DOGE puts $1 spending limit on government employee credit cards
wired.com
wired.com
> out of 4,063 pilots, not a single airman fit within the average range on all 10 dimensions [0]
Surely, there are so many employees in general that probationary employees aren't needed. And surely, most government employees don't need to purchase things on a daily basis, so we can inhibit their credit card use. And most contracts about XYZ aren't crucial, so we can cancel them.
But, my goodness, there is so much nuance and breadth to the things a government does, let alone the government that is responsible for the largest military and that props up a big part of the world economy, that compounding these rash decisions will have far-reaching and serious blowback. I'm all about efficiency, but why be stupid about it?
The plane that we're all on is being dismantled midair, the engines have been turned off, and we're just gliding now. Gliding or falling, anyway
[0] https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/when-u-s-air-force-disc...
The people radicalized to these actions are trying to destroy the government. They haven't been especially subtle about it in their writing. The ideal outcome is not the same government outcomes but at 70% of the cost. The ideal outcome is the collapse of the federal bureaucracy so that the lords of capital can scoop things up and create their little kingdoms.
Last weekend the Washington Post published some internal DOGE memos showing this is absolutely true. What's happening has nothing to do with efficiency. It's all about ideology.
In my experience, efficient is rarely, if ever cheap.
It's worse than that. They're also incompetent.
Look, I'm a radical anarcho-capitalist / libertarian / voluntaryist myself. I'm fine with the idea of "destroying the government" in general. BUT, even I would say that there's a right way to go about it, and that that involves dismantling things slowly and incrementally, identifying replacements (where available) for government services that are being wound down BEFORE winding them down, minimizing the harm done, taking "collateral damage" into consideration etc. These people are doing the equivalent of "destroying the government" by just randomly lobbing hand grenades all over the place, with no knowledge, consideration, or concern, for the outcomes.
Earnest question: Does the second sentence here cause you to reflect on the first, because:
>minimizing the harm done, taking "collateral damage" into consideration...
acknowledges that the government is performing important functions on which people rely.
I know there's an argument that the private sector could instead provide some of these, but that causes me to consider whether such critical services should be in the hands of for-profit companies?
Yeah? been waiting, consciously, for over 35 years and all we managed to do is give billions to industries for no return for citizens, tenfold our debt, potentially bankrupt Medicare, and so on.
Democrats have been in power about equally (20 vs 14 years but just president isn't enough to be "in power"); so neither side is interested in fixing this country for the people instead of themselves.
No matter who you consider to be malefactors. Let's say we call ancaps malefactors, and we're talking about the reformation of society. Surely it's possible to find capable people who will set that in motion and lock it in so it can't be avoided? There must be so many people able to plan this out. You might be one of those people!
And yet, how come we're looking at a pile of nonsense people, hurling grenades and being catastrophically useless in their own rights, across the board?
Do you consider them incompetent, when the claim is they'll make everything great and you hope they'll serve your interests?
Or do you consider that they're doing exactly what they are meant to do, but they're meant to be saboteurs and the damage IS not only the point but the only real plan?
In that case, they might not even be in control of what they think they're intending, but they've been selected to do exactly what they're doing. Some of the bigger ones seem to be carrying on like Bond villains, presumably because they enjoy that, but even they are poised to do catastrophic damage to what they're supposed to 'rule'.
So do they even expect to rule anything, or are they simply trying to break everything before fleeing the ruins? They're not acting like they're trying to build power, it's something else. Even Trump's bluster is not really building power in any way, it's only undermining American hegemony at a staggering rate.
That might be the only purpose.
https://www.notesfromthecircus.com/p/the-plot-against-americ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdVB-R6Duso
Keep in mind people voted for this knowing the plan, but this book documents human behavior in general politics under a new ruler:
"The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics" (Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith)
https://www.amazon.com/Dictators-Handbook-Behavior-Almost-Po...
Removing political guardrails and community due-process is what is happening.
A king and his fool is unsustainable, thus... people with brains and money will simply start to vote with their feet and leave while they are able. Have a great day =3
This is, of course, the model for Russian oligarchs.
Being alive and happy is not effcient.
The federal government, right? They are in favor of state and local government, but object to federal, which they assert reduces the ability for states to have different rules and regulations that can drive competition amongst different legal frameworks.
So it appears, at least, that the administration doesn't actually respect states' rights and is looking to take over everything.
[1] https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/nyc-congestion-pricing-...
As demonstrated by efforts to prevent state and local governments from acting independently...
The US had a civil war that its defenders describe as being about "states' rights", with the most important right of all being the ability to literally own other people as property.
