Where (And Whether) To Lay The Blade

The economy being how it has been over the last few years, anyone reading will have faced a budget which concerns them getting slashed. Whether it's that of your employer, your local government or your previously dependable morning newspaper, you must have given it more than a passing though. I know that I have, and have come to some conclusions (possibly of an erroneous nature, but at least I come by inaccuracies honestly).

The first thought is of whether budget cuts are the right thing to do. Certainly, it would seem obvious that when expenditures amount to 100,000 dollars and revenues less than half that, the two figures must be made to agree with one another. I don't think that cutting expenditures is for the greater good. You are then, of course, able to meet expenses- for the time being. I feel confident in saying, though, that this only leads revenues to drop further. You then cut the budget more, provoking another decline in revenues. When the axe falls, the one wielding it always claims that "we're going to have to do more with less". This is illogical nonsense. You can only do less with less. To do even the same, to say nothing of more, you must conjure up more funds.

The reasoning behind that risible statement may be that fat is going to be trimmed from the meat of the budget. I think that seldom is true. Could it really be so that the funds are spent inefficiently by unwitting servants of the public entity in question? I don't think so. I feel that waste most often exists because it benefits someone who exerts influence over the purse strings. Consider the infamous pork spending of the Congress. Many presidents and legislative leaders have attempted to trim the fat, but can't get at it, because it is protected by those who it serves. Thus the vital muscles feel the blade.

Some say the private sector is more efficient than that. I'll only that the businessman is not instantly any more efficient, savvy or even rational. He's just a human, and humans are irrational, emotional and just plain crazy. He can do crazy things that harm his interests as easily as anyone, and often does.  This is applicable to budgeting in that that he will trim the fat, then the muscle, and he will conclude by breaking the knife by trying to trim the bone.

In one's own domestic budget, things are a little different. There are luxuries which can be dispensed with in the name of austerity, and cutting the budget there is less apt to impact income. The individual is not necessarily more apt in general to do the reasonable or rational thing than the public servant or the entrepreneur (and perhaps is less so), but it's at least possible. I'll only say that you just have to stay in the game until conditions become more conducive to winning it.