>social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face

Who says I don't advocate cutting those too, if you're asking? And I am grey haired, not sure about the ageism.

Well, all I'll say is this then: you are a tiny minority.

Yet the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.

Majority is just a collection of tiny minorities, in this case my minority opinion partially aligns. As it turns out minority isn't aways what you think.

This RMG survey reports 19% of all voters knowing what DOGE was in December of 2024.

https://napolitannews.org/posts/19-percent-of-voters-know-wh...

(PDF) https://napolitannews.org/assets/pdfs/67633dc0cced7-gcm24-12...

Less than 19% knew what the nuclear safety team was, so be careful with the point you're making. There was probably more informed consent for DOGE than many eliminated positions.

> so be careful with the point you're making

I was attempting to find evidence for your claim, and I found that survey. If you can find other surveys, please share, as I am seeing this being repeated a lot.

You were finding evidence for a different goal post you shifted to, that when applied applies even more harshly to the nuclear team.

Shut up, Jesus Christ...

The dude is insufferable.

You're moving the goalposts. People did not, in fact, vote for DOGE.

I said 'the public voted for someone openly stating they'd carry out DOGE.'

They moved the goalposts to what fraction of voters were questionably polled to know about DOGE, because my claim is pretty much irrefutable. Then when I use their own criteria suddenly we cry foul that I used their own goal posts that they shifted to.

You are single handedly making this discussion unbearable. Congrats I guess?

I don't follow. Is there a constituency in favor of eliminating governmental nuclear safety?

I don't follow. Are we moving the goal posts yet again from the above of what % knew what something was? Because the constituency generally did not know of the nuclear safety team. I don't even know their was a constituency calling for their creation, although there is an argument as to why reps might make them exist anyway.

Are you suggesting their creation was improper? Or suggesting constituency advocation would make it proper?

Either way you might draw uncomfortable conclusions.

I think defense _spending_ could be cut dramatically without changing our defense _posture nor preparedness_, simply by modernizing inefficient systems, reducing waste, renegotiating contracts, etc. Our defense spending is relatively insane. We should look at Medicare and Medicaid in the same way. I wouldn’t want to see benefits reduced, but we certainly should be optimizing costs. I really hope the idea of reducing government waste hasn’t become a partisan thing just because the folks doing it right now are doing it very badly.

> Finally, a HUGE majority of the costs of the federal government are social security, Medicare, Medicaid, and defense spending. I doubt even the biggest libertarian on here could advocate cutting any those with a straight face

I think plenty of people would like to cut Medicare and Medicaid spending, not by reducing service, but by cleaning up the unbelievably broken medical system in the US.

The issue is not with Medicaid: it's with the Big Pharma, their lobbies, and the corruption they generate. For-profit companies can't be in control as something as critical and universal like human health.

Many are very much in favor of cutting these services.

As President Musk said, “that necessarily involves some temporary hardship, but it will ensure long-term prosperity”

I am so confident that that is untrue, I don't even feel the need to link studies; questioning whether the American voting public supports SS and Medicare is like questioning if they oppose slavery or endorse family values & apple pie. An extraordinary claim in need of extraordinary evidence, for sure.

And, sadly, I won't take "Trump won the election and then put Elon in charge of cutting stuff, so clearly Americans support that decision" as evidence instead of direct, scientific surveys. For one thing, much less than half of the voting public voted affirmatively for Trump; for another, I hope we can all agree that people on all sides very often vote for reasons very loosely related to the candidate's actual positions on policy.

Apologies if I'm rude, really grateful that such convos are happening on HN in the first place! Separate from "would we be better off with or without the New Deal welfare state and/or the entire federal government", I think this is an appropriate place to agree on empirical facts about the current situation. And "that idea is extremely unpopular" is such a fact, IMHO.

Many, many people figure “fuck it, im not getting social security, so why should the others.” It’s enough to tip elections for particularly odious candidates.

See: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v81n4/v81n4p1.html

They’ve been fed a lie that the system is failed and believe it.

This isn’t my opinion. I’m a widow and survivors benefits for my children has significantly eased the burden of taking care of them. I’m strongly in favor of expanding these programs and soaking the rich to pay for them. Instead they’re getting their money, and someday find themselves on the wall.