Make America Great Again is a about returning to those glory days.
Seems like an issue that should be left to the state, and yet here they are asserting federal authority over it.
Many conservatives agree including a sitting senator saying California should "change their ways".
> https://www.wxxinews.org/2025-02-20/new-york-governor-reject...
Louisiana wants to punish a New York doctor for prescribing medicine. Project 2025 in general wants to ban and criminalize medication abortion nationwide.
If I kept a running list of all the ways conservatives preach states right but don't really practice it, I wouldn't have much time to do anything else.
And "states rights" has been coded language anyway. Refer to Lee Atwater 1981 interview. Now the coded language has focused attention on "DEI", "trans", among other things.
The idea that Trump, Musk, or anybody involved in leadership of Trump's administration care about state and local government authority is, frankly, fucking ludicrous.
Narcissists are deeply emotionally immature, in a way that is incredibly resistant to healing. Their entire life narrative and every action is based on a fundamental delusion. Most of us struggle with change and admitting when we are wrong… To heal, a narcissist must change their entire world view and admit they have been living a harmful lie their entire life.
It’s quite bad when such a person gains significant power and has goals that conflict with well-being of others.
"Something needs to be done. This is something. Let's do it".
The fact that this something might make it worse is ignored.
Remember that "probationary" doesn't mean new. I just learned this, but apparently when getting a promotion it puts you back into the "probationary" period at your new role. So people with 10+ years of service are being let go because they had recently been promoted.
It's really, really hard to believe I have anything in common with people cheering on this cruel incompetence.
Like what is the great thing that needs to be done right now that justifies trampling over peoples lives like this ?
If we aim for 100% efficiency we end up with massive unemployment, because a lot of jobs and businesses are just not necessary. We all just got to experience that first hand, as when COVID hit something like 1/3rd of people either stop worked or worked massive reduced hours and the truth of the matter is the world kept spinning JUST FINE, save for a some inconveniences.
The more efficient things becomes, the more another mechanism is needed to control people, so you are going to eventually have to bring back some kind of formal class system or slavery.
And I'm not sure how your logic follows; there's no link between GP's claim that some government jobs effectively function as a form of welfare and your claim that the number of people eligible for this welfare must increase over time.
You seem to be implying that this is a desirable property of government. I don't think that's true, and I think that the Broken Window Fallacy applies to your argument.
For creating new legislature. Because the relationship between the government and individuals is fundamentally that of force.
> It provides a lot of jobs to people who are otherwise unemployable.
I disagree. The purpose of the government is to secure individual liberties and provide national stability. ALL its programs must serve that strategic objective. Its purpose is not to provide handouts or employment; that is incidental. You don't want incompetent buffoons running the government anyway, or you'll get a bureaucratic inefficient mess.
> a lot of jobs and businesses are just not necessary
So what? There's nothing wrong with having people learn skills in the private sector. At least their relationship to the people around them isn't based on force like it is with the government. Who are you to proclaim what businesses and jobs are necessary anyway? If a business is successful, it must be serving someone, somewhere well enough for them to be paid anyway.
> when COVID hit something like 1/3rd of people either stop worked or worked massive reduced hours and the truth of the matter is the world kept spinning JUST FINE
A lot of people lost their jobs and livelihoods unnecessarily, because they were forced out by the new government regulations. Sure, they may have still lived, but I can promise you their quality of life has reduced. There was more unemployment. More people depended on government benefits provided by productive people still working, rather than depending on themselves and their own businesses. It takes a lot of mental gymnastics to make rhetoric that twists that into a good thing. It's only good if you want more and bigger government with more control, all at the taxpayers' expense.
Maybe let the guy iterate. That's what he does. Remove things till there's actual pain and not just moaning. Moderate by that. Has worked actually wonders till now.
I did read somewhere - and I may be incorrect - but a lot of internal employees are put on 'probation' after internal promotions, and not all probationary staff are like new hires.
USA is bankrupt and the elites have known this since 2008. Trump and co. are the front for the bankruptcy proceedings and the rest is stage management. So this is class warfare in a system that is about to lose its preeminent (power) position in the world. As for alliances, I can guarantee every power center in East Asia has taken note of how US just threw Europe under the bus under the pretext of "change of presidency" as if!
I wonder if the future holds a civil war or a revolution. One of the two is a given at this point.
Now somebody is finally addressing the debt/deficit.
If you think someone else can do better, have them explain their plan in detail.
You're only observing reporting about these actions. There's very little in the way of actual reporting on impacts. Are we actually objectively measuring government performance in any real way?
> will have far-reaching and serious blowback.
