Scott Alexander (Astral Codex Ten)

Now that's some real government efficiency.

And there's an excerpt here in the tweet.

The Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency touts cuts of $55 billion in federal spending, often citing cancelled DEI and climate contracts.

However, a Wall Street Journal analysis of government contract data showed a much different picture.

Woke cuts, in quotes, were a tiny fraction of the total, and many claims of savings were overstated.

Scott writes, And related Iglesias.

Here's a tweet from February 22nd.

From Matt Iglesias.

Compensation is about 8% of total federal spending, of which a majority is military, so it's completely possible to unleash chaos across civilian agencies while only reaping trivial savings.

And that's in reply to a tweet from Patrick Ruffini, saying either Doge isn't saving taxpayers any money or there are, quote, mass indiscriminate firings.

Can't be both.

Scott writes, I freely admit that DEI also did this, I just think that two rounds of decimating state capacity and purging high IQ civil servants is worse than one round.

In fact, this is what really gets me.

Both parties are careening towards destruction in their own way.

There's no real third option, and if I express concern about one round of looting and eating the seed corn, everyone thinks it means I support the other.

I can't even internally think about how I'm concerned about one of them without tying myself into knots about whether I have to be on one side or the other in my mind.

Probably nothing catastrophic happens for the first few years of this.

The cuts to clinical research mean we get fewer medications.

The cuts to environmental funding mean some species go extinct.

The cuts to anti-scam regulators means more people get scammed.