Trump Dictatorship and All Things Politics

[fishonjazz]

The reality is the U.S. has been overspending for a long time. We were all born into the national debt racked up by prior politicians and our kids even moreso. We need to cut spending (always talked about by both sides, but this is the first time I've actually seen any real effort to make it happen).

Unfortunately taxes need to go up too. The wealth tax is a popular populist idea, but I worry the impact will all trickle down from increased cost of goods, etc.

We also need to get a better educated workforce, which means investment in education for those willing to put in the effort.

All true. The question was: What would it look like for the average american if DOGE succeeded beyond everyones wildest imaginations and all waste was eliminated completely? Would there be no more poor people? Would we live a utopia free of crime or civil unrest?

imo nothing would really even be any different. I feel like those that are strong supporters of DOGE are cheering him on like "ya ya, you go musk! This is going to be so awesome for our country after you clean everything up!" What is going to be so awesome though? Do I get to live in nicer neighborhood with a better vehicle and a boat or something? What do we all get once the waste has been eliminated?

 

[BabyPeterzz]

DOGE leaks secret information about intelligence agencies

Elon Musk 's Department of Government Efficiency's latest attempt at creating change in the Washington swamp has seen classified information posted to its website.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Who knew as part of Musk’s federal employee reduction, he would be outing intel officers. Woooops!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Sardines]

I have a question. So lets say this whole DOGE thing works out perfectly beyond all of our wildest dreams for all americans. Musk is completely trustworthy and doing everything on the up and up and for the sole benefit of the citizens of the USA. He finds ALL the waste and eliminates all of it flawlessly. Now there is no longer any waste at all. The perfect amount of money is being spent on the perfect programs etc.

What are we thinking that would look like for the average american like myself? I assume we are thinking that would mean money coming back into our pockets or less money leaving our pockets (no/less taxes)

So now every american in the USA has lots more money (spending power). Does a combo meal from wendys stay at 11 bucks or whatever it is now? Or does the owner of wendys realize that we all have way more spending power and raise the price to 25 bucks for a combo meal?

Does that new chevy silverado stay at the 60,000 dollar price (or whatever it is currently) or does the owner of chevy realize that there is way more money to be made in a capitalistic economy where there was a recent huge influx of money to each person and raise the price to 90,000?

Rich would continue to rich and poor would continue to poor is my guess. I think a lot of the poors think that Musk is going to help them get rich with what he is doing. I dont think that is what will happen.

The average American would get fewer government services, a smaller and weaker safety net and would still have to get up at 4am every day to go to work to make ends meet or face loosing everything.

People talk about freedom a lot. I don't think the average American has ever known what freedom is. We've been conditioned to believe that our dependance on a wage is a virtue and that working harder and longer for someone else's profits is the best measure of our worth as a human. If that's freedom I want something different than freedom, because this sucks.

 

[Sardines]

DOGE leaks secret information about intelligence agencies

Elon Musk 's Department of Government Efficiency's latest attempt at creating change in the Washington swamp has seen classified information posted to its website.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Who knew as part of Musk’s federal employee reduction, he would be outing intel officers. Woooops!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let's all keep in mind that Musk is an American citizen for business reasons, not because he has any concern or loyalty to the U.S.. Billionaires are world citizens and exist in a different reality than us normies.

 

[gandalfe]

Yep.
I mean musk could simply take his 118 billion that he got from the US government over the last decade and split it equally amongst the whole country and we would all be multi millionaires while he would still have hundreds of billions.

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic or deliberately misstating things.

There are 335 million people in the US. That means each person would get about $350. Enough for dinner and an electric bill.

 

[fishonjazz]

I'm assuming you're being sarcastic or deliberately misstating things.

Neither. I was just way way off lol. And I was thinking more along the lines of splitting by household rather than every man woman and child but it still wouldn't be that much.

Point stays the though which is, whatever money and spending power is provided to the masses simply gets absorbed in cost of living (inflation) raises.

 

[TheGoldStandard]

All true. The question was: What would it look like for the average american if DOGE succeeded beyond everyones wildest imaginations and all waste was eliminated completely? Would there be no more poor people? Would we live a utopia free of crime or civil unrest?

imo nothing would really even be any different. I feel like those that are strong supporters of DOGE are cheering him on like "ya ya, you go musk! This is going to be so awesome for our country after you clean everything up!" What is going to be so awesome though? Do I get to live in nicer neighborhood with a better vehicle and a boat or something? What do we all get once the waste has been eliminated?

We are overspending like crazy. It has to stop. It may help us keep a strong country that can continue to pay its debts without devaluing our currency (printing money).

If this waste had been stopped years ago perhaps we'd be in a much better fiscal situation in this country.

 

[gandalfe]

Neither. I was just way way off lol. And I was thinking more along the lines of splitting by household rather than every man woman and child but it still wouldn't be that much.

Point stays the though which is, whatever money and spending power is provided to the masses simply gets absorbed in cost of living (inflation) raises.

That's the thing. These dollar amounts seem huge, but when you look at them from the perspective of the largest economy in history, they're tiny.

