When it comes to managing finances, Wilkins Micawber, in Charles Dickens’ book “David Copperfield”, observed the following :
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery.”
It’s an observation so fundamental, it’s called the “Micawber Principle“.
Of course, this principle applies to Government budgets as well, but, whenever Government’s involved Murphy’s Law must be duly incorporated; specifically, the following corollary[1]:
“Negative expectations yield negative results; positive expectations yield negative results.” - Murphy’s Non-Reciprocal Law of Expectations
Why? Because Government politicians, especially Democrats (a) never met a pile of (someone else’s) money they didn’t want to spend, (2) never met someone who couldn’t afford to pay more taxes, (c) never created a “temporary” tax, and (d) never made it legal for a citizen to avoid paying taxes (unless, of course, it’s a politician). The result? Come feast or famine it’s misery for the taxpayer, but not necessarily for our elected officials.
Personally, I don’t see why balancing a budget is so difficult: Perhaps it’s because my chosen profession was Engineering, not Economics. Heck, I still refer to the bank’s instructions when reconciling my checkbook… oops… I’m digressing. When I first got out of college I ordered “The Rubber Budget Account Book” by the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER), which is still available today for a very modest sum (or, for free on the interweb, for those on particularly tight budgets – or insufferable tightwads). While I don’t use the worksheets, I adhere to it’s basic teaching: Expenses expand or contract based on the available income. Elegantly simple, just like Micawber’s observation.
So, during this Holiday Christmas Season I suggest the Congressional Budget Office take some of that Taxpayer money and buy each member of Congress a copy of “The Rubber Budget Account Book“… right after they give each one of them a copy of their excellent, one-page infographic on the United States Federal Budget.
[1]A corollary which, curiously, does not appear on this site… talk about ironic!
Thanks for reading!
