Wasteful Spending Make a Man Wanna Holler

One thing that cracks me up is when right-wingers start screaming that if there's one thing the American citizen hates, it's "wasteful government spending." According to Hannity et al, if we even hear the phrase, steam comes out of our ears and we stomp over to our desks to craft a letter to our congressmen to let our fury known. They love to throw out huge numbers to us so that we'll be shocked into hating Osama bin Socialism. You know, cause if there's one thing the average citizen understands is macroeconomics. Hmm.

Except that the average Joe the Plumber has no idea what these numbers mean. Yeah, a "trillion" sounds huge. But without breaking down what it's for, for how long, how it's being paid for, who's actually paying for it, is it insured, which market it's affecting blah blah blah we're basically reacting the same as if someone had shouted "boo!!!!" at us. Maybe the trillion bucks is being used to soak up the ocean and set it on fire, or maybe it's being used to invent a car that runs on smiles and produces $5 bills. The point is someone just shouting out numbers with no context to get people angry is irresponsible.

For instance. Newt Gingrich was just on Hannity, and he was railing about Nancy Pelosi using a private jet. Seanzarelli starts screaming that if the American taxpayer knew their own money was being spent on this they would, and I quote, "lose their minds!!!" These two began carrying on like Pelosi was taking our money over to the OTB. But then Newt slips, and cites the cost at $5-8 million. So I took the higher of the two, divided ONLY BY THE NUMBER OF PEOPLE THAT VOTED FOR OBAMA, putting the burden on them. And it's a whopping 11 cents a year each. Less than one cent a month.

Now, you can say it's still wrong, and you can say that things like that add up, and you may be right. But the vague ranting & raving that was going on (much like the minute by minute "THE SKY IS FALLING!" Dow Jones updates used to scare people who have no idea what the Dow Jones even is) to people who, although they wanna think so, have no idea what you're really talking about can be a somewhat dangerous thing. I'd hate to be the guy who got all worked up over this, went home and slapped his wife around in anger at this "wasteful spending!!!" and then read this post and realized he had been played. Sorry buddy!