I doubt that it will be "far" or "serious." We did all of those things before credit cards even existed. It will be "minimal" and "altered on a case by case basis."
> The plane that we're all on is being dismantled midair,
I'm on the ground. Your government employees are in the plane. It's concerning to be sure, but not anything we can't fix if it goes poorly.
We joked that we just had to unplug it and wait for something to fail or for someone to complain.
As a non citizen of USA, I'm genuinely curious of what will happen now that it seems that this joke is a normal way of doing this. "Let's shut everything down and see what we're really missing! We'll fix it if needed be. "
55 years ago the Cuyahoga River caught fire (it wasn't the first time) and the fix was to kickstart the EPA.
You could also have kept better records in the first place so this sort of thing didn't happen.
> that this joke is a normal way of doing this.
You'll find that there are many differences between the operation of a profitable company and a government.
> and the fix was to kickstart the EPA.
The _natural human response_ once the media got involved was to start the environmentalist movement. Most of the work to cleanup the river was done by Cleveland and Ohio state. Which is just quibbling over details. What you should really explain is why the EPA needs credit cards to do what they do.
It was easy for X to get rid of advertisers. It was impossible to get income back. And while the old infrastructure and features work, their new ones are buggy and frequently reversed.
What evidence do you have for this?
> will do everything in their power to prevent you from fixing it.
They're the administration. This is their prerogative. Perhaps your ideas about "fixing it" aren't shared?
> It was easy for X to get rid of advertisers. It was impossible to get income back
Are we talking about for profit corporations or governments?
> And while the old infrastructure and features work, their new ones are buggy and frequently reversed.
Are we talking about a codebase or governments?
Eventually to solve this resulted in a system where a $40 pizza lunch went to a committee of completely disconnected morons who debated it and would then forward it to a VP to make the final call. Probably a couple thousands in time costs with the paperwork and people time involved … for $40 of pizza. Oh and they had lunch while they debated.
I got an email from the committee once, I told them to forget it and I would buy my team pizza with my own money…. they actually tried to get me in trouble for that.
These kinda dumbass middle manager politics sound like they help (to people with no work experience…) but they’re more costly in the end.
Thankfully we were bought and the new CEO did away with it.
Every meeting should have a, "this costs $$$ per hour to run this meeting" clock.
They don't care, destruction of the federal government is the point. Congress needs to do their job.
One day, deep in a build, I was so frustrated I got our CEO and COO and made them walk around the building with me as I fumed "Every meeting should have a, "this costs $$$ per hour to run this meeting" screen" - and our COO looks at me and said "are we really that bad?" and I said "THIS MEETING ABOUT MEETINGS COST US $5,000!!!!!!!!!!!" - sadly, we didn't get any screens, but a company wide email went out and meetings decreased.
Levels.fyi built this btw: https://www.levels.fyi/cost/
We are truly fucked, you know?
That sound exactly out of the Simple Sabotage Field Manual
https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
It didn't go down so well when I stated "I don't know how much each of you get paid, but I know the rough hourly rate my firm charges to have me here, and I can pretty confidently state we've just spent more money debating that hour's charge than the hour's charge is worth" -- it did move the meeting on to more important topics though.
"Penny wise but pound foolish" springs to mind.
I knew a place which did the same for stationary. "Employees are using too many notebooks".
Eventually they would have a staff to stock, approve and disburse. Which Im sure costs darn more than anything the notebooks did.
Either way, its still unclear why you would ration notebooks of the things.
Eventually I guess people just want an illusion of control.
These are people who want to prove, regardless of anything, that government is less efficient than private enterprises... particularly their private enterprises, who would be happy to help you with your problem, dear citizen, for a nominal fee.
Since they don't really do that, they can then define the term to mean whatever they want and then declare it as "successful".
This is literally going to cost the government more money.
"I don't want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub." - Grover Norquist, an unelected person, who many Republicans in congress signed a pledge to.
We're at the "small enough" phase, and soon enough we'll be at the "drowning" phase. This is their dream come true, unfortunately it's going to be a nightmare for everyone but the most wealthy.
Either way, they're saving $50, either by stealing it from the employees who'd rather pay themselves to be able to do their job, or by causing hundreds of dollars worth of damage to the productivity because someone spends 2 hours hunting for an unused pen instead of just grabbing one from the supply box in the corner.
Or "government sent their workers to this hotel on tax payers' dime!!" with a picture of some suite, and turns out they just attended a conference about their area and they only saw the conference rooms.
I don't get why spending money on government workers is so frowned upon. They deserve conferences, a nice office and some social stuff just as much as anyone. My Christmas parties as a government consultant cost probably 5x as much, never heard anything, and also paid with tax payer money, just through a layer of privatization...
