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.”
Relatively speaking, did he even find that much? I live in a poor, red state and cigarettes are almost $10 a pack (which is only a bit more than what they cost in NY in 2005). If I hadn’t quit
almostover a decade ago, I’d for sure be quitting now.Edit: I quit in 2013 and am now realizing that’s over a decade.
When a friend of mine told me a pack of Marlboros cost like $15 in RI I was amazed. How the fuck are people paying almost $1/cig?
Speaking from experience, it’s a hard habit to break. But you’d think the mental image of rolling up a $1 bill and lighting it on fire would push some people away.
…honestly, I probably should buy some cigars or cigarettes from Wish or something. The way America is going, those will buy a lot of food and things when the American Dollar implodes from all of the fuckery.