The Indignant Household Budget

Last updated on: July 7, 2010 at 4:49 pm by Fred Clark

The Indignant Household Budget 2010-07-07T16:49:50-04:00 Fred Clark

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One of the more popular voluntary delusions of the IndigNation has to do with the "kitchen table" analogies comparing "your" household budget with the federal or state budget.

These analogies are misleading and distorting in the semi-deliberate way of so much of what the IndigNation does — preferring self-congratulatory self-righteousness to accuracy or effectiveness or justice or efficiency or, well, pretty much anything.

"Harrumph, harrumph," says the Indignant Politician. "You're better than them. When your household budget is out of balance, what do you do? You cut costs. You cut coupons and pack your lunch and live within your means!"

"Yes, yes!" cries the Indignant Target Audience for this stale shtick. "That's exactly what we do because we are good and righteous and disciplined and moral people. We are so very much better than them."

"Yes you are!" agrees the Indignant Politician.

"Yes, we really, truly are!" agrees the Indignant Audience.

"You're so very, very good and moral," the IP says.

"And those people are such prodigal moral inferiors," says the audience.

That's an abbreviated version. The IndigNation can keep this sort of thing up for hours and hours.

But no matter how long they discuss this supposed analogy between household budgets and public budgets, they will never admit or allow or mention that revenue might be a factor. The Indignant Politician will never suggest that the householder take on a bit more overtime or look for a second job.

And the pitiable thing is that here in reality — as opposed to the smug fantasy world of this stock speech — overtime and second jobs are exactly what many of those poor cheering fools in the audience are actually doing to try to make ends meet. The indulgent spendthrift luxuries the Indignant Politician condemns aren't things his audience ever "cut" from their household budgets, because they weren't things their household budgets had ever been able to afford in the first place. Sure, they know how to cut costs and cut coupons, but in real life, the most common and most effective budget-balancing step for their households is not to whittle further at their bare-bones expenses, but to work harder and work more to bring in more revenue.

The Indignant Politician's time-honored load of crap about "your household budget" is particularly distorting and misleading in a situation like the one currently facing the U.S. and most of the world.

The problem right now is unemployment. Massive unemployment.

Unemployed people don't pay income taxes. And they can't afford to buy or hire the goods and services of others, meaning those others aren't selling or working as much as they could and they're also paying less in taxes.

The math isn't complicated. It's not even math — it's simple arithmetic. Unemployment = deficits. Massive unemployment = massive deficits.

Anybody complaining about deficits who isn't suggesting, first and foremost, that the unemployed need to be re-employed, is either a fool or a villain or both. If you're going to be tut-tutting about deficits, then you had better also be screaming bloody murder about unemployment. If you do the former without doing the latter, you supply proof that you don't understand or care about either one.

The problem is unemployment. The Indignant Politicians and the Deficit Tsk-tsk-forces refuse to acknowledge that because it doesn't fit neatly into the "We're righteous, they're immoral spendthrifts" template of the standard household-budget analogy.

When your household budget is out of balance due to unemployment, then no amount of cost-cutting is going to allow your family to live within its means. When your means is an income of $0 you don't need austerity or discipline or smug self-righteousness. You need a job.

And right now there aren't enough of those to go around.

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