Sounds like my company.
It finally got rid of the travel agency contract, so for my meeting last week I ended up spending $600 in salary hours making my own arrangements so the company could save a $50 commission to a travel agent.
Penny wise and pound foolish.
But that's the point. With the travel agency contact, employees did ZERO work. One day you just got an email with your flight, car and hotel information. The travel agency handled everything.
There was no "working with" an agent. Employees focused on their work, not figuring out travel arrangements.
That you worked with someone tells me we're talking about different things.
Suppose a 500$ monthly expense for taxi, where the employees need to use public transport in its absence. Or a software tool that saves 1 hour per week, and costs 20$/ month.
In both cases the employees need to spend more time and the costs are reduced.
But the salary cost is fixed (for the most part, whatever cuts where possible were already done), so the workload goes up in this phase. And I'm assuming they are just trying to crack the whip.
It's just a typical business management tactic of reducing costs, and maximizing workload per employee, (and increasing income usually, but in this case I think they'll translate it to reduced income as tax cuts, the increased income is for the private sector)
At least that's my take, pretty straightforward.
The goal isn't to reduce spending. It's to create bad press to get rid of parts of the government that get in the way of the cronies in charge.
This is a Capraesque idea of Washington D.C..
The correct answer is both, until and unless the perpetrators wish to come forward and defend themselves as just malicious or just incompetent.
If they were really attacking waste, why haven’t they so much as made a peep about military spending?
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/hegseth-military-maj...
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/20/nx-s1-5303947/hegseth-trump-d...
They listed 17 things they want to spend MORE money on.
Here's the list they want to stuff more money into.
1. Southwest Border Activities
2. Combating Transnational Criminal Organizations in the Western Hemisphere
3. Audit
4. Nuclear Modernization (including NC3)
5. Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCAs)
6. Virginia-class Submarines
7. Executable Surface Ships
8. Homeland Missile Defense
9. One-Way Attack/Autonomous Systems
10. Counter-small UAS (Unmanned Aerial Systems) Initiatives
11. Priority Critical Cybersecurity
12. Munitions
13. Core Readiness, including full DRT (training) funding
14. Munitions and Energetics Organic Industrial Bases
15. Executable INDOPACOM (India Pacific Command) MILCON (military construction)
16. Combatant Command support agency funding for INDOPACOM, NORTHCOM, (Northern Command), SPACECOM, (Space Command) STRATCOM, (Strategic Command) CYBERCOM, (Cyber Command) and TRANSCOM (Transportation Command)
17. Medical Private-Sector Care
They genuinely believe domestic violence is something you should tolerate and accept. Etc.
They control the courts, presidency, congress, most state houses and governors offices, have most popular news shows and networks, and they're unwilling to admit their policies are incompetently administered so therefore socialists and trans people must actually be running things, somehow, somewhere, in some invisible way.
They refuse to take responsibility and imagine conspiracies where some scapegoat is puppet mastering their failure.
Don't dismiss it. They deeply believe this.
In fact, the upcoming Budget calls for an _increase_ in the defense budget.
They are definitely not as laser focused on that as they are on nickling and diming workers and removing database columns that deal with diversity and inclusion.
It feels as though I'm trying to cut down my household spending and I focus on canceling my $15/mo Netflix account rather than negotiate down my $1000/mo credit card bill or work on finding an apartment that's $1500/mo rather than $4500/mo.
Fascist can be idiots, of course, but they tend to glorify the military (per Eco). And thus far, these guys have shown that they are mostly going to just bumble around and be gloryhounds. Sure Donny like the pomp, but real fascists wouldn't be gutting the NNSA or the DoD. They'd be building it up and expanding it, even at this early stage.
The only 'but' I can think of is that they are going to gut the military, then build it back up with fellow nutters. Something that many admins (and countries!) have tried to do to the Pentagon, and have all failed at.
Still, assume stupidity, not conspiracy, per Hanlon's razor.
Not necessarily. If those organisations were not blindly obedient to the leader (which they shouldn't be in a functioning democracy) then the fascist playbook then would be to neuter them and replace them with a more loyal apparatus.
In Hitler's Nazi germany, the SS were a new organisation with loyalty to the Fuhrer rather than the state. The SS acquired immense power and became a virtual state within a state.
You're also assuming that the fascist end goal is global domination. If the Fuhrer was driven primarily by narcissism, and by nature lazy rather than as hard working as Hitler apparently was, and they already have control of the largest democracy and arsenal in the world, then war and global domination may not be required to satisfy their psychological urges.
