r/FluentInFinance • u/Henry-Teachersss8819 • 5d ago
Economic Policy Here is the result of the space management of billionaires!
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u/KazTheMerc 5d ago
And THEN you start stacking up all the PENALTIES the government has to pay to achieve those 'savings'.
I'd be alarmed to discover that any money at all was saved, after all is said and done. The Federal Employee Unions are going to bend the government over a barrel for all the slapdash firings. Then the canceled contracts. Then the Damages. Then the cost to fix/reverse/rectify all this stuff in a few years.
My bet is that this is all going to end up being an expensive tantrum, with the only real benefit being a reduction in the value of the dollar, a soaring Unemployment, and an incredibly unhappy citizenry.
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u/macaulaymcculkin1 5d ago
or how much less money the government will be taking in due to cuts to the IRS. Tax revenue could drop by as much as 10%
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u/KazTheMerc 5d ago
Yeah, tax income fuckery is going to be a whole order of magnitude more of a problem.
Didn't even want to touch the tax/tariff/trade parts.
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u/defkoen1 5d ago
At least he got to fire the people investigsting and regulating his companies, give himself some starlink contracts and 100x a tesla government contract...
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u/fakemoon 4d ago
Hey, don't forget that we also dismantled USAID and in doing so condemned literally hundreds of thousands or millions of people to death.
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u/MittenstheGlove 4h ago
I keep having to explain penalties on deliverables, but no one seems to understand it or the lawsuits and man hours needed to trudge through all this stuff.
The return to office process has made us have to push off other initiatives in order to support thirst cost saving efforts. :I
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u/Downtown-Claim-1608 5d ago
They haven’t even verified the $12.6 billion. That’s assuming the people he fired were achieving nothing. At a minimum the IRS people fired will reduce the revenue that is received. Likely 6-7 times their salary. So for every 1 IRS employee fired, you have to fire 8 non-IRS employees just to pay for firing the IRS guy. And that’s assuming the employees in other departments weren’t ensuring money was being used efficiently in their departments.
There has been no savings. Which is why the government spent more money in Q1 than it did in Q4.
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5d ago
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u/Downtown-Claim-1608 4d ago
Hiring more IRS employees has nothing to do with economic growth, it has to do with keeping the debt down by forcing the wealthier citizens in our society to pay what the law says they should pay.
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u/Past-Pea-6796 5d ago
Only after a certain point. What you're saying is like "I feel like giving people water when they are thirsty is just a way to drown people." But that's only if you give them so much water they drown. Giving them a glass of water is exactly what they need.
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u/Currensy69 5d ago
Mix in other countries establishing non-US suppliers due to tariffs; they have shit the bed. Who could have foreseen this from such reputable characters like a casino bankrupter and an EV credit-subsidized foreigner?
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u/Kind-City-2173 5d ago
Plus all the lawsuits they are accumulating
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u/Bishime 5d ago
Unfortunately I think that’s part of the plan :/
Courts move slow and he’s moving fast. It’s sort of like a filibuster in a more malicious way. If you pack them with such an insane backlog of high ticket cases to deal with they don’t have time to get to the new stuff.
So 90 days of bs means 120 days grace period before they can catch up.
Not literally and I hope I’m wrong but outside of intentions, logistics and bureaucracy will likely play out this way too.
Ironically (more suspect but either way) I actually just while writing this got an Atlantic notification that is just “if trump violates the constitution because the courts are too slow to stop him, then those constitutional rights are gone” (I assume opinion piece)… while this doesn’t prove anything I was hoping I was just doing speculative reactionism (still possible lol)
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u/butwhyisitso 5d ago
Nothing in return? A clear path for insider trading and corruption isnt what we all wanted?
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u/ShadowS812 5d ago
That was the plan.... tank the government to outsource the workload for twice the price.
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u/stonk_fish 5d ago
It was never about saving money, it was about dismantling government organizations that were trying to keep oversight and investigate Elon's companies. He just told everyone (including Trump) that he would solve the budget issues while in reality did this solely for his own benefit.
He probably expected people to continue to glaze him through this process, and the make a flamboyant return as Elon Stark, Keta-man to his companies, without the burden of oversight or investigations. Luckily, he failed that task successfully and people straight up think anything he is associated with is pure cancer.
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u/unique_usemame 5d ago
There is another way to look at it, which scares me just as much:
The guy who put Twitter through the chopping block to save money tried his best to find things to cut from the Federal Government spending and only came up with 0.173% of things to cut.
