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Lyn Alden had a good, terse analysis of why DOGE was unlikely to be effective in this newsletter[0]. The math was simple, the folks behind DOGE must have themse

by debo_ 1y ago

Lyn Alden had a good, terse analysis of why DOGE was unlikely to be effective in this newsletter[0]. The math was simple, the folks behind DOGE must have themselves known that their stated mission was impossible. It starts with these paragraphs, if you want to seek to it: "This is the goal of the newly proposed Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy. This is an advisory commission rather than an official government department. Musk has famously vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending—roughly 30% of last year’s federal budget. Although this sounds good on paper, achieving such a target will be quite challenging, given the composition of government spending. Last year, the government spent $6.75 trillion, with $4.1 trillion (61%) classified as mandatory spending." [0] https://www.lynalden.com/full-steam-ahead-all-aboard-fiscal-dominance/ https://www.lynalden.com/full-steam-ahead-all-aboard-fiscal-...

AnthonyMouse 1y ago
Classifying some spending as "mandatory" is a ruse to make people ignore the potential for any savings there. The largest component of "mandatory" spending is health spending (e.g. Medicare), and it certainly isn't the case that Medicare is fully optimized. For example, is it overpaying for anything? Paying for things that are ineffective or unnecessary? Would it be better to means test certain benefits so that the government isn't making big social assistance payouts to recipients with a net worth over a million dollars? Is there any Medicare fraud? The next largest and almost as big is social security, so what happens if we means test that program, or even just get rid of the reverse means testing in the existing program which makes larger payouts to people who made more money? These things would all reduce "mandatory" spending, potentially by a significant amount, and there is nothing preventing that from happening except for the false insistence that it can't be done.
- rincebrain 1y ago
  The problem with means-testing benefits is that it often will cost more to means-test than to just accept nonzero fraud rates past a very minimal point, and there is a significant amount of friction introduced when you add more friction to people who do not have time or energy to spare. e.g. if I ask you to submit receipts for literally everything that you bought in the last week, in order to give you a $20 stipend weekly, you will probably not bother, even if you could use the $20, and it will probably cost more than $20 to pay me for the time processing that. I'm not saying there's no waste, but I am saying that the optimal amount of waste to reward is nonzero.
  - hn_acc1 1y ago
    They do say that the US is a country where people will happily spend $10 to ensure no one gets $1 they weren't entitled to..
    - snowwrestler 1y ago
      Right, which is why broadly-available old-age insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security work. Everyone pays in their own money, to which they are entitled. So there’s not really any reason to spend that extra $10. It’s also why “Medicare For All” runs into opposition. It’s hard to make the case that a healthy 22-year-old is entitled to a lifetime of free health care before paying a dime into the system.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        That's just status quo bias. Countries with fully socialized healthcare systems make the same "everyone pays taxes and then everyone gets it" argument for including the healthy 22-year-olds and you can make the same "this person doesn't deserve public money" argument for not providing government benefits to people who have their own wealth. Moreover, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you could modify those programs to cost less money if your primary goal was to lower spending.
        snowwrestler 1y ago
        I am describing factors that have produced the status quo in the U.S., not arguing that the American status quo is correct.
      - jakelazaroff 1y ago
        It's very easy to make that case: healthcare should be a human right, and our society should provide it to every person to the extent that it can. We can just decide to make things public services. No one ever says "wait a minute, kids shouldn't be get to use roads for free before paying a dime into the system." It sounds ridiculous! But for some reason, people buy that logic when it comes to healthcare and college.
- ares623 1y ago
  How much will the optimization and means testing cost? Will it end up starting an entire division of workers to review and verify? There is no free lunch. This is like optimizing by shaving single digit milliseconds in uploading artifacts for your build time, but 10 minutes is spent somewhere else.
- debo_ 1y ago
  Right, but DOGE was told by the current government that they weren't allowed to touch Medicare. This is covered in the article I linked.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    Is the current government known for following rules and consistently adhering to previous declarations?
- runako 1y ago
  One reason those programs are not means tested is because it means that everyone can depend on them. Once they are means-tested to only apply to poor/middle class people, they will begin to be aggressively cut like the other means-tested programs. Also worth noting net worth "over a million dollars" is not extravagant for a Medicare-age person who did not have a pension, for example. This is basically a median home and $600k in savings. Not poor, but also not likely to be able to pay anything close to rack rate for health insurance for an older person.
  - acdha 1y ago
    I’d also add that there’s a powerful benefit to having something like Medicare as a right of citizenship: it builds social cohesion and avoids the stigma which is often attached to social programs. Some landlords go to great lengths to avoid section 8 tenants, for example, and that has a substantial negative cost to society.
    - FireBeyond 1y ago