> The memo, dated Tuesday, calls for military leaders to provide a proposal for eight percent in budget cuts each year for the next five years. The proposals for the massive cuts to the Pentagon’s budget of approximately $850 billion are due by February 24, less than one week after Hegseth issued the memo.
> It was issued the day before President Donald Trump endorsed the House’s budget plan which includes a $100 billion increase in defense spending, suggesting a major disconnect within the administration. Hegseth himself called for an increase to the defense budget one week ago. While visiting Stuttgart, Germany, Hegseth said, “I think the US needs to spend more than the Biden administration was willing to, who historically underinvested in the capabilities of our military.”
If Trump sets in motion a series of events that cause the world to switch to a different reserve currency, a lot of Americans are going to realize how good we had it. American hegemony may not be great for the world, but it sure is great for Americans.
There's a meme going around of Xi Jinping just sitting back and letting Trump dismantle the US himself. Except that it's not a joke, it's reality.
Europeans now know that the military spending (and the factories) need to be on the correct side of the Atlantic, and not vulnerable to the whims of an unreliable ally
I wonder if the liberals had it wrong: that Trump isn’t beholden to Russia, but to China instead. The goal s to destroy America’s credibility by bullying our allies even more than our supposed non-allies. He wanted to tariff Mexico and Canada at 25% but China only 10%. I see the end of his term with China replacing the USA as the premiere super power, they already are rapidly catching up with key investments in green energy, Eavs, AI, automation, drones, etc…they have things the world wants to buy while we have…bluster, bullying, and nothing else really appealing (buy our manufacturing output that costs 2X and is half as good!).
I’m only half-joking. It really does come down to “cultural issues” for much of Trump’s base, many of whom don’t have the education or curiosity to understand what they want to destroy.
It's so ridiculous that it took Trump of all people to address this and similar such lunacy that's even more harmful, like locking up males in women's prisons.
Democrats should've dropped this trans nonsense years ago when it started becoming obvious how policy based around "gender identity" adversely affects women and girls.
Instead they pushed and pushed to the point of absurdity, making an absolute mockery of their political platform. It's such idiocy.
I doubt this. Do you really think the government is the reason Silicon Valley has been so successful? Sure the government created the internet, but after that many tech companies flourished in Silicon Valley with very little regulation. I think that's why America has been so successful. If you look at anything the government gets its hands in, costs sky rocket (education, healthcare, etc).
This is why all this DOGE shit is so frustrating to a lot of people. I don't disagree that there is government waste, or that there are regulations that should be scrapped. But people don't realize how much success in this country is due to having largely fair and functioning institutions. That's all getting chucked out the window now.
https://smartpay.gsa.gov/about/statistics/
>> GSA SmartPay statistics for fiscal year 2024:
$39.7 billion in total program spend.
$506 million in refunds earned by agencies/organizations.
$441 was spent on average for each transaction."I don’t want to abolish government. I simply want to reduce it to the size where I can drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grover_Norquist#Views_on_gover...
The idea is to replace these government positions with private positions.
Remember feudalism? Some guy with all of the capital - which, in those days, meant arable land - basically got to dictate how things worked, because he had the stuff you, as a peasant, needed to live. He was called the king. If you didn't do what he wanted, your life got cut short. Government was just one guy's ideas enforced by his brute squad. In many ways, it was a sole proprietorship. Eventually, nobility was required to administer the land, and that nobility eventually turned into a structure that could keep the king somewhat in check, lest they carry out a coup. They became the administrative state. Today, we have legislative, judicial and executive bodies that - at least ostensibly - need to win election in order to do the same thing, thus replacing the nobility.
That's the ultimate goal here: the dismantling of the administrative state. The administrative state carries out laws made by a body - in this case, Congress - that, at least in theory, puts society's desires at the center.
A number of these laws directly impact the ability of capital holders to generate more capital. Since the people holding this capital think that the only reason humans do anything is to create more capital, they go to any lengths to keep society's "unprofitable" desires at bay.
Since the accumulation of capital can result in monopoly, you will, at some point, have someone controlling all of the capital again. This is a return to feudalism. You won't be swinging a scythe in a field in a toque and tunic, but the structure will be the same.
From all accounts the firing was incompletely indiscriminate and so many people who you would think would never be fired were e.g. US Army Corp of Engineers working on flood prevention.
And so I can't imagine anyone wanting to join the government when there is a strong chance you will be fired in the medium term with no notice and with no reason. All after you've physically moved you/family to Washington because remote work is no longer available.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/podcasts/the-daily/trump-...
