alt Hacker NewsThis guy thinks waste in government is only 15%.
At the low end, the GAO estimates of federal spending, 3-7% is fraud, 3% is improper payments, 7-10%+ is legal but wasteful (e.g. zombie programs) - totaling 13-20%.
In the middle, DOGE (don't smite me, just citing multiple sources) estimated 30-33% was waste.
And at the high end, the American public according to Gallup polling perceives 59% to be waste. https://www.cato.org/blog/americans-say-federal-govt-wastes-...
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Is this a serious take? Citations from DOGE and American perception?
DOGE isn't a source so don't cite them. They just made shit up.
The American public is stupid and wrong and their perception is not useful here. They will believe the government wastes 50% of every dollar because they have been told that, even though it's just stupidly wrong.
The GAO is actually the only information you provided. They are trustworthy and happy to be critical of every administration, and they don't get enough love for their important work.
I don't know if you realize this, but 3-7% literal fraud is actually a pretty good number for a very complicated system. 15% "waste" where it's hard to even define what "waste" is is also a good number.
Visa and Mastercard accept far higher for a far simpler fraud profile.
Also you said "This guy thinks waste in government is only 15%" and then the only data you provided has to wave many hands to get up to 13-20%. What the hell man?
NEE profit margin is currently 40.37% https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/NEE/nextera-energy...
From that, NEE pays 43.72% in dividends.
So we can say that 17.64% of the amount paid for energy to this company is wasted in dividends ALONE.
Just to put some numbers on the waste on the private side.