Rather than tearing the system down, let's identify the areas of rampant waste to a degree more lucid than what a news channel or podcast claims. Most areas people claims for alleged waste are legally required/statutory or spindoctored (especially grant topics).

Social security isn't waste, but it is on the chopping block.

It blows my mind that people are so hungry to hurt so many others and themselves in the process.

“Notably, the views among DOGE supporters differ when it comes to where to draw the line: The first of the three people with knowledge of its work told Semafor the “entire federal government” is up for grabs. The second person suggested the line would be drawn at areas affecting national security and initiatives providing direct benefits.”

https://www.semafor.com/article/02/06/2025/inside-doges-marc...

I personally hope that it is more of the second

We've had since FDR to try and curb the post WW2 federal hyper expansion. Regulations keep growing, our prison population reaches one of the highest rates in world, and we get vanishingly little infrastructure or other benefits for the taxes the common man pays.

Patience has expired.

There was lots of time to use the scalpel. The doctor never showed up, so the pre med dropout showed up with a sledgehammer, dumb and self serving as he may be. Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.

> Trump is the symptom of the disease not the main cause.

To this, we agree. To better understand a why so many are resisting, I encourage you to read up on Yarvin's Dark Enlightenment, then who has associated themselves with that movement. The overlap in the Executive branch and Trump's more outlandish ideas are substantial. Technofascism and neofeudalism are not acceptable solutions.

I disagree with social security not being waste. Just because some people find it useful, doesn’t inherently make it not wasteful.

I’ll be lucky if my generation will even be able to pull anything out of social security.

So I've been paying for social security my whole life and you think it's a waste and you have the right to take the program away from me? Will I be getting a refund?

FWIW, the US Supreme Court ruled[0] in a famous 1960 case that Social Security is an ordinary income tax and you are not entitled to receive any benefit of that payment, same as income tax. Whether we like it or not, that has been the law of the land for 65 years. Most Americans are simply ignorant of this reality.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flemming_v._Nestor

I doubt it, but hey welcome to the club. Like 1/4 of everything I make goes to social security.

But just because I’ve been contributing my whole life doesn’t mean we should double down of a failing program.

> Like 1/4 of everything I make goes to social security.

If you want to be taken seriously, don't make false claims. It weakens your other arguments. Social Security is 6.2% (12.4% if self-employed since the employer takes care of half) on the first $176,100 of your net income (which for the median US taxpayer is on all their income). Medicare is 1.45% (2.9% if self-employed, same as Social Security).

So if you are self-employed, you pay at most 15.3% of your income below $176,100 in combined Social Security and Medicare. That's a lot, but it's not 25%. If you are not self-employed, you're paying 7.65% on income below $176,100 to both Social Security and Medicare which is very far from 25%.

If you're earning over $176,100 your effective Social Security tax rate will drop.

I agree, that was a striking claim to make. Perhaps the person you responded to puts a lot into their 401k thinking it is social security or thinks income tax is FICA?

Nope, I’m self-employed, so I pay 15%. I said, “Like 1/4”, indicating roughly.

As another commenter pointed out, social security is basically just income tax. If you combine my actual income tax with social security and Medicare, then I’m way north of 30% which is just ridiculous.

I was not claiming that social security is exactly 1/4 of my income, though I see how it could’ve been misconstrued that way.

15% is pretty far removed from 25%. I'll happily take the 10% you're willing to pay in to keep your estimate accurate!

If you think this is actually about "rampant waste in our government" then you are incredibly naive.

What do you think it is? What do you think is motivating Musk?

For USAID, the fact that USAID was investigating him:

https://gizmodo.com/elon-musks-enemy-usaid-was-investigating...

His attack on USAID was not "rooting out waste", it was to settle a personal vendetta against the agency.

This is silly. USAID was investigating the usage of Starlink in Ukraine, which by the way Musk provided completely free of charge at a time when no one else was doing anything for Ukraine.

DOGE found that USAID has actually spent taxpayer dollars to funding terrorists.

I have no idea how we try to connect these dots to be “personal”. USAID was a sham and it’s been exposed.

I think maybe you're missing the negatives Musk/Starlink did in Ukraine.

And they alleged terrorism. They did not show it, FISA and other courts aren't engaged, and they have Flynn, a foreign agent, making those claims and boosting them.

How did DOGE determine that the funds went to terrorists? Do you know? I certainly don't. I want to know, so we can put the right guardrails in place for the future, and frankly, I don't trust musk at all. He lies whenever it's convenient.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant and we should be ensuring it's shining everywhere.

Fascism.

I don't know but it sure is interesting that White House is saying Elon Musk will now be reviewing his own conflicts of interest [1] as a man heavily invested in companies with large government contracts or beneficiaries of government incentive schemes.

Or maybe it's just too avoid having to worry about sexually harassing his employees[2].

[1] https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus...

[2] https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flig...

