re: Elon Musk: Annual fraud of US Taxpayer $ is an estimated lower bound of $1.5 Trillion +

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So there is fraud but its not "that bad?"

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1.5 trillion is a pretty sensational claim don't you think?

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He was tasked with finding waste and fraud and didn't find anything approaching 1.5 trillion annually

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It’s not gonna happen in 4 months. Doge- type investigation into government spending needs to be continuous in perpetuity, not just a flash in the pan.

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They are at 214 billion. A lot of this is on judges blocking so much

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People are actually disputing/arguing that the person is wrong about the amount of fraud, not the fact that are 100’s of billions in fraud. It is amazing, yes?

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Any reason to take this statement seriously?

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Seriously? You seriously ask this?

Our government, at all levels is one massive extortion scheme and you are here with your head in the sand.

Truly cuckish of you.

That’s nice. These estimates are common, and easy to pull out of a hat. Podcasters other commentators like Musk have such a nice time making declarations.

But Musk already declared that DOGE would remove large amounts of fraud and waste. The trillions just didn’t happen.

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And DOGE removed how much fraud and waste before they shut it down?

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DOGE is still operating and they are at $214B as of today

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People are actually disputing/arguing that the person is wrong about the amount of fraud, not the fact that are 100’s of billions in fraud. It is amazing, yes?

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Is the 214 billion actually fraud though? Or just deemed unnecessary?

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Really? The guy out there catching his own rockets?

That makes him an expert on government spending how exactly?

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While catching rockets is technically irrelevant to this argument, you're wrong if you think his background isn't relevant to understanding finances.


He graduated from UPenn with a double major:
A Bachelor of Science in Physics from the College of Arts and Sciences.
A Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of Business



... Ok, so what if he majored in econ? Did he use that knowledge?

Yes, in 2000, he founded X.com:

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X.com had ambitious plans to offer a digital alternative to traditional banking. The company offered financial services through the Internet, providing things such as online banking, payments, and money services. All in all, the two companies complemented each other well, and the merger brought together Confinity's advanced payment solutions and X.com's broader financial services, and the sum of the two parts quickly became a force to be reckoned with.

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quartr article on paypal

This merger resulted in the creation of the financial services company, PayPal, for which Musk briefly served as CEO (before Thiel pushed him out over a difference of vision).


... okay, but what does that have to do with finding waste and fraud? ... I'm glad you asked.

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Elon Musk’s attempt to remake the Social Security system appears to be deeply informed by his time at a company that helped him become a leading figure in Silicon Valley: PayPal (PYPL).

His tenure at the digital payments upstart more than two decades ago was marked by a fight against fraud, which he and his then-colleagues considered an existential threat to their enterprise.

"Fraud wasn't just a storyline at early PayPal — it was the storyline," said Jimmy Soni, an author of a book about the company that turned into a tech star in the late 1990s and early 2000s. "It represented survival or catastrophe."

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How Musk and his PayPal cohort tried to deal with financial cheating in that era has clear echoes today as Musk's DOGE team has embarked on a search for fraud across the federal government and in the Social Security system in particular.

While available data shows that fraud is a much smaller relative issue in the federal government now than at early PayPal — where losses indisputably represented a sizable piece of the startup's balance sheet — Musk rarely offers commentary these days that doesn't make charges of widespread wrongdoing around the government.

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yahoo finance article


From his education, to his implentation of that education into a financial services company, to detecting and weeding out fraud at that company, he is likely in the top 1% of people who might be qualified to lead a team on a quick but deep dive into a large organization to quickly identify waste and fraud. If you then consider his ventures like Tesla and SpaceX, which are on the receiving side of government subsidies, contracts, etc., he is likely near the top of the top 1%.



On to the rest of your post:

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He was tasked with finding waste and fraud and didn't find anything approaching 1.5 trillion annually

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He was part of DOGE for 4 months and only had time to look into a limited number of agencies before he left. I'll quote part of Grok's answer to why he didn't find more:

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DOGE did not have time to investigate numerous other agencies, including at least 4 major cabinet departments (Defense, Justice, Labor, and Veterans Affairs) and dozens of smaller independent agencies (out of roughly 430 federal agencies total). The short operational timeline and focus on high-violation entities like USAID limited broader scrutiny.

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In summary, it isn't unreasonable for Musk in any way to say based on the potential waste and fraud he did find in a limited time and at a limited number of agencies that he might expect to find $1.5 T or more overall.

The fact that the waste / fraud numbers he did find are disputed by entitities that want the cash to keep flowing, and that Congress and possibly parts of the executive and judicial branches are resistant to cleaning things up doesn't diminish the fact that he found hundreds of billions in potential issues and never even had a chance to look into some of the largest agencies, like the DoD.

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So it essentially becomes an argument as to whether the aid is justified.

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Spending that we don't like isn't fraud though of course

democrats keep saying this stupid line doesn't change the fact that fraud has been found