am not qualified enough for that discussion. My point is that funding a genocidal empire is inherently bad whereas public health funding can have inefficiencies but is overall a net good. The discussion is moot however because the agencies aren't being gutted over concerns of efficiency, but because of an ideological commitment to free market shock therapy. It's like arguing if you should order the fish or chicken while the Titanic is sinking. Sure there's an argument to be had, it's just not relevant right now.

yuppii 2y ago

It is unfortunate but most users here are just partizans fueled with propaganda. I do not remember this place being such an echo chamber 10 years ago...

bgirard 2y ago

The opinion here isn't homogenous. You'll find a wide range of opinion. It will shift based on which posters are active at a given time, or even from minor nuances in the story.

reciprocity 2y ago
I, too, find it bothersome when people refer to an opinion written in a post and generalizes as if it were the opinion of an entire community. HN is not one person and it's incorrect to refer to it as if it is.

splitrocket 2y ago

"War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses." - Major General Smedley Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." - President Eisenhower Military Spending and Tax Cuts for the wealthy have some of the lowest economic multipliers of all government activities: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiplier_(economics) * Education spending: 2.4 (Federal Reserve research) Source: Federal Reserve * Medicaid/healthcare: 2.0 Source: Congressional Budget Office Cbpp * Food stamps (SNAP): 1.73-1.74 Sources: Mark Zandi/Moody's Analytics, Americanprogress, Manhattan Institute * Unemployment insurance: 1.61-2.1 Sources: Blinder & Zandi; Urban Institute, Americanprogress * Infrastructure spending: 1.0-2.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress * Military spending: 1.5 (average) Source: Federal Reserve * Middle-class tax cuts: 0.6-1.5 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Feyrer & Sacerdote, Americanprogress * Upper-income tax cuts: 0.2-0.6 Sources: CBO, Blinder & Zandi, Americanprogress * Permanent extension of all Bush-era tax cuts: 0.35 Source: Moody's Analytics model, Cbpp Dollar-for-dollar, social program spending consistently produces higher economic returns than military spending or tax cuts, especially tax cuts for the wealthy. $1 billion spent on education or transit creates more than twice as many jobs (17,687-19,795) as the same amount spent on defense (8,555). -Cigionline In fact, military spending can actually slow economic growth over time; a 1% military spending increase can reduce economic growth by 9% over 20 years. Zandi's analysis of 2010 tax legislation found that 90% of economic growth and job creation came from unemployment insurance extensions and targeted tax credits, while high-end tax cuts had "only very small economic impacts." - Cbpp Jack Ma was completely correct: US wasted trillions on warfare instead of investing in infrastructure. https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-says-the-us-wasted-trillions-on-warfare-instead-of-investing-in-infrastructure.html https://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/18/chinese-billionaire-jack-ma-...

whalesalad 2y ago

Part of existing in society is being pragmatic, reasonable, and not having black or white thinking.

mikeocool 2y ago

I have experience in technology and biomedical research. IT consultants, particularly from the large firms, are very overpriced for the value they provide. Blindly cutting NIH grants (even some of the ones that sound silly on paper) and funding for research institutions is doing great harm to progress in modern medicine. Multiple things can be true at once.

next_xibalba 2y ago
[flagged]
- rtkwe 2y ago
  And they got caught by the system already... You can't just snap your fingers, destroy the entire apparatus of academia and get it back again on a whim. It'd be a century or more to rebuild fully if you really did try to start over again. The impulse to cheat is even exacerbated by thinner funding not fixed by it because you're pressed extremely hard to get results to justify the next grant, and your tenure board in 5 years, and there's basically no grant money for replication and no prestige at all.
  - rahimnathwani 2y ago
    What do you mean 'they were caught by the system already'? Claudine Gay is still employed by Harvard. According to her Wikipedia page, she is the "Wilbur A. Cowett Professor of Government and of African and African-American Studies at Harvard University". And she wasn't exposed by folks in academia, but by people outside that system.
    - next_xibalba 2y ago
      Tessier-Lavigne only resigned from Stanford’s presidency and remained on the faculty. His case was far worse in my opinion. His research consumed millions of dollars and resulted in the misdirection of further millions downstream. Everyone knew Gay’s work was useless BS, it just also turned out to contain plagiarism.

kshri24 2y ago

It is called the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Coined by author Michael Crichton: “Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows. You open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murray's case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backward—reversing cause and effect. I call these the "wet streets cause rain" stories. Paper's full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know. That is the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. I'd point out it does not operate in other arenas of life. In ordinary life, if somebody consistently exaggerates or lies to you, you soon discount everything they say. In court, there is the legal doctrine of falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus, which means untruthful in one part, untruthful in all. But when it comes to the media, we believe against evidence that it is probably worth our time to read other parts of the paper. When, in fact, it almost certainly isn't. The only possible explanation for our behavior is amnesia.”

bitmasher9 2y ago
I read the news to judge what the propagandist want me to know, not to actually learn things. I find skimming NYT’s and FOX’s headlines are perfectly satisfactory. If anything peaks my interest I do independent analysis, putting weight on primary sources. I often try to listen in on experts discussing the matter among themselves.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  When do you have time to work?
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Fwiw, I listen to sports talk radio whenever I’m not in meetings or otherwise physically interacting with someone else at work. The actual “news” stopped being productive to read, watch, or listen to when the term “pregnant chads” was coined. Been downhill ever since.