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...
more realistically, it's "if i wanted america to fail, i would..."
This did have the interesting effect of making some of his positions cross-party populist, like his neoliberalism- and free-trade-skepticism. Normal republican voters hate that stuff and will tell you so, as do lots of left-wingers, but both parties (from about 1980 to 2016) loved all of it. He also talked some weirdly leftist talk, a few times, about healthcare, but with no specifics or clear plan, and that wasn't something he ended up taking action on. Same reason, though: Republicans have been told to hate "Obamacare", so they do, but lots of them also hate our existing healthcare system and insurance companies especially. Another gap between the voters and what their own party's officials were delivering, for him to exploit. They'd 100% eat up universal healthcare if a Republican promoted it, it's all in the letter next to the name.
It's why I figured he'd at least get the R nomination, if not win the whole thing, well before most folks considered him anything but a joke candidate.
Those people are not the problem, rather the problem is the people who voted for him who don't have being that dumb as a justification.
We were barraged for 6 months about how Twitter would fall over the next day when Elon took over there and took a radical stance, and it just didn't. I'm curious if this will be similar.
Farmers who produced food that was sent abroad by USAID are not getting paid, and will have stock piling up that they don't have a buyer for.
Scientific and health agencies have been muzzled during a time when we are fighting bird flu (millions of flocks dying), there has been human transmission and there is a high risk of another pandemic (bird flu or anything else) coming along. People will die who wouldn't otherwise have to.
The agency which protects Americans from predatory bank fees has been shuttered, so we can expect our banking (like $35 late fees) to get more expensive.
I could go on and on, but our country is not Twitter; it's not even comparable, on almost any level.
Cutting funding for biotech results in loss of jobs and loss of patent filing. Loss of patent filing means loss of people needed for filing patents. On and on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure this out (some pun intended).
...and?
This is such a common thing in tech we have entire websites built around it to track the layoffs.[0] In fact, using that site you can see in February (only 20 days so far) we've had 10,950 tech workers laid off. Expanding it further, in 2024 alone there were over 152,000 tech workers laid off. 2023? Only a mere 264,000 layoffs.
Where is the outrage and emotional blackmail over this for the lowly tech worker, yet we're supposed to bend over and take it while saying this is a bad thing for government workers?
Personally, I think they're just finally experiencing the America they run and they don't like it when it bites them like it bites the average American, and I have to assume that's why it seemingly has such high approval ratings among independent voters.[1]
[0]: https://layoffs.fyi/
[1]: https://www.axios.com/2025/02/14/arizona-voters-trump-elon-m...
The number one attraction for working for the government is stability, and that's baked into the salary.
If you want to attract skilled workers to work for the government, have the same experiences getting laid off, and get paid less, they're just going to turn to private industry.
I can't imagine crying on linkedin like some of these .gov workers showing up in my feed. I would never be hired again.
Could you go on and on with any actual examples since all of your statements were riddled with "probablies" and "mights" and "wills"?
https://bsky.app/profile/jrothst.bsky.social/post/3liin7up3c... It seems almost unavoidable at this point that we are headed for a deep, deep recession. Just based on 200K+ federal firings & pullback of contracts, the March employment report (to be released April 4) seems certain to show bigger job losses than any month ever outside of a few in 2008-9 and 2020.
Higher unemployment leads to lower consumer spending - the USA economy is built on consumer spending.
They've already damaged research/education, even if somehow it all gets undone. There's absolutely no reason to cause a brain drain in a country that has historically attracted students from all over the world.
Normal people don't consider leaving their country over losing one job.
I'm saying that with a bit of self-deprivation. These people in my opinion bring value to society with their jobs. In contrast to many IT roles where that can be a bit questionable sometimes. My own employment included.
Well, our inflation rose to 3% in a month, a few people have died over all these illegal spending freezes, we had a repeat of the Saturday Night Massacre[0] where 6 or 7 judges resigned due to Trump wanting to basically hold blackmail over a corrupt Mayor's case to be temporarily dropped. Those are the most immediate and obvious effects seen after one month off the top of my head.
>Elon took over there and took a radical stance, and it just didn't. I'm curious if this will be similar.
I don't know why people say this when Twitter had clear changes to day to day use. Let alone to anyone investing in Twitter. Smaller content creators get even less organic engagement, celebrities are harassed more because of blocking changes, commenters get worse, more toxic community.
The effects only aren't felt if you use Twitter to get news and you avoid comments, or an account. Even then Twitter makes it harder to view stuff without an account. The fall of Rome took years, if not decades. If you're just expecting anything software to collapse like a demolition project you need perspective on how people define "drastic".
