Defund Space X
this post was submitted on 14 Oct 2025
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Technology
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Thing is, when the economy is already going downhill... You ought to increase government spending instead of reducing it. It puts more money in the economy. More people with jobs also spend more money at businesses that employ people.
There is an argument to be made that having secure high paying government jobs harms other sectors by taking employees and raising average pay, forcing them to keep up. We aren't anywhere near that being an issue though, but there is a limit where more government jobs can make recovery harder, when other sectors go out of business competing with it and there's nowhere for anyone to go once the government jobs close.
Well unfortunately the President of the United States is bad at business and the Republicans are ...Republicans. The only thing that matters to either are rich people.
He is a moron to be sure, but crashes like this make opportunities for those with means to gobble up the big stuff cheap. Sure ground beef is expensive as fuck right now but I bet the wagu steak hasn't changed nearly as much. Hell when the economy is going well the rabble want a taste of the good stuff. Better to keep them in their place.
Oh I know, I'm just fully enjoying the irony of watching the man who was supposed to lower the grocery prices make fewer people be able to afford groceries.
While simultaneously increasing grocery prices.
to put that into context - according to wiki, jpl has about 5500 employees
A literal decimation.
The literal one involved executions.
A figurative decimation.
High level workers, it's like Christmas for oversea companies. Keep forcing them to migrate because they're definitely worth it.
According to the article, it is due to restructuring that has nothing to do with the spite layoffs being used by the Trump administration to punish Democrats for their unwillingness to support a dramatic 2x increase to healthcare expenses for Americans.
Republicans are holding Americans hostage instead of giving us back the healthcare we paid for
Unfortunately, the money has already been pocketed.
oh whew, for a second I thought that there was a non-political layoff in our Govt. /s
AFAIK JPL is part of the University of California, not NASA and I’m pretty sure this isn’t the first round of layoffs at JPL in the last few years.
Edit: It’s Caltech. I misremembered.
Edit 2: People seem to not be understanding what I am saying so I will clarify: JPL - Founded in 1936. NASA - Founded in 1958.
While NASA is the primary sponsor of JPL today its management has always fallen to its original founder, Caltech. Both JPL and Caltech are considered Federal Contractors. The decision to lay people off was made by JPLs management and has nothing to do with the current government shutdown. This is the third round of layoffs at JPL in the last 18 months or so and is largely due to cuts and restructuring to planned missions like the Mars Sample Return.
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/ -> ABOUT
About JPL JPL is a research and development lab federally funded by NASA and managed by Caltech.
I misremembered, but my point still stands; the decision for layoffs, this being the third round in 18 months, didn’t come from the government it came from JPLs management which isn’t NASA.
but my point still stands;
yeah, i don't think it does.
How? My point was that management decisions regarding JPL don’t come from NASA. Misremembering the institution doesn’t negate the point I was making.
of course it does. nasa pays the bills and they are the ones who say "we will hire or fire people, because we do or do not have money". management from caltech says "ok, these are the people who have expertise we need".
you don't think they are giving money to someone and that someone does whatever they want with these money, do you?
That’s literally how think tanks work. Their paychecks come from Caltech not NASA. They answer to the board of governors not NASA. But you also seem to have forgotten the context of the original comment I was replying to.
Mich easier to just write a cheque of money money to Elon. I hear he likes taking public money 💰💰💰.