Funding all of these things cost every American a grand total of $2.14 each per year (assuming these costs are annual). (729M total cost, 340.1M US population as of July 2024.) He uses these big numbers to make the whole thing seem scary, but the cost is completely insignificant. The average person has no concept of just how much money the government brings in, and how completely meaningless dollar amounts of this magnitude are, and all of these sort of reports take advantage of that to make people angry.
Another way to look at it: The total cost of all of these initiatives is less than 0.1% of the US's annual military budget.
And far less than the amount of money that either Trump or Musk will have funneled to themselves and their businesses over the next few years.
But Musk’s companies are getting more lucrative government contracts, paid for by the taxpayer, so that’s cool I guess.
Hypocrisy is an expression of power.
We've got to start treating this for what it is. Every time they do something hypocritical it's on fucking purpose. It's to show us that they can do it, and we cannot. That is very, very purposeful.
Let's dispel with this fiction that Elon Musk doesn't know what he is doing. He knows exactly what he is doing.
Of course. Government inefficiency is everything that helps poor people. Taking from the poor and giving to the rich is totally efficient, though.
Throw in that Tesla and SpaceX have gotten over $18 billion in subsidies, and he's seperating countries with tiny fractions of that
They're also completely ignoring the return on investment of these funds. China is busy investing around the globe to sow pro Chinese sentiment everywhere. If you want democracy to thrive these are the types of investment that can buy your side long term alliances. But we already know they don't want democracy to survive.
Foreign aid has hilariously good ROI. When I went to Africa, locals told me that the Bush admin introduced the concept of bug nets to prevent mosquito bites and malaria. A one-time program that probably cost Americans at most $10 drove a major cultural shift that has saved possibly millions of lives and has affected everyone. We'll literally buying goodwill.
Musk has all the money in the world but has no real friends. He doesn't know what the value of anything other than money means, that's why these expenditures are nothing but waste to him.
Tripping over pennies to lose dollars. These turds do not understand soft power and international trade.
Yup. And by the end of the week China will step in and replace all of that funding.
And then we'll be left wondering why we're being kicked out of all our overseas bases. And then why the SEA countries are acquiescing to everything China wants and then why Taiwan gives up major concessions like allotting high quality computer parts to China.
It's all connected.
It's such an easy concept. I can't figure out if they actually don't get it because they are so narcissistic and why would anyone appreciate a few million in aid or if they are just playing stupid to posture to their base and be able to do even worse while everyone is distracted.
I think the later might be more accurate and I'm really curious what else I am missing.
Never underestimate bad students who reject academically rigorous ideas because they're intimidated by smart people.
I'd like to thank DOGE for single handedly strengthening Chinas soft power around the world!
This whole list amounts to $729 million. That is 20% of the $3.5 billion in additional money we sent in one month to Israel to buy bombs and missiles. You can see what kind of goodwill our government is really interested in "spreading". Maybe the USAID money was well spent and we could do something about the money that is going to death, misery and creating more hate against us? Crazy talk, I know.
Its insane that these guys don’t realise that USAID and all these programs are all about soft power. So many of these countries are going to turn on the US and they’re going to shocked pikachu face when a bunch of new wars and terror attacks spring up.
They do, they are just removing the soft power “carrot” and are going to rely on military force instead. They rely on forcing people to conform because that’s all they know how to do as corporate dictators. Just view their actions as that of CEOs. The little people don’t matter and will do what they’re told. Manipulate investors and PR for more money and control. Take your golden parachute when everything falls apart.
You could just say "they'll act shocked".
Where’s the fun in that
What in all of that list am I supposed to be upset about? All i see are good causes to better medical and Democratic outcomes in other countries.
I’d rather my tax dollars be spent on these things, than more cyber trucks or whatever.
Any sane semi-intelligent human would agree but we don't live in that world.
Kinda curious what the reaction are but not enough to give that Nazi traffic.
Ooh, ooh, look at the price of a single Tomahawk missile or anything else we regularly blow up, even in training exercises!
You can either aid democracy in South Africa, or have 1 Tomahawk. I wonder which does the most good...
Gotta pinch as many pennies as we can to fund the most important causes like funneling more money into the pockets of billionaires.
They are deliberately not giving the time scale on these things, and this is all from inception of these programs. This is a cumulative total of spending over decades in most cases, and definitely over many years for others.
Fuck these assholes for trying to justify their existence.
Well done to DOGE for absolutely tearing up the place scrounging up the US Government's metaphorical pennies, whilst ignoring actual budget inefficiencies, such as the infamously overzealous military budget
Damn $19M for a biodiversity conversation?!?! What are they conversing about?! \s
The thing is, you can make anything at all sound stupid if you try, and they are. There's many earth-shattering scientific studies that can be made to sound idiotic. You're not building a fission reactor, you're "finding out what happens when you stack spicy rocks and get them wet".
Leave it to the trump regime to fuck around and revive things like the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
Which America pretty much let happen. We were happy to fuck around in Vietnam, where we lost, and Korea but Cambodia? Nothing to see there folks.
Korea but Cambodia
completely agree about cambodia, nixon's hideous bullshit there is still killing kids through unexploded ord. Korea?
I mean maybe I don't get your gist but we fought a long war there then pretty much occupied the place for the remainder.
Look how they snuck empowering women (in the USA) in the middle
Why highlight Nepal specifically? You could highlight any country in the list and say funds were cut
Because I'm Nepali citizen
What are the things that they're trying to make out as stupid here, with the "fiscal federalism" and "biodiversity conversation"?
Op is a shill for Big Nepal
Yeah, fuck all these programs that legitimately help people; lets cut those, then spend 5x that money on bombs to be used in an ongoing genocide.
There's also a chance that many of these are employing Americans carrying out this work. So it may not even be the most extreme thought that "all this money is leaving America". He could be cutting American jobs, that pay American taxes (so a portion of that comes right back to the tax fund).
I'm not surprised he's against anti corruption campaigns in Serbia. That's kind of the opposite of his whole deal.
Taking bets on him thinking it's some kind of DEI program for nipples.
We would save so much more if musk just fucking exploded.
