John McCain, brilliant economist that he is, has promised to balance the budget in four years by cutting taxes, which is sort of like me solving my credit card debt problem by cutting up my paycheck.
The key to his plan, though, is winning the war in Iraq, because the balancing act comes from all the money we save by not having the fight the war any more. He actually said that the money we save will be used to pay down the deficit. Except that the money we are spending there is deficit spending, so that plan is actually a little weird.
It's like you have a big lake during a drought. Atlanta can understand this analogy. No water is coming in, but you're taking water out, so the water level keeps dropping and the citizens are worried. So the mayor comes up with a plan: stop taking water out of the lake. Brilliant.
"But," the citizens say, "we want the lake refilled." The mayor comes up with another plan. "No problem," the mayor says, "we'll refill it with the water we're no longer taking out."
Brilliant.
that's like "decreasing spending" by lowering the amount of an increase... they get less money that they wanted, so it's a cut, but it's more thanm before, which is actually an increase.. but they call it a cut. Sheesh. Instead of law school, maybe they ought to go to business school. Econ 101 - a balanced budget is $in = $out. Even better is $in > $out, but since when has that happened?
ReplyDeleteI have always believed that most politicians have no real sense of money. Or priorities. Or how to balance the two. When you get 50 or 100 or 454 of them together, chaos ensues.
sigh.........