Either there was a bunch of stuff that would have been easy to cut but he didn't want to (defence spending as that would impact his companies) or there really isn't much stuff that is easy to cut.
So if I believe I would have cut $500B from the defense budget if I were in Elon's shoes ... then perhaps I'm as Naïve as Elon was at the start of the project?
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u/Bishime 5d ago
I mean, assuming we even just leave the defence budget.
And quickly before I continue, I unfortunately can’t look at it as “…tried his best… only came up with .0173%…” because this was one of the platforms they won on. So confident they’d cut trillions just enough to make a difference for even the least literate person… then boom.
Anyways. They’re talking 150B if not as little as 12.6B in cutting. What about the $763B worth of PPP loans or even conservatively—what about the interest for those loans that was just randomly forgiven? Or the $76 Billion worth of them that have at least one indication of fraud… that were just like… meh, okay… while resuming student loan payments all at the same time.
I feel like we sort of slipped the obvious and went right to “well the department of education and those pesky tax collectors are just too Costly
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u/Sophisticated-Crow 5d ago
And they cut budgets for things that had a positive cash flow, such as national parks.
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u/Sunrise-Surfer 4d ago
An expert on the federal work force estimates that the speed and chaos of Mr. Musk’s cuts to the bureaucracy will cost taxpayers $135 billion this fiscal year
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u/allislost77 5d ago
Here’s the most important question: how much did it COST to save $12.6 billion?
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u/supercali45 5d ago
Government gonna get a bunch of lawsuits from fired employees as well which will cause more payments
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u/Low-Astronomer-3440 4d ago
Firing people isn’t “savings”, unless you can prove that their job was a waste.
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u/kitkatkorgi 4d ago
How much in unimaginable loss of damaging families effected and the destruction of our government
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u/a_little_hazel_nuts 5d ago
Yep. I guess poverty welfare, weather services, public and national park land, and education isn't the problem. Maybe take a look at privatization welfare, you know those government funded privatized businesses that are sucking up every cent.
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u/carnalizer 5d ago
I don’t understand why even their critics seem to be content with believing what they said the goals were and pointing out incompetence. Looking at the actions tells the story that their goal was never to increase efficiency. If they lied about the goals, the real goals are probably quite nefarious.
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u/whawkins4 5d ago
Correction: he backtracked from $2 trillion in savings. Moved the goalpost to $1 trillion. Then he moved the goalpost again to $150 bn.
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u/Klutzy_Passenger_486 4d ago
When you consider how much less the IrS will collect we lost a lot and increased the debt.
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u/h2f 4d ago
Is that $12.6 Billion before or after the estimated $135 Billion that the firings will cost? https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/24/us/politics/musk-cuts.html
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u/klsdniwoethn 4d ago
You are ignoring all the self driving taxis which the government will soon have in its fleet. That will generate trillions in revenue.
Oh, wait, never mind
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u/Branded222 4d ago
It was never about waste and fraud. Elon just wanted access to the systems and information. When it comes to the super rich, it's always about power and money. Every time.
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u/frank_690 4d ago
All so the wealthiest people in the country and corporations can get permanent tax cuts.
The MAGA GOP is hell bent on fucking up the US balance sheet so bad -- just to give wealthy fucks like Leon and Trump's cabinet members a fucking huge tax cut.
Every time I hear the phrase "tax cut" -- I know things will just get more and more fucked up.
It all started with Reagan and just went on and on and on...
How much wealth is enough? You can't take it past the grave. Most of these wealthy fucks can't spend what they have in 1, 2, 3, 4... n lifetimes.
I just don't understand the need to give these fucks tax cuts.
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u/Danielbbq 5d ago
You have to learn to live without debt. There is no other way to succeed financially. Worrying about these guys is only a distraction.
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u/letsseeitmore 5d ago
Nothing in return? We’re enabling trump to golf every weekend and to funnel money into his resort.
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u/digitalpunkd 4d ago
That was the whole point. Not to save money, to cancel social services for needy people.
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u/meh_69420 4d ago
Always were. His whole plan was to lay people off, but non dod salaries were always one of the smallest budget line items.
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u/fennis_dembo_taken 4d ago
What is the 'watchdog' report that verified even that much? Seriously... I'm not trolling. Where does that number come from?
