How in the world did the government spending get so far off the tracks? In less than a month Elon will and his 20 year olds will pry 1 trillion dollars out of the politicians cold dead hands. will

[1032004]

Here is Musk piling on someone getting trolled for losing their job, and seemingly thinking that because she wore pajamas while working from home that she must not have been actually working.

 

 

[headshuck]

It does seem like it could be a fake. Who would post something so stupid in the first place?

[jross]

3 hours ago, 1032004 said:

How long did it take between the “short term unemployment” and “increase in private sector jobs”?

Gov job cuts begin modestly in 1994.  Higher cuts from 1995-97.  Attrition and retirement still hitting in 1998 and pretty much done by 1999.

1990s Canadian Unemployment Rate

• 1990: 8.1%
• 1991: 10.3%
• 1992: 11.2%
• 1993: 11.4%
• 1994: 10.4%
• 1995: 9.5%
• 1996: 9.6%
• 1997: 9.1%
• 1998: 8.3%
• 1999: 7.6%
• 2000: 6.8%

Government spending went down.  The annual deficit flipped from 7% in 1992 to a surplus in 1997/98.  GDP growth went from 1% in 1992 to 4% in 1997 and 5% in 1999.

[jross]

3 hours ago, 1032004 said:

Here is Musk piling on someone getting trolled for losing their job, and seemingly thinking that because she wore pajamas while working from home that she must not have been actually working.

 

 

 

This DefiantL poster has an egregiously outdated take.  WFH IS A problem for unmotivated workers but it has zero to do with how someone dresses.  I work more daily hours from home, with higher productivity, than I do in the office... with appropriate apparel for whichever meetings are required.  

I say that as someone who believes that making your bed each day is a key behavior to running a disciplined, successful life.

 

 

[Caveira]

9 hours ago, RockLobster said:

electric car making genius. 

Wait is he even a regular genius then?

[Bigbrog]

3 hours ago, Caveira said:

Wait is he even a regular genius then?

I'll never understand the mentality of some on here...thinking Musk isn't a smart successful guy...like under what sort of qualifications are you freaking using dude?!?!  It would be absolutely hilarious if RL or RV ever had the chance to sit down with Musk and speak to the guy and truly understand what he has accomplished in his life comparable to them.  Would love for them to compare the charitable contribution and charitable actions he has taken compared to them, even normalizing it out over salaries for each party.  It probably is because they are so intellectually weak that they can't separate the dislike for someone's personality with whether they are smart and successful....Musk is a weird dude...but he is also extremely brilliant and successful...and that would hold true no matter what side of the isle he supported.

[Husker_Du]

17 hours ago, 1032004 said:

Us?  I agree it should be good for the country as a whole in the long-run but how much of this savings is the average person actually going to see? And be sure to include all the lost jobs as a negative in this calculation.

if you think the government should employ people simply so they have a job you're a socialist. 

[1032004]

19 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

if you think the government should employ people simply so they have a job you're a socialist. 

I don’t think that.  Just pointing out that when you start out with x number of people with a job and fire some of those people, that’s going to have a negative impact on the economy compared to what it was previously

[Bigbrog]

7 minutes ago, 1032004 said:

I don’t think that.  Just pointing out that when you start out with x number of people with a job and fire some of those people, that’s going to have a negative impact on the economy compared to what it was previously

That may technically be true given that those people may not be able to contribute in the same way to the economy compared to when they were employed (again I think the argument of HOW these people were let go is an argument that could be had); however, if their job was not needed it is the right thing to not maintain that job position (cut the waste).  To me the right way to handle this would be to give the people time to find another job before their position is eliminated, help them with job placement (there are programs out there), and give them a severance, if needed.  But ultimate the job should be eliminated if it is not needed.

[1032004]

10 minutes ago, Bigbrog said:

That may technically be true given that those people may not be able to contribute in the same way to the economy compared to when they were employed (again I think the argument of HOW these people were let go is an argument that could be had); however, if their job was not needed it is the right thing to not maintain that job position (cut the waste).  To me the right way to handle this would be to give the people time to find another job before their position is eliminated, help them with job placement (there are programs out there), and give them a severance, if needed.  But ultimate the job should be eliminated if it is not needed.

Agree.  My point all along has been to say that DOGE’s efforts should likely be good for the economy/country in the long-term.   But probably not in the short-term IMO, largely due to the jobs that will be lost (both from the government jobs themselves being cut as well as private sector jobs that depended on government contracts that were cut).

[Lipdrag]

22 hours ago, 1032004 said:

And be sure to include all the lost jobs as a negative in this calculation.

