Successful spending, tax, and budget decision-making requires trade-offs. Acknowledging those who lose when making trade-offs has always been difficult for elected officials, advocates, and pundits alike. Yet, making course corrections for government policy means changing relative priorities and has never been more required than it is today. I’m not just talking about deficits and the rising debt being left to future generations. Over recent decades Congress has oriented spending less and less toward the needs of our time.
Excellent article. I have been involved in state budgeting and I've never seen one dime being spent that didn't have a constituency behind it that could make a credible argument that this would be the most important dime to be spent. Government needs priority. Printing money is not the answer.
A professor of mine once used the term “honorary Pareto optimality” to describe the tendency of economists to say a policy provides benefits large enough to compensate those who are made worse off, even though there is no intention of compensating those made worse off.
In your leadership on tax reform in West Virginia you faced this issue in spades.
Excellent article. I have been involved in state budgeting and I've never seen one dime being spent that didn't have a constituency behind it that could make a credible argument that this would be the most important dime to be spent. Government needs priority. Printing money is not the answer.
A professor of mine once used the term “honorary Pareto optimality” to describe the tendency of economists to say a policy provides benefits large enough to compensate those who are made worse off, even though there is no intention of compensating those made worse off.