Rob Douglas: Budgeting for the new normal

Steamboat Pilot & Today ^ | January 17, 2013 | Rob Douglas

[george76]

Like a scene from “The Wizard of Oz,” the economic stagnation hobbling America in the wake of the Great Recession has pulled back the curtain of market bubbles — housing being the most recent — to reveal an American economy that is a pyramid scheme devoid of the labor participation rate and overheated consumer spending that temporarily fueled economic growth while hiding the unimaginable cost of government.

Now that the curtain is withdrawn, Americans have realized that their previous assessment of what they could afford and what the government could afford were delusional. America is awakening to the reality that individually and collectively, we must transition from buying whatever we want to calculating how to pay for what we truly need.

Just as Americans are learning to live within their means, government must learn to prioritize spending in a manner that doesn’t further burden current citizens or future generations. The new normal for government spending should be to budget only for services that can be paid for within a generation at, or under, existing tax rates.

[kitchen]

Thanks George. Rob is one of the good guys.

The problem with publishing in the Pilot is that this fall on deaf ears. Boulder West and the rest of Routt went 75% for the Kenyan in the last election.

[kitchen]

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