Yes.  And we were sure to include all of the lost Japanese and German military jobs as part of the cost (negative in this calculation) of winning WWII.  Taking money from hardworking people and still to be born generations and giving it to others then worrying about those taking the loot is quite an interesting take on "a negative in this calculation".

If we stop all the thieves from stealing then those thieves will have no jobs!  

[1032004]

42 minutes ago, Lipdrag said:

Yes.  And we were sure to include all of the lost Japanese and German military jobs as part of the cost (negative in this calculation) of winning WWII.  Taking money from hardworking people and still to be born generations and giving it to others then worrying about those taking the loot is quite an interesting take on "a negative in this calculation".

If we stop all the thieves from stealing then those thieves will have no jobs!  

So you think everyone that lost their job as a result of a DOGE recommendation is a thief?

[RockLobster]

14 hours ago, Caveira said:

Wait is he even a regular genius then?

No, not even a regular genius. But he has a knack for marketing.

(Even when what he is saying isn't true - which seems to be the true measure of marketing.)

[RockLobster]

10 hours ago, Bigbrog said:

I'll never understand the mentality of some on here...thinking Musk isn't a smart successful guy...like under what sort of qualifications are you freaking using dude?!?!  It would be absolutely hilarious if RL or RV ever had the chance to sit down with Musk and speak to the guy and truly understand what he has accomplished in his life comparable to them.  Would love for them to compare the charitable contribution and charitable actions he has taken compared to them, even normalizing it out over salaries for each party.  It probably is because they are so intellectually weak that they can't separate the dislike for someone's personality with whether they are smart and successful....Musk is a weird dude...but he is also extremely brilliant and successful...and that would hold true no matter what side of the isle he supported.

You're obviously confused.

The previous discussion was about Elon being cast as a "genius"... which he is not.

Not a genius, not a great engineer, and a total wacko. But Elon is a successful marketer and promoter.

Nobody here is claiming Elon isn't somewhat smart and very successful.

It's just that he's neither brilliant nor a genius. And, IMO, certainly not someone to be admired.

(Folks like you often confuse wealth with high intelligence. Something I'll never understand.)

[Caveira]

18 minutes ago, RockLobster said:

No, not even a regular genius. But he has a knack for marketing.

(Even when what he is saying isn't true - which seems to be the true measure of marketing.)

You know more about physics than Elon does ?

[Bigbrog]

9 hours ago, RockLobster said:

You're obviously confused.

The previous discussion was about Elon being cast as a "genius"... which he is not.

Not a genius, not a great engineer, and a total wacko. But Elon is a successful marketer and promoter.

Nobody here is claiming Elon isn't somewhat smart and very successful.

It's just that he's neither brilliant nor a genius. And, IMO, certainly not someone to be admired.

(Folks like you often confuse wealth with high intelligence. Something I'll never understand.)

LOL...you are absolutely delusional.  Enlighten us on what you would claim to be a "genius"...or just even "great" in your book??  And NO I don't equate wealth with high intelligence...I equate high intelligence with being a very smart and intelligent person which musk is...besides you are trying to move the goal posts as well.  Musk is a genius in how he runs his companies, is an amazing engineer, physicist, and coder...which has made him the world's richest man as a result.  Take your hate for all things R sunglasses off and you will see how much he has done for this world in terms of technological advancements.

And I somewhat agree with you on him being a "wacko"...but that is based on his personality quirks versus how smart and successful he is. 

[pokemonster]

On 2/18/2025 at 8:50 PM, jross said:

These specific listed contracts account for approx. 20% of overall DOGE savings.

Expect more mistakes to occur.

You seem to at least not be an idiot, albeit you're using it to defend people completely misrepresenting their data. I'd get fired at work if I claimed savings of $55B and was nowhere close to this. So, what's 20% of $55 billion? Is it $8.6 billion, the actual number of the combined totals of the contracts? No? Hmmm. That's not even excluding the money that was already spent against said contracts. Lemme guess, your justification is they're moving fast and surely they cannot double check their numbers?

Maybe they need to tell their LLM to actually learn to do math instead of the bs misrepresentation of data they're doing instead. 

[Husker_Du]

2 hours ago, pokemonster said:

 I'd get fired at work if I claimed savings of $55B and was nowhere close to this. So, what's 20% of $55 billion? 

would you be fired, if, say you worked somewhere like, idk, say, the Pentagon

and you you couldn't pass an audit and didn't know where billions of funds went to?

hypothetically, of course. 