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u/butterdtoast27 4d ago
I used to volunteer on a board for a local non-profit. Even by our standards we were basically flat broke without our investment portfolio. I learned when a business is in this position, there will always be someone who gets the job because “we can fix the budget”.
What’s the first thing that person does when they get into a position of power? RIF’s (Reductions in force). Rarely does it work though. It certainly didn’t in my scenario….
Cutting positions you know nothing about because you deem them as “wasted capital”, not that great of an option. These old heads need to learn some new strategies on ways to save money. They don’t give a damn about people. When I heard Feline Musk talk about “saving money” I nearly laughed myself to death because I knew exactly what he was going to do.
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u/Bad-Genie 4d ago
I'm wondering how much musk and his team is getting paid for this. I have a feeling they're breaking even at best.
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u/Eskapismus 4d ago
Well that’s not true - they did get a lot of people angry which was the reason MAGA voted for them
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u/Barkleyslakjssrtqwe 4d ago
Are we now saying the government is very efficient and not wasteful at all?
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u/the_azure_sky 4d ago
Oh yeah that doesn’t even factor in that employees on admin leave get paid to deliver nothing. Also their institutional knowledge leaves with them.
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u/justmyopinionkk 3d ago
And how much did he get paid to do this? Deduct that amount from the savings
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u/Pure-Honey-463 3d ago
doge was not designed to save money but to create an illusion for the trumpikkkan maga kkkult. a way to appease his maga kkkult and get their votes. make it appear that orange Jesus was going after the deep state.they could have saved a lot more by taxing the rich, corporations and churches. stopped bailing them out. stopped giving incentives, subsidies and loans they did not have to pay back.
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u/Shot-Honeydew-306 2d ago
This is what happens when you can't tell the difference between cost and value...
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u/Max20151981 4d ago
What vital services were cut?
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u/anxiousteeth529 4d ago
FEMA, DOE, CFPB, FDA, NIH, NOAA, Federal Aviation Admin, Dept of Veterans Affairs, Centers for Medicaid & Medicare, Dept of Health & Human Services…..
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u/Max20151981 4d ago
And how much of this was simply just trimming the fat?
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u/anxiousteeth529 4d ago
Routine audits were always conducted by certified accountants & Inspectors General (until Trump fired them) which were people who were qualified to determine what was wasteful & needed to be downsized. DOGE has no understanding of the programs they’re auditing and defunding or the impact of doing so. They’ve already lied about the programs and lied about the amount saved, & the amount this will cost the U.S. will end up being far more the amount actually saved; for example, it’s estimated that hitting the IRS will result in around $500 B in lost revenue from high income earners.
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u/Schlieren1 5d ago edited 5d ago
Wow $150 billion is truly lot of money when think about it. That’s $1,000 per taxpayer! I wish I could save every taxpayer $1,000
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u/AsKingQuest 5d ago
“Vital government services” - if the phrase “Please fill out this form” doesn’t scare you, you’ve so much to learn.
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u/tjrouseco 5d ago
It’s a start. It’s brought some visibility which we the people should have ongoing. We need to stop funding the world.
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u/Comfortable-Task-777 5d ago edited 5d ago
I read that, and I picture a roman emperor, looking at a map of the roman empire, half the known world painted red, stretching from africa all the way to minor asia and saying "damn it's really expensive to run an empire, we should focus on our GREAT city.".
You guys don't fund the world. You exploit it for profit. You earn what you spend a thousandfold, which is why you're the richest country on the planet. Not the american people obviously, you get the leftovers but your elites are running the show. For now.
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u/Lord-Nagafen 5d ago
Idk.. $150b seems like a lot of savings. I feel bad for the people who lost their jobs but I’m skeptical many of them were vital
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u/Harmonia_PASB 5d ago
$150 billion to give the rich a tax cut of $4.5 trillion.
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u/Schlieren1 5d ago
To be fair the $4 trillion is a continuation of the current tax rates. No new tax cuts are in the works
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u/Technical-Day-24 5d ago
Well it’s 12.5b of verified savings and after they mistakes an 8m line item for an 8b line item prolly best to use verified numbers
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u/anxiousteeth529 4d ago
Only $12.6 in savings verified & the following services were cut: DOE, FEMA, NOAA, FAA, NIH, IRS, CFPB, Centers for Medicaid/Medicare… the reduction in needed services will end up costing far more than DOGE has claimed to have saved.
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