Summary
$150 billion: that’s the grand total of savings Elon Musk revealed last Thursday that he and his DOGE team are “expecting” to make after months of ruthless and often mindless cuts.
To call this a monumentally unimpressive number doesn’t do it justice. Musk’s “savings” here — which are already error-ridden and inflated in the first place, created by totaling up spending that never actually existed or that was, alternately, either already cut or never actually was — represent just 15% of the trillion dollars he originally promised he would slash.
In fact, government spending so far under Donald Trump has actually gone up compared to the last two years under Joe Biden.
“Musk will have effectively crippled the modern American state and ripped vital services away from ordinary Americans in order to pay for more waste at the Pentagon.”
Does this even take into account all the extra work and thus spending doge’s flailing caused?
In addition to that cutting NOAA staff only saves money until the next hurricane hits, cutting the CDC only saves money until the next outbreak hits, cutting the FDA only saves money until the next foodborne contamination etc. etc.
One would think the US already has enough experience in how it does not work like that, but it seems the guys in power are determined to walk that road til the end. What’s the end though?
Hopefully, the collapse of America into several smaller states, with the most powerful blocs (again hopefully) being less shitty than America was.
More likely, the collapse of America into chaos
I don’t think these two options are exclusive to each other. And it’s sad.
But globally!
We’ve already had an e. coli outbreak that the FDA tried to keep quiet.
And lawyer time