----
On topic: no, don't compare this to Twitter that no one needs in a day to day. The US economy will get noticeably worse, jobs will be harder to find and more people will be let go, The GDP will fall, and if March goes horribly a lot of old people will be on the the street dying. It's not going to all happen in one day, but lives will be lost over these reckless changes. The US isn't exactly doing too well with foreign policy either so that'll be the most obvious effect for you. Our country will probably shift to rely less on us goods.
[0]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturday_Night_Massacre
That wasn't my point though. Twitter itself changed, which was expected and (I assume) intended. My point was the months of us being told constantly by the media that the sky is falling - the servers would fall over tomorrow, the advertisers would all leave and there would be no money, etc. This was literally daily for at least a month.
Now, Twitter is still up and running fine (from a technical and assumedly financial perspective). It appears Elons methods worked fine, and all the other major tech companies also went on a mass firing spree to trim the fat.
I'm honestly not sure how this compares with similar changes to a federal government - or if it does at all. But the context of my comment came from the GPs point, fat cutting and applying highly profitable tech start approaches to a federal government is an interesting thought exercise and especially so for a country that values capitalism over people so highly.
Every significant government policy being added or removed has real world impact - both positive and negative. I'm curious if the positives will outweigh the negatives in this case.
That seems to be my point tho. you're imagining Twitter collapsing in a few days and going out of business. That's not really how things work.
Twitter went private so no one really knows how well it's doing. I'd bet any confidence in Twitter these days isnt really in Twitter so much as Musk hype, however.
>. It appears Elons methods worked fine, and all the other major tech companies also went on a mass firing spree to trim the fat.
By waht metric? Financial is dubious of you're following the scene. Workers, certainly not. I guess in the metric that it let him buy the election. That's pretty big, I'll admit. I don't think thst trick will work twice, given his current reputation.
In the sense that "it is operating as a domain?" MySpace is still"up and running fine " in 2025. Digg is still up and running in 2025. Such name brands so well known don't really die in a literal sense; someone's going to buy and try to salvage it even after Musk sells it one day.
>MySpace is still"up and running fine " in 2025. Digg is still up and running in 2025. Such name brands so well known don't really die in a literal sense ; someone's going to buy and try to salvage it.
What positives are you imagining? We pay off the defecit? This ephemeral mood of "corruption" is dealt with? That you get a tax cut? Maybe the 3rd one will save you a few thousand a year.
I don't see many upsides here that counter balance this. That's pretty much my whole reservation of this comment. It just seems to be saying "well maybe we get something good out of it" while dimissing the bad that's already come. All on a basis of a company that didn't completely die out from the same cuts and suggesting it "works" because of that.
- Debt repayments are entering a level similar to 1990s due to high rates and debt, meaning the government will eventually have to use inflation to reduce it.
- Trump's hostility to energy and housing, two primary drivers of inflation
- Tariffs
- Deportations of farm workers
Inflation expectations according to surveys and rates markets are back up to 2021 levels.
The only thing pushing against inflation is a relatively strong real economy, which isn't guaranteed to last if the tariffs and deportations happen.
March will be no different than January.
The effects have started to be felt, but nowhere near the lecel they will be if things continue much longer this way; as well as the directed impacts, a generale economic slowdown is expected as a fairly near-term second ordee effect. Lots of direct job losses plus people holding off spending because of a cloud of uncertainty is a great way to make a recession.
https://www.statnews.com/2025/02/18/impact-of-trump-federal-...
If I were to bet on it, yes it will be similar. My guess is that things will over all be better 3/4 years from now, after some initial pain.
The expanded ACA tax subsidies are very unlikely to be renewed. This will result in about 5.6 million Americans (26% of the people with marketplace insurance) who can no longer afford healthcare and are left to rely on emergency rooms, which is a cost we all end up bearing anyway.
Our allies have lost all trust for us. They already hated Trump in his first term because he was stupid and confrontational and transactional in a truly ignorant way, and him getting re-elected after some pretty obvious poor governing means that our allies no longer trust not just our government, but the actual people who voted him in. The ignorance and pettiness and hatred of the American voter means investing in the US as an ally has become a very stupid thing to do.
I'm cancelling a vacation outside the US because I have no interest in interacting with border agents who feel empowered and vindictive. I already cannot travel to certain US states where a pregnancy scare can become a crime.
Our state economy has been buoyed nicely by the shitload of Asylum seekers from all over the world who are educated and just want to work, but are often not allowed to for dumb reasons. Lack of funding and a hostile immigration environment will only hasten the death of our state, which has a very old population.
