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| Jul 05, 2009 5:56 pm |
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re: re: LA Times Seeks Your "Balance The Budget" Assistance |
| abbeboulah
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As a matter of interest, I did spend some time on this exercise -- even managed to 'balance' that budget, that is reconcile the numbers but only to have them show that it is inherently as misguided as the budget process itself. Some of the specific difficulties have been pointed out. The choices are crude and incomplete, the consequences invisible, for example. But is not the fundamental problem that spending commitments have been made for which equivalent revenue provisions have not been secured? So when the revenues fail to materialize, commitment / promises will have to be broken. The 'balancing' in such situations consists of finding those promises that will have the least adverse consequences (AKA next election penalties, only soem of which will be functionally related to the actual damage and suffering caused, according to the motto: let the devil take the hindmost). Doing this with specific budget items will inevitably cause imbalances and inequities in the entities (people, institutions, departments, industries) affected. Which brings me back to a suggestion I made earlier, perhaps in a different forum but one I know is monitored by most of the few remaining stragglers here: of defining the budget allocations not as actual sums but as percentages of the revenues that will actually materialize. This will automatically spread the impact, minimizing the resulting inequities, and encourage all affected to get creative and innovative both with respect to estimating the revenues, and with respect to strategies for dealing with the uncertainties involved. It does not preclude adjusting the percentages to address specific identifiable problems in specific sectors.
A companion measure -- to resolve the apparently intractable controversy about referenda and voter initiatives (a similar issue looming in Florida, widely and hotly debated in blithe ignorance of California's experenience from what I can see):
Each new law and referendum etc. must be accompanied by an analysis of how it will be paid for -- again, in terms of budget percentages and if necessary by new taxes, so people can see who will be affected, and how.
Barring some such measures -- might one not expect these innovation and creativity groups to fair be buzzing with suggestions? --- the budget-balancing act will predictably cause both inequities and resentment (with unpredictable severity), in other words, just "new / improved" problems. Private Reply to abbeboulah (new win) |
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