DOGE tries to do math again and makes $86B mistake
Summary
Elon Musk claims to have saved taxpayers $105 billion, but its own figures add up to just $19 billion.
A New York Times report found DOGE falsely credited itself for long-canceled contracts, including a 2005 Coast Guard contract.
DOGE’s inexperienced staff, many tied to Musk’s companies, may be unqualified to understand complex government programs. Mistakes could be deadly, with one former USAID staffer warning tens of thousands of lives may be lost.
The Times alleged DOGE has been removing erroneous “savings” from its wall of receipts just to replace the mess-ups with new errors.
https://www.thedailybeast.com/doge-and-elon-musk-try-to-do-math-again-and-makes-86b-mistake/Open linkView original on lemmy.world651
Comments51
Even this is lying. It's the equivalent of saying you lost weight after you chainsawed your arm off.
Fun fact. If they go ahead with that plan that was floated to send every American 20% of the DOGE "savings", based on that $19bn figure (which as you correctly point out, is a total falsehood; nothing is saved by cancelling completed contracts or downsizing revenue producing departments), the result would be that every American would get a one time payment of $10.
That's it. That's what Musk is claiming to have saved the country; a McDonald's happy meal. And for that he's burning down departments like the consumer protection bureau that protects Americans from scams and exploitative business practices.
Well that last part is only natural... He has to make sure he can make a living after all
I mean you kid (I assume), but literally all of the departments targeted so far are ones that have been investigating Musk's companies
I wish I wasn't (for a myriad of reasons, that being the least of which) yet, here we are
The fastest way to lose weight is in fact amputation.
Or the old joke "I lost 200 pounds of useless flab.... I killed my husband."
There's of course no reason for me to mention this in the context of Elon (and Trump)
Or saved money buy not buying food.
Or as I like to call it: The majority of my adult life
1984 is really 2025
We're not quite there yet, but you can definitely see the direct line to get there at this point and we're running down it.
oh *snap*!
He reduced spending. We need to know the societal cost of those reductions before we can talk about savings. I suspect he has impoverished a generation.
In the financial crisis in 2008, many countries deployed austerity programs to cut debts and costs. Their economies shrank and some still haven't recovered from that experiment. And DOGE is austerity with a chainsaw, not with a scalpel. It's going to hurt, a lot.
Just one? You are far more optimistic than I am, clearly
So far. It's only March and it's only the first year
We were already on that trajectory though. He just made it faster. If it sparks a meaningful backlash, it might turn out to have been a good thing.
Even if it adds up to 19 billion, it will never be that number. There are costs to terminating a contract, usually requiring compensation for all materials bought or produced, as well as overhead costs related to the contract. There is a reason that contracts exist and it's to disincentivize the dissolution of an agreement... Termination for convenience is not cheap.
That's not even getting into lawsuits related to direct employee terminations.
And at the end, this is for what? What benefit do we get from tearing up contracts that are half completed and half paid for? What benefit is there in laying off people that wanted to serve and in many cases took a pay cut to do it, knowing that the trafeoff is stability of their employer and the knowledge that they are helping the country.
This shit will haunt us after I die. Trust has been shattered. Good luck calculating the cost of that.
"mess ups". Lol. Call it what it is Daily Beast ... fuck ups. Fuck ups beyond all comprehension. Fuck Ups Beyond All Recognition.
Fubar!
"I'm not seeing it in my German dictionary..."
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/fubar
Shrug, it's in Cambridge English 😀
It's a quote from Saving Private Ryan
Oh, my bad I wasn't aware.
No worries! It's kinda my schtick; posting movie quotes wether they fit or not.
If you rewatch Ryan, pay attention to the character Upham...
Yes AND they are doing this on purpose. Evil fucks are trying to lie to their followers who will most likely eat that shit up.
Cmon guys. The math adds up.
19 billion saved for the plebians, 86 billion saved for himself.
Measuring the savings is pointless as they were not cut for the money but for the perceived merit to musk and trump. Parroting their stated motivations seems harmful.
The point is to undermine their authority in the eyes of those who believe the propaganda. If they are continuously fucking up and costing money then you may get say a state level clerk telling them to fuck off when they inevitably try to fuck with the states, a clerk who may have allowed them to do some very damaging shit
It's like he's writing a performance report and desperately trying to pad the bullet points because he doesn't have enough to fill the required "what have you accomplished" area.
Musk describing something as bigger than it really is? Color me surprised.
Makes sense based on that article about his wang.
Like they gave Ukraine 300 billion where in reality it's some 50B and the rest they "pledged" the same way Amber Heard pledged to help poor children...
I get that math is hard to some people, but every computer I've used has had a calculator of some sort.
Unless you let AI do the math...
Are these tools using LLMs for their math?
Damn, the ketamine really is freeing his mind! Freeing it to be worse in every way, that is.
Yeah, but are any of those lives billionaires? Then who cares? -Dogebags, probably.
After the first thousand, yes.
😲 the hell you say!
The fact they actually put "may" in there is insulting to readers. We KNOW They are totally and completly unqualified for 99.99% of the work they are doing.
Whatever happened to Andrew Yang? That guy could math so much harder than these guys
Staff from musks companies, that are used to just spaffing their handout money up the wall, can't figure out real budgets and contacts?
What a fucking suprise.
Is our reality part of a failed Austin Powers script?
I am sorely disappointed in the lack of machine gun jubblies if so.
Maybe that's why it failed
So we're gonna be getting all of the money he saved us back as a tax rebate, right?
....right?
Yea, the whole.ten.dollars.
You're welcome!
Meh, close enough! Drinks for everyone!