I hear that you’re having some troubles with your finances, and I just wanted to help you out a bit with some advice. Don’t worry, it’s free advice!

1. You can’t spend more money than you make. Really, this one’s pretty simple. It’s a matter of debits and credits, which need to be (at the very least) equal. I know that you’re a big fan of bailouts, but there is no one to bail you out. Even Bill Gates can’t swing that kind of cash, so you need to fix your own problems.
2. Giving money to irresponsible people is, well, irresponsible. It seems that banks haven’t figured out that paying millions of dollars a year to CEOs does not guarantee them top-notch quality businessmen. The more you bail them out, the less reason they have to reform. I’d say we start by enacting some laws: if you take our money, nobody in your company makes more than $150k per year. At this rate, they can hire about 20 (or more) smart economics grads straight out of the University for the price of one crusty old CEO, creating extra jobs and virtually guaranteeing that one of those 20 will have some clue how the real world works. (If people “can’t live on that,” move the bank headquarters to rural Indiana, where they will be the richest people around)
3. Start fighting over whose programs don’t get cut. Again, you’re in the red every year. Obama wants to halve the deficit in 4 years? WE’D STILL BE SPENDING WAY MORE THAN WE’RE MAKING!!! Rather than wasting time in congress fighting over who gets to spend more money on new programs, I propose a new perspective.
   1. Divide our deficit by total tax revenue (about 33% in 2008)
   2. Cut every single government program by that percent (33%)
   3. Make congressmen fight for scraps. If you “need” more spending for something, you have to convince everyone else to sacrifice spending on some other program: there’s no more money to spend, just like a real budget.
   4. If tax revenues fall, congress is required to cut spending.
   5. If tax revenues rise, spend the extra money on paying off our ridiculous debt.
4. If all else fails, fire all the politicians in the next 4 years, and replace them with people in this country who have 0 credit card debt, don’t have disproportionally high house and car loans, and make less than $150k per year. Chances are, they’ll be able to take care of things.

It’s not going to be easy, but I know that somewhere in the back of your mind it makes sense that disaster looms if every year we spend more than we make. I know that you can’t honestly believe that the federal government should be bailing out every poor decision (or lazy soul) that ‘requires’ a few bucks. Sometimes, a little pain goes a long ways towards convincing people that those $5,000 shoes are a little overkill, or that $150/month on cable when you’re unemployed is unsustainable.

If you let people bleed a little bit when they do stupid things, they just might learn not to do those stupid things again.

Sincerely,
Andy