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.
Is there a specific item you’re looking at? The issue here is in a few different areas but largely breaks down to
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.