Bijan Sabet

Managing a budget

This post isn’t about startups.

It’s about our state and federal government budget.

Simply stated there are two ways to manage a budget

Grow revenue faster than expenses
If you can’t do #1 then you need to cut expenses

When cutting expenses the government needs to think about

a) who needs more help than others and

b) identify less important and costly programs

Some of my friends tell me they are socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

And some of them are. But many aren’t unfortunately.

They want to support our various wars in the middle east but don’t want to pay more taxes.

Or they are upset with how we treat the poor in this country (socially liberal) but won’t fund programs to help on a consistent basis (fiscally conservative?)

Or they are impatient with our public schools, our environment, our roads/bridges/tunnels and won’t allow for higher taxes and/or ending wars overseas.

At some point the code must compile.

In my mind an example for being socially liberal and fiscally conservative is ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This was supposed to be our anti war president but he hasn’t shown up yet.