this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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Summary

$150 billion: that’s the grand total of savings Elon Musk revealed last Thursday that he and his DOGE team are “expecting” to make after months of ruthless and often mindless cuts.

To call this a monumentally unimpressive number doesn’t do it justice. Musk’s “savings” here — which are already error-ridden and inflated in the first place, created by totaling up spending that never actually existed or that was, alternately, either already cut or never actually was — represent just 15% of the trillion dollars he originally promised he would slash.

In fact, government spending so far under Donald Trump has actually gone up compared to the last two years under Joe Biden.

“Musk will have effectively crippled the modern American state and ripped vital services away from ordinary Americans in order to pay for more waste at the Pentagon.”

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 61 points 1 year ago (4 children)

150 billion

Yeah and if you actually believe that to be true then I have a bridge to sell you. These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion

I'd be surprised if it's even close to 15 billion

[–] PlzGivHugs@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

These dumb fucks sold 8 million as 8 billion

Even aside from stuff like this, things they claim to be saving tend to be cut contracts. Contracts that have already been paid, but will no longer have to provided what they'd been paid for.

[–] finitebanjo@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Also they lost like 500Bn according to the IRS due to cutting IRS staff alone, not including revenue lost as a result of cutting services that the government provided and revenue lost as a result of other nations no longer doing business with the USA such as arms sales, energy, rocketry, hospitals, and other transactions.

By all accounts DOGE is losing money.

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 year ago

Same answer as the other reaction: if i start pulling on those threads then there is no end

[–] schema@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It also completely ignored the cost of the consequences, which is likely going to easily outpace any money "saved".

[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 2 points 1 year ago

Oh inwasnt even gonna go there. Once you start pulling those threads it just becomes an absolute Avalanche of shit

[–] andxz@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It's probable that it's way less than that, and that's not factoring in whatever it'll cost to unfuck everything he's done. Not that that's likely to happen anytime soon.

Also not counting in the brain-drain that is already happening.

I hope it'll be better for all you normal human beings in the US at some point in the future, I really do, but fuck me if this shit isn't scary all the way on the side of the Atlantic, and that's coming from someone living right next door to Russia. I'm way more scared of what'll happen when the US goes full 4th Reich.

I guess one could argue you're already there to be fair, but I still hope it went too far too fast and a backlash is incoming.