Small-picture solutions don't solve big problems

We've been mopping up water on the kitchen floor for fifty years now. Does anyone think we should have been looking for a leaky pipe?

After fifty years of failure, am I the only one who says balancing the budget by cutting federal spending is the wrong plan?

People say it is spending in excess of revenue that creates deficits. Even economists say it. It is true, of course. The arithmetic is correct. But it is a small-picture view.

The trouble with the small-picture view is -- Surprise! -- it doesn't show the big picture. If you balance your budget, it can affect your favorite restaurant because you don't go out for dinner anymore. It can affect the deli where you no longer stop for coffee on your way to work. That's three small pictures: yours, the restaurant's, and the deli's. Your small-picture view ignores two of them. Or dozens of them. Or hundreds. But those dozens or hundreds then have to consider adjusting the small picture of their budgets. And that can affect you, or your neighbor, or dozens or hundreds more people. And so on.

That's a glimpse of the big picture.

If you spend a dollar, it has a ripple effect. If you don't spend a dollar it has a ripple effect. Everything that happens in the economy affects the economy. The big picture is not as simple as "spending in excess of revenue".

Raising taxes and cutting spending impact everyone's small picture. If there is an imbalance in the big picture, a monetary imbalance perhaps, then small-picture solutions, at best, only move the problem to someone else's budget. Like when you squeeze a balloon at one and it gets bigger at the other. Or like the whack-a-mole.

Fifty years and counting. It is time to re-think the plan. We need a plan that will work.