Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
If the cashier at Cub took my money then announced she had a surplus, I’d say she overcharged me. That’s a bad thing.
If the State takes my money then announces it has a surplus, I’m supposed to be thrilled?In the private sector, a budget starts with a realistic expectation of income, then works in spending that can be afforded.
In government, a budget starts with special interest spending demands on paid-for politicians, who set the income to cover the payoffs.
The equivalent process in the private sector would be monopolistic price fixing by a crime syndicate.
Joe Doakes
Everything you really need to know about government budgeting, you learn from Henry Hill’s soliloquy about Jimmy Conolly from “Goodfellas”.
You know what I mean; the one that goes “business is been bad? F*** you, give me the money”.
Today’s left believes that the state spends your money better than you do (read anything by Cass Sunstein if you want examples of this). You buy an SUV rather than a hybrid because you are terrible at determining where your own interests lie. Who does know where your best interests lie? People like Cass Sunstein.
This is a poisonous ideology. Non-ideological, textbook economics (called “formalist” economics) explain that command economies fail and market economies succeed because market economies are better at measuring value than command economies.
An economy expands when an investment of one unit of resources returns > one unit of resources. Command economies return one unit of resources because people are better at measuring value when they own both the resources invested and the return on the investment of the resources.
Last week the Powerline Boys put up this post on the enemies of formalism in economics: http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2015/01/first-they-came-for-the-sociologists.php.
The enemies formalism don’t like it because it measures an economic system’s success by how well it utilizes (or exploits) natural and human resources.
The enemies of formalism are socialists. They want to change the rules so that producing wealth is not the measure of an economy.
The problem is one of values. In a market economy, the consumer and the worker determine value. In a socialist economy (it’s called “substantive”, rather than “formalist”), value is determined by an elite.
If they value your driving a hybrid rather than an SUV, you’ll drive a God damn hybrid. They believe that science proves that their values are better than your values.