      > I’d also add that there’s a powerful benefit to having something like Medicare as a right of citizenship While not attached to citizenship, there already is something built in. New immigrants to the US often have to have a financial sponsor (I did, on my K-1 fiance visa). That sponsor has to agree (and demonstrate ability) that in the event that the new immigrant claims public benefits in the first ten years of their residence in the US (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) that the government is entitled to recoup those benefit costs from the sponsor.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    The Medicare budget is approximately $1400/month for each person over 65. A completely plausible means testing approach isn't "if you have a million dollars you have to go pay a billion dollars for healthcare" but rather that if you have that much money you have to pay the $1400 to get Medicare. Someone with $600,000 and earning 5% APY would be getting more than that in interest, not including appreciation or imputed rent on the $400,000 house, and would stop having to pay the full rate if their net worth fell below the threshold anyway.
- Capricorn2481 1y ago
  This is quite the comment. 1) You start off saying the mandatory spending is a ruse. 2) You provide no evidence for it. 3) You ask some pretty basic (still good) questions that each department already undergoes. 4) You conclude the spending must not be mandatory after all, just by the mere existence of your questions. Almost assuming the worst case answer to each question you raised. Do you understand this is Seagull budget planning? I am no government defender, but I am consistently flabbergasted by people who think government fraud detection started and ended with DOGE. Do you guys seriously write "Are we paying for unnecessary things" as though it's an insightful question nobody in government has looked into before? Even after we have confirmed DOGE did fuck all and likely made this whole process even worse?
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > Do you guys seriously write "Are we paying for unnecessary things" as though it's an insightful question nobody in government has looked into before? It isn't a novel question, which is how we know so conclusively that the answer is "yes, the government is paying for many unnecessary things". The people receiving the money keep lobbying to prevent it from being eliminated, so the primary thing preventing it from being eliminated is government authority to actually change things. Whether or not that's what DOGE did, it's the thing a government efficiency operation could and ought to do.
- daveguy 1y ago
  > The largest component of "mandatory" spending is health spending (e.g. Medicare), and it certainly isn't the case that Medicare is fully optimized. For example, is it overpaying for anything? Yeah, it's over paying for private equity vultures who overcharge to extra maximum profit from healthcare. But that's reform that sorely needs to happen by the government reigning in those private companies not to the government. By trying to "drown [the government] in the bathtub" like Norquist advocated, project 2025 asshats are damaging our country. Some things are mandatory only if you love your neighbor.
  - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
    > But that's reform that sorely needs to happen by the government reigning in those private companies not to the government. So the government passes regulations that cause private equity asshats to jack up prices, e.g. by making it infeasible to start new companies to compete with them, and then the government overpays to buy things from them, but this is somehow not the government's doing? Bad regulations passed at the behest of private asshats are still bad regulations and the solution is still to repeal them. > Some things are mandatory only if you love your neighbor. And some things aren't mandatory at all, like having the government overpay for stuff which is nevertheless classified as "mandatory" spending.
    - daveguy 1y ago
      > So the government passes regulations that cause private equity asshats to jack up prices, Nope. That's not what I said, but nice try. It means we don't allow for-profit companies to run our healthcare. Public. Accountable. Non-Profit.
      - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
        How are you supposed to get an accountable government agency? Is the VA or the DMV or the DEA actually accountable right now, and if so then why are they so bad? Accountability comes from the ability to reject something objectionable, i.e. it comes from having other alternatives that subject the provider to competitive pressure. That's not what you get from a government agency, nor is it what you get from a consolidated market where the incumbents have captured the government. It is what you get from a competitive market, which is the thing we currently lack.
- amanaplanacanal 1y ago
  Changing the deal of social security after people spent a lifetime paying into it seems like a non-starter. That's on top of the fact that it would require Congress to change the law to make that happen, no department of government efficiency can do it.
pstuart 1y ago
Striving for efficiency is laudable, but that wasn't the goal. It was to dismantle institutions that the Oligarchs and their minions wanted to destroy.
estearum 1y ago
> the folks behind DOGE must have themselves known that their stated mission was impossible. this assumes these people aren't actual complete dumbasses in this domain (they are)
debo_ 1y ago
I'm adding the rest of the context from the post I linked since it's clear almost no one is reading it: "Mandatory spending includes entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are legally required to provide benefits to eligible recipients. Even if DOGE wanted to, this spending can’t be cut. To change these programs’ funding, eligibility, or benefits, Congress must vote to amend the laws, a daunting task in the current polarized political climate. Compounding the issue, President-Elect Trump recently stated his unwillingness to touch Social Security or Medicare. In addition, the Republican Party included protecting these programs as one of twenty promises in its 2024 GOP Platform. If the incoming administration follows along party lines, that leaves discretionary spending (26%) as the only realistic target to trim spending."
tencentshill 1y ago
Mandatory according to who? Congress? DOGE has more actual, real power than our elected congress at this time.
FireBeyond 1y ago
> Musk has famously vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending—roughly 30% of last year’s federal budget And yet with what he's done, federal spending has increased $400B this year.