Three large parts of our economy are: Lumber trade with Canada, Tourism with a lot of that coming from China, and selling lobster to China. With another trade war, that's all fucked. Before China became a buyer of our lobster, the industry was dying because they were catching too much and they had to keep selling lobster for cheaper than ground beef.
The farmers up state who grow potatoes will be fine, since it's been industrialized since before I was born. Everything else we grow is going to get a lot more expensive with less migrant labor, so I hope you don't like broccoli. Alternatively, we replace migrant labor with chain gang workers from the local prisons and enjoy the (literal) fruits of slavery.
https://www.google.com/search?q=gas+charge+cards+postal+work...
Step 2. Hire consulting companies like Bain to provide services previously provided by the gov, at a higher price. Spend $X * 1.5 (if you're lucky) per year. But by then, the public has moved on to some headline-grabbing news (invading Canada, or Greenland, etc.), and the budget increase is buried on page 4.
Scamming the American public.
Seems like a smart move to just remove the GPC program in general. you can spend up to 10K with literally no competition requirements... Seems like there is alot of room for fraud, waste and abuse there. Better to reduce red tape for procurement and have a more centralized purchasing manager coordinate like every company does.
There is no other way to do it fast enough to blame the recession on previous administration than to up the unemployment rate fast.
> In 2024, the U.S. government paid $1.2 trillion in interest on its debt, which was a record high. This was the second largest federal expenditure, after Social Security.
I wouldn't be surprised if someone changes this accidentally in a way that a limit like this is by-passable with minimal effort in the coming weeks (if not already).
1. The president has immunity for official acts,
2. The president can pardon anyone who does his bidding, and
3. 2/3rd of the Senate is needed to convict and remove the president and there is loyal thrid.
No matter how much Trump, or his henchmen screw up, they know they can walk away after 4 years and nothing can touch them.
Please continue to disentangle Canada's economics from the US; it's much more likely your kids starve then are shot.
The path to violence is: * imposition of punitive tariffs by Trump * Retaliation which escalates to energy export tariffs. * At some point Canada shuts off electricity transfer to the US and restricts water transfer, which shuts down the eastern seaboard. Trump declares this an act of war.
This is what won't happen. People are far, far too comfortable for that, you'd need to see 30%+ unemployment rates for that to change.
I forget where I read this, but shutting off the cards was part of the playbook when Musk took ownership of Twitter. If I remember correctly, they shut off the cards and waited to see who complained. Apparently they discovered a bunch of subscription services that no one had even signed into or used at all, just paying out for years.
"We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work"
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/11/books/review/administrati...
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-ends-many-twitter-...
> Twitter will no longer be covering several costs or paying for a number of perks made available to employees, some for many years, for example. And the maximum amount allotted for work-related trips has been limited, as those trips are also set to become rarer.
> The allowance for a mobile phone bill is now $50 per month and the daily allowance for food while on a work trip is now $75... Meanwhile, the overall limit on expenses for any kind of work-related travel has been "revised" by seniority level
Searched for things like "expenses," "cards," "subscriptions," etc.
You can enumerate the failures of Dems if you'd like but casting both sides as the same is utter nonsense.
And your little dig of "without any hint of self awareness" makes me think that you think you know better.
Goods & Services Purchases - Office supplies, equipment, and materials. Contractor payments (for purchases below the micro-purchase threshold). Software licenses and IT-related purchases. Repairs and maintenance services for government property. Training and educational materials for employees.
Fleet and Transportation - Fuel and maintenance expenses for government-owned vehicles.
Devastated to see a once great nation (and with that I mean 80s/90s United States, _not_ current United States) rapidly falling apart as fast as my own.
These days I'm convinced that the usual "The government can't do anything right!" pro-Trump guys are not saying it as a warning or complaint: it's an aspirational quote for them.
Oops. No credit!
Not to mention the bazillion other legit reasons for expenses.
The article is paywalled, but I would be willing to bet that there's not much discussion were those credit card transactions were made.
My guess was true. No mention of strip clubs or casinos.
https://time.com/4472824/pentagon-spending-strip-club-casino...
Larger than $1 is in this case zero, there's nothing one can buy for $1 on a credit card. I'm not sure why they chose this amount and didn't just set it to 0. Not sure when this is coming but soon government employees will need to bring their own paper and other needed officeware from home, unless they'll have to bring toilet paper and soap as well if the cut is too deep. At the same time the billionaire class has nearly doubled their wealth and nobody is batting an eye for it. Strange times we're living indeed.
[1]: https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/04/03/14993...
So now instead the red tape is causing inefficiency in an area that was already efficient as applicable to the risk.