[mspart]

2 minutes ago, Husker_Du said:

would you be fired, if, say you worked somewhere like, idk, say, the Pentagon

and you you couldn't pass an audit and didn't know where billions of funds went to?

hypothetically, of course. 

Realistically until now, no.  

mspart

[jross]

2 hours ago, pokemonster said:

You seem to at least not be an idiot, albeit you're using it to defend people completely misrepresenting their data. I'd get fired at work if I claimed savings of $55B and was nowhere close to this. So, what's 20% of $55 billion? Is it $8.6 billion, the actual number of the combined totals of the contracts? No? Hmmm. That's not even excluding the money that was already spent against said contracts. Lemme guess, your justification is they're moving fast and surely they cannot double check their numbers?

Maybe they need to tell their LLM to actually learn to do math instead of the bs misrepresentation of data they're doing instead. 

Would you stop guessing and think critically?  What, When, Where, Who, Why, How.

There was a misplaced DOGE slam because of the "mistake" of $8B saved for a contract that was actually $8M.  I asked "how could this mistake have been made."  This led me to identify that the contract said $8 Billion from Sept 2022 through Jan 22 2025.  The mistake is not on DOGE for grabbing the available information.  The mistake is on whomever entered the wrong number in Sept 2022, and whatever process allowed that mistake to go unnoticed.  We'd then need to go think critically about how that occurred.  Then what and or should DOGE execute to prevent bad contract data from impacting them in the future?

Please review the language on the website.  What do you think it means?  I'm doing a lot of thinking for others...

[pokemonster]

12 minutes ago, jross said:

Would you stop guessing and think critically?  What, When, Where, Who, Why, How.

There was a misplaced DOGE slam because of the "mistake" of $8B saved for a contract that was actually $8M.  I asked "how could this mistake have been made."  This led me to identify that the contract said $8 Billion from Sept 2022 through Jan 22 2025.  The mistake is not on DOGE for grabbing the available information.  The mistake is on whomever entered the wrong number in Sept 2022, and whatever process allowed that mistake to go unnoticed.  We'd then need to go think critically about how that occurred.  Then what and or should DOGE execute to prevent bad contract data from impacting them in the future?

Please review the language on the website.  What do you think it means?  I'm doing a lot of thinking for others...

You figured all of this out on your own in how many minutes? Yet the DOGE geniuses could not... Ask yourself a question, why is that? Are you more qualified than the entirety of the DOGE team? Or are they given grace because they're working in haste, so don't need to be accurate? It's either incompetence or malice misreporting that data, you choose which. 

[fishbane]

Why do people take Elon Musk's claims seriously?  Sure he will cut the budget by $1 trillion.  The same people that believe that probably believe that he is an elite Diablo/Path of Exile player.  

[jross]

 

26 minutes ago, pokemonster said:

You figured all of this out on your own in how many minutes? Yet the DOGE geniuses could not... Ask yourself a question, why is that? Are you more qualified than the entirety of the DOGE team? Or are they given grace because they're working in haste, so don't need to be accurate? It's either incompetence or malice misreporting that data, you choose which. 

I questioned it immediately because the my default is media skepticism.  I figured it out in a five minute google search after the "slam" was posted.  I don't know if I would have asked "Can we trust the contract data" if I was in charge of the project.  I'm likely to have been burned as well.

 

[jross]

The specific examples of contract and lease cancellations posted on www.fpds.gov account state that it accounts for approximately 20% of the overall $55 billion in savings. This suggests to me that the listed cancellations are a subset of broader efforts.

Copy/paste the "savings" table into excel to determine the savings sum is $7,187,588,305, or about 13% of the 55B.  That is close enough to 20% for me.  There are 17 contracts that state "SEE FPDS" rather than list the savings.   If the $8M was $8B, the list would account for about 27%. 

It doesn't matter because its a rounding error amidst glorious work!

Edited 18 hours ago by jross

[Paul158]

On 2/19/2025 at 9:11 AM, jross said:

Gov job cuts begin modestly in 1994.  Higher cuts from 1995-97.  Attrition and retirement still hitting in 1998 and pretty much done by 1999.

1990s Canadian Unemployment Rate

• 1990: 8.1%
• 1991: 10.3%
• 1992: 11.2%
• 1993: 11.4%
• 1994: 10.4%
• 1995: 9.5%
• 1996: 9.6%
• 1997: 9.1%
• 1998: 8.3%
• 1999: 7.6%
• 2000: 6.8%

Government spending went down.  The annual deficit flipped from 7% in 1992 to a surplus in 1997/98.  GDP growth went from 1% in 1992 to 4% in 1997 and 5% in 1999.

Quote

 

You are really good at researching. Thank you.