by debo_ 1y ago

AnthonyMouse 1y ago

Classifying some spending as "mandatory" is a ruse to make people ignore the potential for any savings there. The largest component of "mandatory" spending is health spending (e.g. Medicare), and it certainly isn't the case that Medicare is fully optimized. For example, is it overpaying for anything? Paying for things that are ineffective or unnecessary? Would it be better to means test certain benefits so that the government isn't making big social assistance payouts to recipients with a net worth over a million dollars? Is there any Medicare fraud? The next largest and almost as big is social security, so what happens if we means test that program, or even just get rid of the reverse means testing in the existing program which makes larger payouts to people who made more money? These things would all reduce "mandatory" spending, potentially by a significant amount, and there is nothing preventing that from happening except for the false insistence that it can't be done.

rincebrain 1y ago
The problem with means-testing benefits is that it often will cost more to means-test than to just accept nonzero fraud rates past a very minimal point, and there is a significant amount of friction introduced when you add more friction to people who do not have time or energy to spare. e.g. if I ask you to submit receipts for literally everything that you bought in the last week, in order to give you a $20 stipend weekly, you will probably not bother, even if you could use the $20, and it will probably cost more than $20 to pay me for the time processing that. I'm not saying there's no waste, but I am saying that the optimal amount of waste to reward is nonzero.
- hn_acc1 1y ago
  They do say that the US is a country where people will happily spend $10 to ensure no one gets $1 they weren't entitled to..
  - snowwrestler 1y ago
    Right, which is why broadly-available old-age insurance programs like Medicare and Social Security work. Everyone pays in their own money, to which they are entitled. So there’s not really any reason to spend that extra $10. It’s also why “Medicare For All” runs into opposition. It’s hard to make the case that a healthy 22-year-old is entitled to a lifetime of free health care before paying a dime into the system.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      That's just status quo bias. Countries with fully socialized healthcare systems make the same "everyone pays taxes and then everyone gets it" argument for including the healthy 22-year-olds and you can make the same "this person doesn't deserve public money" argument for not providing government benefits to people who have their own wealth. Moreover, it doesn't have anything to do with whether you could modify those programs to cost less money if your primary goal was to lower spending.
      - snowwrestler 1y ago
        I am describing factors that have produced the status quo in the U.S., not arguing that the American status quo is correct.
    - jakelazaroff 1y ago
      It's very easy to make that case: healthcare should be a human right, and our society should provide it to every person to the extent that it can. We can just decide to make things public services. No one ever says "wait a minute, kids shouldn't be get to use roads for free before paying a dime into the system." It sounds ridiculous! But for some reason, people buy that logic when it comes to healthcare and college.
ares623 1y ago
How much will the optimization and means testing cost? Will it end up starting an entire division of workers to review and verify? There is no free lunch. This is like optimizing by shaving single digit milliseconds in uploading artifacts for your build time, but 10 minutes is spent somewhere else.
debo_ 1y ago
Right, but DOGE was told by the current government that they weren't allowed to touch Medicare. This is covered in the article I linked.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  Is the current government known for following rules and consistently adhering to previous declarations?
runako 1y ago
One reason those programs are not means tested is because it means that everyone can depend on them. Once they are means-tested to only apply to poor/middle class people, they will begin to be aggressively cut like the other means-tested programs. Also worth noting net worth "over a million dollars" is not extravagant for a Medicare-age person who did not have a pension, for example. This is basically a median home and $600k in savings. Not poor, but also not likely to be able to pay anything close to rack rate for health insurance for an older person.
- acdha 1y ago
  I’d also add that there’s a powerful benefit to having something like Medicare as a right of citizenship: it builds social cohesion and avoids the stigma which is often attached to social programs. Some landlords go to great lengths to avoid section 8 tenants, for example, and that has a substantial negative cost to society.
  - FireBeyond 1y ago
    > I’d also add that there’s a powerful benefit to having something like Medicare as a right of citizenship While not attached to citizenship, there already is something built in. New immigrants to the US often have to have a financial sponsor (I did, on my K-1 fiance visa). That sponsor has to agree (and demonstrate ability) that in the event that the new immigrant claims public benefits in the first ten years of their residence in the US (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) that the government is entitled to recoup those benefit costs from the sponsor.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  The Medicare budget is approximately $1400/month for each person over 65. A completely plausible means testing approach isn't "if you have a million dollars you have to go pay a billion dollars for healthcare" but rather that if you have that much money you have to pay the $1400 to get Medicare. Someone with $600,000 and earning 5% APY would be getting more than that in interest, not including appreciation or imputed rent on the $400,000 house, and would stop having to pay the full rate if their net worth fell below the threshold anyway.
Capricorn2481 1y ago
This is quite the comment. 1) You start off saying the mandatory spending is a ruse. 2) You provide no evidence for it. 3) You ask some pretty basic (still good) questions that each department already undergoes. 4) You conclude the spending must not be mandatory after all, just by the mere existence of your questions. Almost assuming the worst case answer to each question you raised. Do you understand this is Seagull budget planning? I am no government defender, but I am consistently flabbergasted by people who think government fraud detection started and ended with DOGE. Do you guys seriously write "Are we paying for unnecessary things" as though it's an insightful question nobody in government has looked into before? Even after we have confirmed DOGE did fuck all and likely made this whole process even worse?
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > Do you guys seriously write "Are we paying for unnecessary things" as though it's an insightful question nobody in government has looked into before? It isn't a novel question, which is how we know so conclusively that the answer is "yes, the government is paying for many unnecessary things". The people receiving the money keep lobbying to prevent it from being eliminated, so the primary thing preventing it from being eliminated is government authority to actually change things. Whether or not that's what DOGE did, it's the thing a government efficiency operation could and ought to do.
daveguy 1y ago
> The largest component of "mandatory" spending is health spending (e.g. Medicare), and it certainly isn't the case that Medicare is fully optimized. For example, is it overpaying for anything? Yeah, it's over paying for private equity vultures who overcharge to extra maximum profit from healthcare. But that's reform that sorely needs to happen by the government reigning in those private companies not to the government. By trying to "drown [the government] in the bathtub" like Norquist advocated, project 2025 asshats are damaging our country. Some things are mandatory only if you love your neighbor.
- AnthonyMouse 1y ago
  > But that's reform that sorely needs to happen by the government reigning in those private companies not to the government. So the government passes regulations that cause private equity asshats to jack up prices, e.g. by making it infeasible to start new companies to compete with them, and then the government overpays to buy things from them, but this is somehow not the government's doing? Bad regulations passed at the behest of private asshats are still bad regulations and the solution is still to repeal them. > Some things are mandatory only if you love your neighbor. And some things aren't mandatory at all, like having the government overpay for stuff which is nevertheless classified as "mandatory" spending.
  - daveguy 1y ago
    > So the government passes regulations that cause private equity asshats to jack up prices, Nope. That's not what I said, but nice try. It means we don't allow for-profit companies to run our healthcare. Public. Accountable. Non-Profit.
    - AnthonyMouse 1y ago
      How are you supposed to get an accountable government agency? Is the VA or the DMV or the DEA actually accountable right now, and if so then why are they so bad? Accountability comes from the ability to reject something objectionable, i.e. it comes from having other alternatives that subject the provider to competitive pressure. That's not what you get from a government agency, nor is it what you get from a consolidated market where the incumbents have captured the government. It is what you get from a competitive market, which is the thing we currently lack.
amanaplanacanal 1y ago
Changing the deal of social security after people spent a lifetime paying into it seems like a non-starter. That's on top of the fact that it would require Congress to change the law to make that happen, no department of government efficiency can do it.