 

[Sardines]

We are overspending like crazy. It has to stop. It may help us keep a strong country that can continue to pay its debts without devaluing our currency (printing money).

If this waste had been stopped years ago perhaps we'd be in a much better fiscal situation in this country.

How does this "overspending " affect me? Because I'm not noticing it.

 

[fishonjazz]

We are overspending like crazy. It has to stop. It may help us keep a strong country that can continue to pay its debts without devaluing our currency (printing money).

If this waste had been stopped years ago perhaps we'd be in a much better fiscal situation in this country.

I don't disagree with anything in your post but the question I posed remains unanswered.

 

[TheGoldStandard]

I don't disagree with anything in your post but the question I posed remains unanswered.

Yes, I answered it. It may help us keep the status quo.

 

[LogGrad98]

The reality is the U.S. has been overspending for a long time. We were all born into the national debt racked up by prior politicians and our kids even moreso. We need to cut spending (always talked about by both sides, but this is the first time I've actually seen any real effort to make it happen).

Unfortunately taxes need to go up too. The wealth tax is a popular populist idea, but I worry the impact will all trickle down from increased cost of goods, etc.

We also need to get a better educated workforce, which means investment in education for those willing to put in the effort.

We have evidence that increased taxes on the rich and on corporations will not "trickle down" any more than tax cuts trickle down to help anyone. And that proof is the entire decades of the 50's and much of the 60's when we were growing on prosperity across all strata with the highest corporate taxes and personal tax rates on the rich we have ever had. Then in the 70's due to increased pressure from lobbying efforts, they started cutting taxes, which lead us to the deeply flawed "trickle down" theories to try to reduce the damage done by the decreased tax rates in the 70's and 80's reduced greatly from those of the 50's and 60's. But this is what the rich wanted, lower and lower taxes, and more wealth. Combine this with very effective efforts to stymy any increases in wages and we essentially gave handouts to the huge corporations, reduce regulations and oversight allowing oligopolies to develop in pretty much every area of our economy, and the biggest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class to the rich we have ever seen, which is continuing to this day. We built this mess by allowing heavy deregulation and heavily reduced taxes to the upper class. Which is what they wanted when they started lobbying and paying off politicians, and putting themselves in power in the background, leading directly to what we have today with a puppet president being driven directly by the top oligarch on the entire planet.

So, tl;dr, the prosperity of the 50's proved we would have better outcomes across all levels of the population with higher tax rates for corporations and the rich coupled with better controlled spending.

I mean who knew that bringing in more revenue and spending responsibly leads to increased prosperity? All it takes is politicians to put the needs of their constituency above the desires of the billionaires who pay them off and keep them in power regardless of how ****** it gets for everyone else. Easy peasy!

In other words, ain't gonna happen.

 

[fishonjazz]

Yes, I answered it. It may help us keep the status quo.

The question was what do I get from all the waste that musk finds and eliminates?
If your answer is the status quo then I get nothing that I wouldn't get if musk was never appointed by trump and Doge never existed.

Would have been more to the point to just say I get nothing.

 

[PJF]

View: https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/1890403518885863574?t=30aJBCz88O8QapiBp2t4oA&s=19

 

[Sardines]

View: https://x.com/SteveGuest/status/1890403518885863574?t=30aJBCz88O8QapiBp2t4oA&s=19

Before the election MAGA dummies mentioned egg prices 1,000,000,000,000 times
Trump mentioned that he would fix that on day one 1,000,000 times

After the election egg prices went up and MAGA dummies blamed anti-Trumpers for continuing to talk about it.

 

[TheGoldStandard]

The question was what do I get from all the waste that musk finds and eliminates?
If your answer is the status quo then I get nothing that I wouldn't get if musk was never appointed by trump and Doge never existed.

Would have been more to the point to just say I get nothing.

No, if we just keep wasting money and going into debt, things will get worse. I am not a fan of Trump, but am glad something is finally being done.

And the waste is much worse than just line items on headlines.

My office in D.C. overhired to anticipate hiring freezes (this was under Obama's first term). At one point we had four people hired that had no role. They literally did nothing. And every office in the Department was doing the same thing. And DOGE would have a tough time finding that type of waste. And that is not even a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of misappropriation.

Ideally we'd reallocate these wasted funds to help with poverty, homelessness, etc. I'm just not sure we have the luxury to do this.

I'm sure Republicans will tout that DOGE will stop the need for tax increases (in actuality they would attenuate the amount of the tax increases truly needed). And indeed, the rhinos will likely kick the can down the road, but at some point someone will have to pay the piper.

Between Social Security running out, debt rising, home prices going crazy with wages not keeping up, the next generation is going to have a tough time.

It would have been great if our parents generation had done a better job at controlling government spending.

 

[Mongoose]

Before the election MAGA dummies mentioned egg prices 1,000,000,000,000 times
Trump mentioned that he would fix that on day one 1,000,000 times

After the election egg prices went up and MAGA dummies blamed anti-Trumpers for continuing to talk about it.

Literally nobody mentioned egg prices you brainwashed nitwhit. This is all propaganda that you are regurgitating like a moron. Show me some posts where anyone was complaining about egg prices during the brain dead administration.

