Cutting Spending

You know what would really help, if you want to cut spending? Most things that actually help the majority of people — social programs, preventive health care, even free college tuition — are not very expensive. Most human beings’ needs are actually quite modest, even if you’re thinking in terms of “full human flourishing” — which of course is a ridiculous thing for the government to care about, but stay with me. The really expensive things are huge tax cuts for the wealthy ($300bn), bailouts for reckless speculators who threaten to undermine capitalism as a whole ($700bn), and unnecessary wars ($700bn).

It’s kind of like if your budget is tight. Most of the time you’re not going to be able to fix the problem by saving coupons and drinking PBR. Reducing things like your house and car payment or health insurance premiums would be game-changers. Actually, let’s use a more appropriate metaphor: getting your massive heroin addiction under control would be the game-changer. As things stand, our ruling classes seem to think that the heroin addiction is even more important than the house payment and that the way to keep everything going is to buy our canned vegetables on sale.

Meanwhile the house is on fire and someone thought it would help to cancel the homeowners insurance and give the money we would’ve spent on the premiums to the heroin dealer so he could spend it betting at the track, because his winnings would mean he could afford to sell us cheaper heroin — and to rebuild the house we, again, need to maybe think about switching to dial-up internet instead of DSL, or checking more books out at the library instead of buying them, or something. Or no, I know — we can cut out the charitable donations altogether! Poor people just waste their money anyway.