From Pine View Farm

The Federal Budget 2

Robert Reich has an interesting take on it, and concludes that “balancing the budget” is a meaningless chimera, because

. . . the federal budget doesn’t at all resemble a family budget. The federal budget is a static account that tells us nothing about past, present, or future. Price supports designed to protect today’s farmers are treated the same way as education and health care for our nation’s children. They both show up as categories in the yearly budget – even though the farm price supports are to keep a group of people secure today, while education and child health care are really investments in America’s future. Social Security surpluses show up in the budget as this year’s revenues that offset this year’s expenses. But in reality the surpluses are payments by post-war boomers who are still working – but who in a few years will be retired and making big withdrawals. What look like revenues will soon turn into big liabilities. The federal budget hides this inconvenient fact.

(snip)

We should worry instead about putting aside enough to deal with past obligations, devoting no more than we can now afford to current needs, and making adequate future investments – even if we have to borrow in order to make them.

Worth a thought.

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2 comments

  1. Opie

    February 19, 2007 at 5:59 pm

    If you were a college professor, would you prefer a job at a college traditionally supportive of your point of view, or would you rather be a token voice of dissent at one that championed another viewpoint? I noticed Reich is at Berkeley now. I think he’d make a great contribution at Univ of Chicago.

    (Disclaimer: The University of Chicago does not seek my advice in staffing.)

     
  2. Frank

    February 19, 2007 at 7:04 pm

    It’s difficult to generalize about universities–as far as the professors are concerned, the particular school they are part of tends to be more important than the overall rep. of the institution.

    But to answer your question directly, if I had tenure, I wouldn’t give a darn about what anyone else at the institution thought.