 

[Rubashov]

No, if we just keep wasting money and going into debt, things will get worse. I am not a fan of Trump, but am glad something is finally being done.

And the waste is much worse than just line items on headlines.

My office in D.C. overhired to anticipate hiring freezes (this was under Obama's first term). At one point we had four people hired that had no role. They literally did nothing. And every office in the Department was doing the same thing. And DOGE would have a tough time finding that type of waste. And that is not even a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of misappropriation.

Ideally we'd reallocate these wasted funds to help with poverty, homelessness, etc. I'm just not sure we have the luxury to do this.

I'm sure Republicans will tout that DOGE will stop the need for tax increases (in actuality they would attenuate the amount of the tax increases truly needed). And indeed, the rhinos will likely kick the can down the road, but at some point someone will have to pay the piper.

Between Social Security running out, debt rising, home prices going crazy with wages not keeping up, the next generation is going to have a tough time.

It would have been great if our parents generation had done a better job at controlling government spending.

You can trace America's debt problems back to Ronald Reagan's tax policies.

 

[LogGrad98]

No, if we just keep wasting money and going into debt, things will get worse. I am not a fan of Trump, but am glad something is finally being done.

And the waste is much worse than just line items on headlines.

My office in D.C. overhired to anticipate hiring freezes (this was under Obama's first term). At one point we had four people hired that had no role. They literally did nothing. And every office in the Department was doing the same thing. And DOGE would have a tough time finding that type of waste. And that is not even a drop in the bucket compared to a lot of misappropriation.

Ideally we'd reallocate these wasted funds to help with poverty, homelessness, etc. I'm just not sure we have the luxury to do this.

I'm sure Republicans will tout that DOGE will stop the need for tax increases (in actuality they would attenuate the amount of the tax increases truly needed). And indeed, the rhinos will likely kick the can down the road, but at some point someone will have to pay the piper.

Between Social Security running out, debt rising, home prices going crazy with wages not keeping up, the next generation is going to have a tough time.

It would have been great if our parents generation had done a better job at controlling government spending.

Again spending is only half of the problem. The bigger half, really, is the reduction in revenue through tax cuts to corporations and the rich. This reduced money brought in by literally trillions over the past decade. You can't cut spending enough to offset the reduction in revenue. Try cutting your spouses entire income out of your household and see if you can cut spending enough to fully cover it. For the vast majority of people this would be impossible unless they started living in a van down by the river. Same for the country. You can't cut out significant portions of our income through tax cuts and expect to cut spending enough to account for it. What doge is doing now is just destructive for the sake of wealth transfer to the rich, it does nothing to cut actual excess spending. If you want to do that then stop giving the handouts to corporations like Tesla, which account to billions, instead of cutting USAID which amounts to mere millions by comparison. It's ridiculous in the extreme. But fixing spending was never the goal of doge. The goal all along was to keep the big corporations getting direct government handouts while also keeping and expanding the tax cuts that directly transfer wealth into the hands of the mega-wealthy. That's it. It does nothing to help 90% of America and indeed will hurt that 90% severely in the long run, while doing nothing but helping the other 10%, the wealthy. Blatant robber-baron ********.

 

[Red]

Hypocritical to the hilt. Always. Heck, so often we can easily see that Trump accusations are confessions: he criticizes behavior he has committed in the past, is committing presently, or will commit down the line. So, it really cannot come as a surprise, that while VP Vance has the gall to lecture European leaders about free speech, the White House is doing this to the Associated Press…

White House bans AP journalists from Oval Office amid continued Gulf dispute

News agency, which has declined to use ‘Gulf of America’ name in stories, also barred from Air Force One

www.theguardian.com

But, is the AP truly lying, as the WH Press Secretary seems to clearly suggest? No, it is not a lie, and it’s AP’s choice. Why is Vance lecturing Europeans on free speech?? Why is the WH “Demanding” that news outlets follow suit?

https://archive.ph/2025.02.14-182931/https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/donald-trumps-ap-ban-puts-the-media-in-a-bind

Donald Trump continued his standoff with the Associated Press for a third day Thursday, as his administration again barred the outlet from the Oval Office for not referring to the Gulf of Mexico by his preferred appellation: the Gulf of America. “I was very upfront in my briefing on Day One that if we feel there are lies being pushed by outlets in this room, we are going to hold those lies accountable,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reportersThursday, insisting that it was a “fact that the body of water off the coast of Louisiana is called the Gulf of America.”

“I’m not sure why news outlets don’t want to call it that, but that is what it is,” Leavitt added. “It’s very important to this administration that we get this right, not just for people here at home but also for the rest of the world.”

The body of water in question has been known as the Gulf of Mexico for centuries, as the AP noted this week. But Trump—in a move that recalled the embarrassing “Freedom Fries” hubbub surrounding the United States invasion of Iraq—renamed it during his first day in office through an executive order, one of dozens he signed in front of a gathered press and television cameras. It was a supremely silly action, one that has no bearing on what the rest of the world calls the gulf. But it was enough to get Google and Apple to comply, as Leavitt noted in her briefing Thursday while demanding that news outlets follow suit.