The Budget as ATM

THE BUDGET AS AN ATM

By William Urban

It is amazing: Republicans complained for years that President Obama did not present a budget — as the Constitution requires. Then this year they were unhappy because the president’s budget read like a campaign speech; it was, in fact, a wish list of progressive dreams., much as the State of the Union address has become.
We expected the Republican-dominated House to reject it, but not by 413-2! Not even Democrats wanted to run for re-election on this budget. Why did the president send this up? It makes even his foreign policy seen coherent.
I have to think of this kind of budget as an ATM without a withdrawal limit. You know, you just punch in a number and the money pours out. But when I think of this, I remember Barack Obama’s 2011 interview with NBC,: “There are some structural issues with our economy where a lot of businesses have learned to become much more efficient with a lot fewer workers.” That is, “when you go to a bank you use the ATM, you don’t go to a bank teller. Or you go to the airport and you use a kiosk instead of checking in at the gate.” What he was trying to say was that when technology speeds up production or service, people lose their jobs.
The name for this attitude in Luddite, which reflects the 18th century English weavers who destroyed machines that were producing more and better cloth at much less cost than when could do. Consumers everywhere benefited, but the workers blamed the bosses. Even then making money was evil.
Losing jobs is hard, yes, but I remember when telephone operators used to plug in calls, and long distance meant multiple telephone operators plugging in the connections. This wasn’t always bad. I remember calling my former roommate in Texas, and when he didn’t pick up, the operator suggested asking the person in the next apartment where he was. Eventually, we found him.
That was nice, but I think few people actually want to go back to that. It’s so much easier to pick up the cell phone and leave a message, or, if we are able to do what the NSA does, just check the GPS of the phone and see where it is located. Parents can do this now, I understand, and stray dogs can be quickly found.
As for the ATM, I really like the little machines, especially when travelling. I don’t even have to present a photo ID, which I do when cashing a check in some distant community. It’s easier than voting.
There must be a moral in here somewhere. Maybe, if we only allowed the federal government or Springfield to spend money only during working hours six days a week, we’d cut the deficit? Fat chance of that in Illinois, where the legislature recently failed once again to do anything more with the deficit than paper over the pension programs. And now there is a rush to pay for the Chicago pensions before the Republicans get enough votes to block a give-away bill or even elect a governor with a veto. Even Dick Durbin is nervous about re-election, he says, though I tend to believe in the theory that the candidate with the shortest name usually wins, or, often, the tallest candidate.
John Ransom recently wrote a little ditty about our problem:
Oh, the irony.
We voted for Hope and Change.
And we got Illinois.
It happens every time.
Some of this Illinois deficit is union-driven. Not all, of course, but Peter Seller’s award-winning 1959 film, I’m All Right, Jack, comes to mind here As does the rest of the statement — I’ve Got Mine. In the movie neither the employers nor the unions came out looking good, but with the British government having imposed a socialist system on the country, with the unions getting pretty much what they wanted, the unions got the blame for the economic stagnation that eventually brought Maggie Thatcher to power. Britain has prospered ever since. And the ATM machine is by far the best way to convert dollars to pounds, and the traveller does not even have to carry cash or travellers’ checks with him.
I love the ATM when I visit Britain, but I wish that my withdrawal limit was not determined by the amount of money in my local bank account. I have a limit designed to prevent unauthorized use of card — if it was stolen — so that my account cannot be easily drained. But in real life politics none of this is necessary. No government would ever spend recklessly, would it? And everyone is honest. Isn’t that so?
Illinois is a marvelous state, despite the recent poll that suggests half the population would like to move away. We recently read that social security payments were still going to deceased people. That came as a surprise. We knew that the dead could vote, but not that they could continue to receive their retirement benefits.

Review Atlas (May 8, 2014), 4.

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