EnMasse

[DSquared]

With governments running deficits and austerity being pushed as a means to deal with the shortfall, the issue of public finances has gained attention. Are these deficits necessary? What should the left-wing response be? When a left-of-centre party comes out in favour of balanced budgets, some have accused these parties of selling out. Yet I believe that short of severe economic downturns and severe national emergencies, for example a natural disaster, that the left should actually embrace balanced budgets. Why?

Balanced Budgets Or Social Spending? Pick One

People have to budget in their daily lives, and make choices about what's important to them. Often, people sacrifice things they want but feel they cannot afford, for example going on vacation. The right understands this, and connects it to public finances. This works because even though increased program spending advocated by the left is popular, people think of the government having to live within its means, and that you can't always spend on the "nice to haves." Furthermore, when the right talks about the need to balance the budget and the left says, "we have to spend more on social programs," it only serves to reinforce the dichotomy, to reinforce that you have to choose either balanced budgets or social spending. This is a false choice.
Allan Blakeny in Saskatchewan balanced budgets while expanding programs. Grant Devine cut these programs and still ran up deficits.

"Spending Problem?"

The left is always accused of having a "spending problem," especially when there is a shortfall in revenue. What they conveniently forget is that reducing spending is but one way to deal with this. Another way to deal with a budget shortfall is to bring in more money. Conversely, cuts in taxes are every bit of an expense as if you spent the money, even though parties like to pretend it doesn't cost anything. This is how the NDP can offer the most in program spending yet claim that their platform is the cheapest, because the NDP doesn't offer as many tax cuts as other parties.

Who Is Better At It?

Anyone who pays casual attention to the media can be forgiven for thinking that the left has trouble balancing budgets. The reality is the opposite. When in power provincially, it is actually the NDP which has the best record on balancing the books. Fiscal conservatives should be especially unhappy with how the Harper government has racked up high deficits, with little to show for it.

Balanced budgets are the one area where the right-wing claims credibility, and it is on this one issue that they manage to trump the popular ideas of the left. Yet the facts do not support this claim, and if the left can shift the debate on balanced budgets, it will have dealt with a major obstacle it faces in the eyes of the common voter.
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This is pre-eminently the time, to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself-Franklin Delano Roosevelt

[Raos]

I worry about focusing too strenuously on balanced budgets because I worry about it making the surplus/deficit situation one of primary importance, and as an overly simplistic pass/fail measure. Contrary to the suggestion that focusing on social spending reinforces the false dichotomy of balance vs. spending and championing balanced budgets would deconstruct that, I think the balanced budgets mantra would actually do the opposite.

Whatever one can say about what the terms mean in reality, from an objective perspective, I think the right has enough of a stranglehold on framing those terms that it would come across as a bit of capitulation to the fiscal ideology of the right, partly in the sense of just aping their message, but also, and more problematically, because I think it's framed in too much of the public's consciousness that 'balanced budgets' equals cutting spending to match the inviolable ceiling of revenues based on current taxation levels. In that context, balancing a budget by raising taxes becomes a double failure by both not "balancing the budget" as well as playing into and reinforcing the stereotype/spin that all the left knows how to do is raise taxes and just want to tax everybody to death, which itself then further reinforces the "authority" of and belief in the right wing narrative on economics.

I think it would be more effective to directly assault the knee-jerk "taxes are bad" mentality, highlight the failure of the right to even manage keeping budgets in black ink when it claims to be so singularly capable of it, and hammer that even when they do manage that (and even more when they don't) those budgets still lack balance by dismantling public services and eliminating the value side for what taxes are paid, shifting (unbalancing) the focus from the public to private interests, and irresponsibly spending fortunes on shiny toys to combat bogeymen.

[Senor Magoo]

Old timey folk (grandma, Uncle Gord) like to tout the idea of carrying no debt whatsoever ("always pay cash!") as the secret to financial security. Certainly with no debt you'll never be crushed by debt, but you'll probably also miss opportunities as well. I think the average person can, say, carry a bit of credit card debt, so long as they're also able to occasionally pay down that debt.

I think the same is true of governments. I wouldn't suggest that we can never borrow to spend, but this shouldn't be a long term plan, and hopefully we won't borrow in order to spend foolishly. That's, I think, where the left and right differ most. Both are willing to borrow in order to spend: the left on Arts programs and safe injection sites, the Right on fighter jets.
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ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,

[ronb]

Except that governments aren't like people, or families, at all, that's just a bullshit right wing rhetorical framing device. Cuz, to start with your uncle didn't actually have the capacity to issue his own currency. Unless you're a Bronfman.

[Senor Magoo]

Is comparing personal finances with state finances "bullshit" because people actually understand it then?

Because I don't think you need a PhD in economics to understand that whether you're an individual or a government, you can't just keep spending more than you take in, indefinitely.
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[Raos]

Balancing a budget for an individual tends to assume that increasing the revenue side of the equation isn't an option. How convenient for a right wing perspective on a governmental level.

[Senor Magoo]

Do you really think that the average person is unaware that increasing taxes means increasing revenues?

I think most people are well aware that one can balance the budget by spending less or making (taxing) more.
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ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°`°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,¸_¸,ø¤°°¤ø,

[fork]

[ronb]

[Senor Magoo]

[m0nkyman]

Balancing the budget is a no-brainer from a leftist political viewpoint. Do we
A: Give a huge amount of money to banks in interest
or
B: Balance the budget so that tax dollars are spent on social programs instead of transferring it to the rich who invest in banks

How the right owns this issue mystifies me.
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"If I can not dance, I want no part in your revolution."
Emma Goldman

[bshmr]

From another perspective: 'Balancing one's budget' is a mystification that is being confused with a reality of survival. Living within one's means is a useful guiding rule as is saving some for proverbial rainy day. We are still hunter and gatherers despite getting lost in our advanced abstractions (imaginations).

[TS.]

[Raos]

[DSquared]