red viking

These people are obviously unqualified for their jobs, in general. He's also obviously picking people that don't have much respect from the general public. Well known but controversial. Most of them are conspiracy theorists, TV personalities (entertainers like Trump himself) and/or criminals. Wondering why people think this is. My theory is that he wants people that really don't have much credibility and would be unable to get such a position with any other President. That makes them toe the Trump line with unwavering loyalty. In other words, he's getting lackeys.

A problem is that the govt needs entities to buy its debt (bonds). If SS fund stops investing in bonds, then the bond return rate goes up by quite a bit and that makes our debt WAY more expensive. So this strategy may help with the SS fund, but make our overall debt problem worse. BTW, Trump's plan to not tax SS payouts will make the SS fund insolvent much sooner since a big portion of those taxes on SS payouts actually fund future SS payouts. Very glad that we're actually talking about attacking the big ticket items here. BTW, I recently realized that salaries & benefits for federal workers is about 5% of the federal budget. It's a complete joke that Elon is zeroing in on this.

Appreciate it when people tell it like it is.

Yah but most of that money goes to actual non-government people (e.g. social security and Medicare payments); not government employees. So that graph isn't very meaningful at all.

Try again

Horrible example. This was more a,transfer of heat from one part of the globe to another and caused by a specific event. You really knocked that strawman out of the park.

Lol. Yes, but on geologic timescales. Nothing like current rates. Plus, the earth actually should be cooling if we relied upon the natural cycles.

I agree 200%. Pentagon is a cesspool of government waste. Gotta gut that entire sector of spending.

Yes you should but I'm not electable because I tell it like it is.

I can actually respect that but one major thing you got wrong is failing to acknowledge that social security should be and is progressive. Higher paid workers pay in more than they get back and its the opposite for lower paid workers.

There are bad workers in every sector and field that has desk jobs, including people that sleep on the job.

Go ahead and show it.

So, anyway, enough w the deflections. How are you idiots actually going to come close to balancing the budget without cutting any big programs and while cutting taxes. Show me your math.

Empty claim. Sure, I'm sure you can get away w that as a lower paid worker in some cases. Same thing for some pvt sector jobs that are entry level. On a,related note, I never saw more people sleep on the job than when I was in the military. I agree strongly w you on that particular aspect.

Various. More from Musk than Trump, but Trump is going along w Musk from all accounts. See Musks talks on YouTube re: "govt efficiency." Its easy to find.

I've only heard about cutting waste, gov workers and dept of education. Haven't heard any remarks about meaningful cuts except maybe medicaid (but not medicare).

https://science.nasa.gov/climate-change/faq/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7575229/#:~:text=This period has started in,in the decade 2031–2043. Putting man-made global warming aside, we are NOT in a warming period.

I laugh when I see these claims about temperature fluctuations over the past several thousand to millions of years. First of all, these natural fluctuations are WAY slower than what's currently happening. Secondly, climatologists are well aware of these and easily account for them in climate forecasts. However, since they are so much slower (over geologic timescales), they are not a significant factor compared to CO2. It's actually very simple.

I'm not even winger but even I know that we need to cut social security, health care benefits and military spending. Or increase taxes for everybody. Take your pick but don't deflect with claims about balancing the budget simply by cutting "waste."

You need to do more than that though. This is a deflection.

I'm talking reality here so I'm not gonna shut up. People need to look at the actual expenditures in our government before talking about cuts.

Would love to see you make me.

That's great if they can decrease the waste. Seriously. I'd like that. Especially in our fat bloated military. But don't think that you can come remotely close to balancing the overall budget that way. You can't eliminate all waste anyway. Just decrease it. Every administration since the beginning of time has wanted to do this btw. There also comes a point where you can spend more on workers that elimate waste than the actual waste that existed in 1st place, or where cutting workers results in more fraud (due to less oversight) than the original costs of those workers.