Owing Not Owning Your Future: Your Deficit / America’s Deficit – Another Intelligence Test

It’s a new year, so it seems appropriate to take another perspective on the state of intelligence in America. Due to some recent mentions of the country’s budget and its deficit, this just occurs to me to be an appealing theme for a test. So I will follow the usual format, I will present a handful of questions, and some commentary to place a particular context for the questions, and at the end I will provide my answers to these questions. As before, your score is your responsibility to assess. And a willingness to deceive yourself as to the accuracy of your answers or beliefs is just another measure of the actual intelligence level that is being measured. To paraphrase Lincoln:

Some of us can fool ourselves all of the time, and all of us can fool ourselves some of the time, but all of us can not fool ourselves all of the time.

So now we can get to it.

Question 1: If the United States were a person, let’s say it was you, would you say that you are managing your household budget prudently, responsibly and within your means?

Yes No

Context: Your household budget is what you are spending on all the things that go along with running the house (country). So are you spending what you have wisely given what you are getting in return, and given that it all has to come out of what you earn (here your taxes are the same as your wages, they both come from the same place – what you get paid).

Question 2: The U.S. Government has promised to pay a number of people a fair amount of money every year for, well the rest of their lives. Now since big-G doesn’t put aside any money for this purpose they have to get it from you (citizens) every year. Big-G doesn’t have enough to pay out what they promised, so what should they do?

A. Increase your taxes

B. Pay less than promised

C. Borrow more money

D. Cut all spending (everything) equally

Question 3: Who is responsible for creating the budget deficit?

A. Politicians

B. Political Parties

C. Voters

D. All of the Above

Question 4: Many economists will say that some deficit spending can be advantageous for the economy, or can be necessary under certain situations in order to help prevent or recover from economic downturns. If it’s good for the economy then it’s good for everyone, and the more we do the better it will be. Many people use their credit cards in this fashion. They keeping adding to their balance, buy more products, and help stimulate the economy. The financial industry grows its credit business and the economy is booming. No reason this should not go on forever.



Shouldn’t we therefore let our deficit grow every year?

Yes No

Question 5: Congress prepares and submits a budget each year. They get input from all the departments, bureaucracies, lobbyists, special interest groups, and every entity reaching out for a piece of the pie. And every year Congress approves the budget with full knowledge from the Budget Office how much more it adds to the deficit. Every once and a while Congress has to approve raising the debt limit allowed, and yes they approve raising it every time.

Who will actually pay for the spending decisions that Congress continues making each year?

A. The Government

B. Businesses

C. You, the public

D. Investors in Government bonds

The Critical Question X: Think how you think your preferred Congressional representatives would answer these questions. Are they answering the same as you or differently? Given the deficit problem, isn’t at least one of you really doing a bad job?

A. Yes, me B. Yes, the politician C. Yes, both of us D. No, there is no problem

Ding! Times up. You are done, and you can now decide if you scored high, low or in the middle. For anyone with an interest, here are my answers.

Q1: No    Q2: D     Q3: D     Q4:  No    Q5: C      QX: B

You can probably tell that I hold the citizens responsible for the situation we are in. It’s not hard to have a poor opinion for people who do not accept the basic responsibility for their Government’s actions, and disregard for their obligation to prevent their elected officials from frittering away their heritage. If you want something from your Government, then you should be willing to pay for it (and not expect everyone else to pay for it).