Bukhmanizer 2y ago

Seems pretty consistent to me. People were also upset when IT employees got fired. The general rule that employees good, contractors bad still holds. Even though people seem obsessed with the belief that firing public employees and replacing them with private contractors will make the government more “efficient”.

aprilthird2021 2y ago

This is a misframing of the sentiment. No one believes there isn't waste in government. We just don't believe 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds, others whose only qualification is Elon Musk likes them, are good at identifying what's waste and what's important. And we would like to see a measured approach to reducing waste, with some findings released to the people about what the plan is going forward and why the cuts make sense, rather than "just fire every probational employee" or "just 50% slash the SEC" or whatever else they are doing currently.

grandempire 2y ago
> 5 under 20 year olds, some with criminal backgrounds, This is a subset - the one the media choose to highlight and that’s occupying your mindshare.
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  What's occupying my mindshare is that we are firing hundreds of thousands of Americans, disproportionately veterans, while at the same time raising prices of everything artificially. Welcome to stagflation. EDIT: Also, should anyone with a criminal background be in charge of what they're currently doing? I'd say no. That's just me
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

cbsmith 2y ago

There's a presumption in the logic of your statement here that if there is any waste in a program, it must be cut. It turns out that there is generally waste in all operations; it doesn't follow that all operations should be terminated.

Aurornis 2y ago

The internet comment section “pick a side and deride the other” doesn’t work on these situations. Two things can be bad at once. The IT consulting can be too expensive. Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences. Rash moves like this are things politicians and corporate ladder climbers alike love to do, but then they run far away from the consequences. They know they can convince enough people that their bold move was a good thing and that the consequences will diffuse throughout the years on to other people. This very well could become more expensive to cancel abruptly when you consider the second and third order effects.

grandempire 2y ago
> Cutting it all at once with no other plan can have disastrous consequences. I think this part is overestimated. It will get fixed.
- tclancy 2y ago
  By whom?
  - grandempire 2y ago
    This comment by saying it will be disastrous. Remember all the twitter predictions?
    - const_cast 2y ago
      [dead]
    - t-writescode 2y ago
      Underfunding and breaking of, for example, unemployment benefits systems causes real harm, real loss of medication, real loss of house, etc. But that won't make the news in any meaningful way, and the destitute will often be too busy to make loud noises. And the populous at large will sigh and shake their head and say "what a shame", but the loss can be *enormous*.

Molitor5901 2y ago

To be fair, no one wants their job to go away. The government contracting gravy train is massive and has been seemingly never ending for a very long time.

deleted 2y ago

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yibg 2y ago

I don't think the majority view is so much there is no waste in the other areas. With most people I talk to, the objection is mostly with the methods employed and the lack of accountability. For me, I wouldn't have objected to Musk / DOGE going in and actually doing an audit of everything to look for waste, fraud and abuse. And if actual waste, fraud and abuse are found, where evidence and details are provided, I'd personally celebrate that.

aprilthird2021 2y ago
Ditto. Without proof claiming that 50% of some department or other is waste, doesn't convince anyone

meindnoch 2y ago

Gell-Mann amnesia in action.

grandempire 2y ago

Yep, the image portrayed of every other government department is scientists in white coats looking at cancer cells in a microscope, or doctors bandaging soldiers coming off the battle field.

silexia 2y ago

Yes, I agree. The consultants are certainly wasteful, but I am personally aware of many employees for the government who literally have to do nothing and are actually not allowed to do any real work. We need to clean up the waste everywhere.

keybored 2y ago

Amusing that a newly minted federal department of tech-bro adjacent yahoos declares that there is waste but clearly does not have any of the expertise—which would probably need to be wide-ranging—to be able to actually get rid of the waste itself and not just cut indescriminately. You could get an oncologist to admit that the patient had some cells that needed to be removed, due to the advanced cancer. But the layman chose to get rid of a couple of perfectly healthy, cancer-free limbs.

fundad 2y ago

Yep. The budget for the Department of War has been too bloated for too long and needs to be more efficient. Let’s not privilege a series of pet projects for a bunch of bureaucrats over the reset of government.