By cutting spending on foreign countries the US is forcing these countries to turn elsewhere for aid which will come in the currency of the new provider and with strings attached. This can cause a domino effect which will significantly weaken the USDs standing and force the US to take up "real" debt.
DOGE could very well bankrupt the USA if they aren't careful. They don't seem careful or self-aware.
Like who would even claim american bankruptcy as a bad thing? Are you even american if you don't declare bankruptcy? We were founded on incompetency and we will die by incompetency.
All of this is going to require critical thinking skills and unfortunately you can't gain that by reading tips. Assuming you do gave critical thinking skills, it's pretty clear what's taking place and that soft truths are often used to hide deep lies.
And people are invested in their lives and welfare even if all we are is dust floating blindly through the void of an uncaring universe, or whatever.
I can believe the sky is pink until I'm blue in the face. The sky won't change colors because of it.
As an ethnically Syrian person, Elon Musk has posted enraging racist epithets about me every single day on his Twitter. I strongly dislike him as a person for his firehose of slander against helpless refugees who aren't so privileged/fortunate as me. Look at how he is speaking towards poor Ukraine!
Despite this, his companies have without a doubt changed the world. His investments into e-banking, reusable rockets, mass market EVs, ChatGPT, Starlink, green energy, etc. sound like something from a comic book into how outsized an impact they make.
He wasn’t actually involved in any of the engineering ir decision making or putting the team together.
DOGE is yet another distraction to keep the left and the right bickering while the billionaires continue to grow the wealth gap. The dollar is the global currency and its monetary policy is set by private entities that don’t care much about the other 99.99% of us - just enough to keep a revolt from happening.
Fuck the democrats and fuck the democrats for the last forty years. This still sucks ass. The people doing this have utter contempt for the people who live here.
EDIT:
> At the same time, his companies have created seemingly impossible/fantastic technologies/tools that have changed the world forever.
There may be a reversal of causation going on here. It may be that Musk is attracted to successful companies, in which case he is at best an investor, and at worst a parasitic grifter. I see no evidence that he actually adds value compared to other competent people of average competancy. I certainly see no justification for him rampaging about our society destroying most of what remains of a state I actually am willing to associate with. Finally, I see extremely negative value in tying our state to a person who owns the thing that makes a critical asset (rockets). I'd much rather kick him out of our society in order nationalize the talent that we actually benefit from. Hell the employees would probably get a pay increase and we'd get a tax cut and only investors would be off worse (who gives a shit).
For those who missed it, DOGE claimed there were tons people who were about 150 years in the system. In actuality, the the default date in COBOL is May 20, 1875 (the date of the Metre Convention) which works out to about 150 years old.
Elon Musk publicly stated: "cursory examination of Social Security, and we got people in there that are 150 years old. Now, do you know anyone that's 150? I don't know. They should be in the Guinness Book of World Records... So that's a case where I think they're probably dead."
That's how little Musk understands about computer systems he's supposedly responsible for analyzing. And Elon has publicly stated he'll often be wrong wrt DOGE.
EDIT: Elon also posted a Tweet showing age buckets, but according to other Social Security Association folks, they didn't filter out dead people or non-recipients. When you do, only 89,106 are aged 99+. Less than the number of living centenarians in the US: https://x.com/justinwolfers/status/1891678450487841007
https://x.com/justinwolfers/status/1891678450487841007
Also Elon's other Tweet is: "Yes, there are FAR more “eligible” social security numbers than there are citizens in the USA. This might be the biggest fraud in history."
Lawful permanent residents (LPRs), asylees (noncitizen who has been granted asylum in the United States), refugees, some temporary non-immigrants, etc all get social security numbers. Elon doesn't appear to research much before posting and has publicly stated that he'll often be wrong with respect to everything DOGE.
I agree with original comment. I just don't know who to trust to do a deep enough dive to give me good information.
Could be that someone is fairly receiving a payout, but the birthdate was keyed in incorrectly & never corrected (a one key error of "1875" instead of 1975"...would make the person 150 years old instead of 50).
The DB should have had safeguards to avoid this.
And no deduplication is just asking for problems!!!
His engineers/employees... not him.
Besides, I'd be wary of calling electric cars "seemingly impossible/fantastic".
What would those be?
For years he coasted on the reputation of being a dorky, space/environment obsessed autist, but in the last few years it's become obvious that most of his admirable traits were just him masking. Now that he doesn't feel that's necessary we're seeing what happens when the richest man in the world swallows the red pill and it ain't pretty.
For one thing, do not blindly believe what you read here on Hacker News, where there is a clear anti-Musk slant. I'd recommend more rational places like https://www.themotte.org/ where these topics can be discussed in a relatively calm manner. You are likely to come up with more informed opinions than otherwise.
It's not anti-Musk to believe what he says about himself. You should re-examine why you feel the need to push your own slant.
Is DOGE a genuine effort at desperately needed reforms to save America from bankruptcy? Is it a secret plot to take full control of the federal government like a dictator's coup? Is it a mix of both at the same time (ie; recent Saudi and Chinese 'anti-corruption' campaigns)?
What should I believe?