Comment by refurb
2 months ago
> DOGE is BS.
Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?
That seems like an extreme statement.
2 months ago
> DOGE is BS.
Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?
That seems like an extreme statement.
There are no politically viable ways to make the US government significantly more efficient in a way that would leave government services unaffected.
The one big opportunity to do that is defence and it is the one that Republicans, particularly, treat as a sacred cow.
Social Security is already extremely efficient in that the cost of moving money around is minimal.
Medicare and Medicaid are also more efficient than the private sector.
Is government perfect? Hell no. But in the really big picture the big and rising areas of civilian expenditure are not where the inefficiencies lie.
> in a way that would leave government services unaffected
I’m not sure what “unaffected” means. Do you mean from the end user perspective? Or government employee perspective?
I think people underestimate the overhead associated with many government services. Even thing like social security disability have 30-40% of the money not going to the recipient, it’s going to the administration.
If you were able to improve social security administration efficiency (benefit validation, denial appeal, check mailing costs) by just 10%, you just reduced social the federal budget by a few percentage points. That’s huge.
My own experience with government services is that significant efficiencies could be squeezed out and keep the end user service the same (or better?).
Where are you getting your numbers? Social security is well known as one of the most efficient government agencies.
https://www.ssa.gov/oact/STATS/admin.html
A 10% increase in administration efficiency would shave of $700 million.
2 replies →
There absolutely are, but not all of them are good ideas for other reasons. One of the big things that I think many "run government like a business"-types fail to consider, is that fairness, equitability, checks-and-balances, democratic process, quality of life, etc are often inherently inefficient.
That is a straw man, and an ugly one at that.
Every system has inefficiencies, including the government.
The fallacy is to assume that businesses inherently have less inefficiencies than government and/or that a government’s cost/benefit equation improves if it’s run as a business. Often, their functions overlap and this can be the case. Automated traffic monitoring is cheaper than having people count cars. But beware privatization that promises efficiency and lower costs—the result is almost always worse services, maintainable debt and in time a government bailout.
Often, their functions do not overlap. The purpose of social security is not to tighten spending as much as possible, it is to improve quality of life as much as possible.
Funny you'd accuse me of a straw man then go on about claims I never made.
Nothing has changed yet. No plans have been rolled out.
We could wait and see what the plan is before claiming it's a failure already?
Let me quote you: "Are you suggesting there is no possible way to make the government more efficient in a way that reduces costs by some significant amount?"
The poster said no such thing.
6 replies →
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IF you spent a bit of time analyzing your statement you'd realize that the Government doesn't just take money but also give it out.
And not just to employees and benefit receivers but also entrepreneurs and companies.
It's by far the largest single economic actor and statistically speaking given the size of such a large actor it is more likely than not you ended up breaking even as far as quality of life (QOL) when considering all your transactions (in money and services) with the Government.
Given the economic growth measured by GDP in the period 2000-2024 even more likely is that you ended up ahead.
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Except in many, if not most, cases a company’s inefficiencies IS your problem. The perfectly informed rational consumer doesn’t exist. We’re forced to buy what’s on the shelves that we can afford, and the water in the pipes and power on the grid. When the businesses collude and price fix and lower the quality of your goods you DO suffer and your only recourse is regulation.
And get out of here with that libertarian “services I don’t use” nonsense.
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