I’ve heard lots of people say that, and you’re entitled to that opinion. But I have yet to hear a single coherent argument explaining why that’s the case.

I’m open minded but so far all I’ve heard is Musk/Trump haters clanging the alarm that somehow they’re going to take over the government or ruin America or whatever. With no explanation and no facts to back it up.

The evidence is fairly smacking you in the face. Have you seen the number of Executive Orders that Trump has been signing? Many of which are almost certainly to be overturned?

Yes, what does signing a lot of executive orders have to do with it?

Historically-speaking American presidents are using more and more executive orders to push things through.

That doesn’t inherently make them bad.

Because your democracy is being run by fiat, and many of those Executive Orders are batshit insane, or just plain illegal. And you seem to be OK with this.

Pretty sure not a single XO has been illegal. If you’d like to supply some proof I’d be more than happy to look at it.

I’d be curious which orders you personally find to be “batshit insane?”

The funding one was halted by a federal judge saying it was blatantly unconstitutional. That counts as illegal IMHO.

That's the only one I'm aware of at this time, but there's in the high 10's of lawsuits in progress, so there's time for others to be found similarly.

I suspect the Christian only faith department would also count as illegal eventually.

His Executive Order blocking birthright citzenship was blocked. And that is batshit insane - literally thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) would suddenly be affected by that EO.

And DOGE. You know they are going in and changing safety systems at the FAA, right? Insane.

its really not that many (yet) and even so its unlikely he will catch up to the top

I would be much happier if this was being done with any form of thought behind the actions. Put together a report of the "wasteful" spending and target it. The whole department destruction at the whims of one man is the concerning part. Doubly so given he's appearing to target departments that has "wronged" him in the past.

I don't agree with the waste in our government, but Musk has shown himself to be a habitually dishonest individual, so when he says he is out to cut waste, I don't believe him, I think his goal is to target his personal and political enemies while finding ways to redirect funds into his own ventures.

Well as long as you'll admit you're wrong then everything is fine.

That’s not how this works. But the world is a lot better when people can admit the path they chose was wrong.

While it's true I was being facetious I very much do agree with you on this point.

But... you saw that Trump said he wanted to turn the Gaza Strip into an Arabic Riviera and dispossess all the Palestinians... and he wants to take over Greenland, which is not an American territory?

But everything is going great, right?

Very telling the op chose not to reply to your post.

How much have we saved so far?

There is a counter at https://www.usdebtclock.org/

You do realize that what Musk and DOGE is doing is completely unconstitutional, right? ONLY Congress has the right to spend tax dollars. DOGE has no legal right whatsoever to stop any payments Congress has approved.

A Democratic DOJ could very well arrest and charge Musk for what he is doing.

And yet you allowed a grifter like Trump who bankrupted pretty much all his businesses to become President. Got it.

I didn’t allow anything. But compared with the folks running against him? Yeah, I’d pick him every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

Get us a real candidate from the Democratic Party and we could have a discussion but Kamala was even less qualified than trump and what many non-Americans seem to miss is that Americans care about policy A LOT. We generally don’t give a shit if our president is a meanie head or says not nice things. In general we care a LOT about what they say they’re going to do.

Trump’s plans for the nation sounded pretty good to myself and a whole heck of a lot of other Americans winning the popular vote, the electoral college, and (my memory is fuzzy) every swing state except 1?

How do you figure Harris is less qualified than Trump? I never heard Harris say she would try to take over Greenland. I never heard her say it's a good idea to inject bleach to get rid of Covid...

Trump supported a violent attempt to overturn the results of an election. In other democratic countries that's called an attempted coup. Not to mention Trump's own attempts to pressure states not to certify the results.

I don't care if Trump has amazing plans or is Mother Teresa and Henry Ford and Benjamin Franklin rolled into one, he is anti-democracy and that automatically disqualifies him, and those who support him should be ashamed of themselves for not caring. (and that's before we get into his character; I kind of liked Trump way back at the beginning, thought he might be a Ross Perot type of guy; but once that recording of him talking about women came out (before the 2016 elections), I lost all respect for him. And all of his actions since then have been completely self-serving. There is no way someone like that should have so much power, not just over the country but as commander in chief of the military.)

So when you have someone who is such a poor character, and who is anti-democracy, policy doesn't really matter.

Cool, so when the fascists have dismantled government and taken over power, at least we might have your apology, although I doubt it even then, you'll just shift the goalposts.

> Some of us don’t agree with the rampant waste in our government.

Sure, there's waste as in any large organization, and streamlining is great. But to say that all US foreign aid is "rampant waste" and USAID should be shut down? Because it's not being shut down because it was "wasteful" but because it's full of "radical leftists" (supposedly).

None of the purges at any of these agencies so far have had anything to go with "government waste". They are based on ideology.

Come on, open your eyes -- they're being pretty open about what this is about.