Dr. Lane’s Thoughts LXXVIII

The perception of government waste is both widespread and influenced by partisan views. Elon Musk has harnessed a vague ‘need’ by Americans to decrease ‘waste’ and is using it to amass power with the help of his own “Hitler’ (The Dump)

A majority of Americans (56%) believe the government is “almost always wasteful and inefficient,” though opinions vary significantly by political affiliation. Republicans are more likely to hold this view (77%), while a majority of Democrats (63%) believe the government often does a better job than it gets credit for. 

Concerns about ‘waste’ are not purely partisan, as both sides have criticized inefficiencies in government programs, it is just a matter of which programs that they think are inefficient. Examples of documented waste include $25 billion in unreconciled transactions, unused flight tickets, and Medicare overspending. However, partisan divides often shape how these issues are prioritized and addressed, with shifts in sentiment depending on which party controls the presidency.

Let’s just say that everyone agrees that some $500M weapon should not be built and we will ‘save’ the USA from this expense.  That program employed people who will not be moved to another program by the military contractor building the weapon so those people will be fired.  The only thing that we can hope for is that the $500M weapon is replaced by another useless weapon contract with the same contractor!

Military contractors do not lose money; they simply fire employees to ‘save’ money.