pstuart 1y ago

Striving for efficiency is laudable, but that wasn't the goal. It was to dismantle institutions that the Oligarchs and their minions wanted to destroy.

estearum 1y ago

> the folks behind DOGE must have themselves known that their stated mission was impossible. this assumes these people aren't actual complete dumbasses in this domain (they are)

debo_ 1y ago

I'm adding the rest of the context from the post I linked since it's clear almost no one is reading it: "Mandatory spending includes entitlement programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which are legally required to provide benefits to eligible recipients. Even if DOGE wanted to, this spending can’t be cut. To change these programs’ funding, eligibility, or benefits, Congress must vote to amend the laws, a daunting task in the current polarized political climate. Compounding the issue, President-Elect Trump recently stated his unwillingness to touch Social Security or Medicare. In addition, the Republican Party included protecting these programs as one of twenty promises in its 2024 GOP Platform. If the incoming administration follows along party lines, that leaves discretionary spending (26%) as the only realistic target to trim spending."

tencentshill 1y ago

Mandatory according to who? Congress? DOGE has more actual, real power than our elected congress at this time.

FireBeyond 1y ago

> Musk has famously vowed to cut “at least $2 trillion” in federal spending—roughly 30% of last year’s federal budget And yet with what he's done, federal spending has increased $400B this year.