Is there a specific item you’re looking at? The issue here is in a few different areas but largely breaks down to
- It’s not one person but multiple
- A checkbook is a terrible analogy that at least in the US is just used as a way to make political points.
To 1, imagine you and someone else who disagrees with you on basically every financial aspect has to decide how to spend income together. That is likely not going to be a short or fun process.
For 2, a lot of what they are actually talking about here is debt. Debt gets trickier at a nation-state level as it’s not as simple as how much can I repay. Economies all use at least some debt and that debt comes with economic complications. For instance, let’s say we take on debt that pays for roads that will improve shipping times by 25% while reducing vehicle deaths by 5%. Both of those are economic boons, reduced shipping times means potentially more money from in country sales and exports and removed the economic losses of both the death itself and the loss of future economic gains from that individual. This kind of debt quite literally brings in more money than it costs to service that debt.
On the other hand debt that say gets wasted say reopening Alcatraz is debt that won’t go towards any meaningful economic gain and we lose money on it.
Basically (for the US at least), any time someone mentions the term checkbook when referring to the government they are either purposefully trying to mislead you, or are not appreciating the full range of government spending in a way that is a massive detriment to the way we choose to run our government.
To add on to this, it’s also why liberal talking points tend to really highlight savings from programs. As another easy example of good spending: if it costs $50k to send someone to drug rehab versus $75k to house them in prison for a year, with respective rehabilitation rates for 65 and 48 percent, you save and make money twice. Not only is it cheaper up front to send them to rehab, but the lack of a criminal record leaves that person more free when searching for jobs later which can make them a much more productive taxpayer from an input to the economy standard.
Republicans keep reducing the nation’s income by giving their buddies money in the form of tax breaks. Democrats had a balanced budget and were net positive under Clinton.
It’s like telling your boss, I think you pay too much, here’s some money out of my paycheck that you can give back to the bosses. And then wondering why you don’t have enough to pay your bills. Like for Medicare/Medicade or food stamps.
Governments can create/destroy money supply. They don’t need to balance cheque books so it’s not an analogous concept.
Extra bonus: read around fiat currencies.
haha yeah… imagine your checkbook is a joint account with another 534 people, with at least 50% not having any ability to understand finance at all.
good luck.
Guna just lay out the obvious, your check book manages thousands of dollars accross hundreds of transactions. The federal budget manages trillions of dollars accross millions of transactions. A certain amount of tolerance leeway should be expected but to your implied point, they are still fuckin terrible at it.
To also add to the other comments: because the government doesn’t want or even need to have a balanced “checkbook”.
Assume for example you want to buy something from me. But you only have “don bucks”. So you buy a widget from me and I charge you 10 “don bucks”.
Problem though, through taxes you’ve only got 5 bucks left. So you just create 5 bucks and add it to your pile. (Deficit spending) Now if you don’t balance that with a loan, your “don bucks” are now worth less because why would I want one of your “don bucks” when tomorrow you could just create a million of them for no reason. (Hyperinflation) So you instead borrow 5 bucks from a friend of yours with a promise to give him back 6 tomorrow. (Bonds)
I still sell you my widget for 10 “don bucks” but now what can I spend my newly acquired “don bucks” on? Well, since everyone has their own currency I ultimately have to spend it on you. This means I end up giving you those 10 bucks back in hopes that you’ll either give me more in return (another loan/bond) or give me back my own currency from money I’ve traded to you.
So in the end spending more than you make (at the nation state level) can be a net boon on the economy as you effectively create a vendor lock in, similar to how companies push their gift cards, etc … because that money is only good in one place. You just have to make sure not to spend too much beyond your means because every dollar you create this way adds to inflation a little bit. So if you create too much then inflation gets out of hand and you end up with hyperinflation and now every one of your citizens wants to get rid of your money because they’ll lose too much before they can give it back.
