Budgetary Musings

Why do we need a budget? To decide if the money is coming or going, of course.

If there is a lot of money coming in, it's a good thing, and it's called a surplus budget. Problem is, this happens only in Utopia (in case you didn't know, this does not actually exist). In the real world, there's more money going out than coming in, and that's not a good thing, generally. Unless you are the U.S.A.

So if there is more money going out than coming in, what do you do?

You spend less, theoretically. Practically, have you ever seen anyone do this? No, it's not macho at all. So, what else can you do? If you are the government, you can increase taxes. If all goods are already taxed enough, you introduce a service tax. If you run out of ideas, you can combine everything and call it a Goods and Services Tax.

But seriously, to quickly get to a surplus, we only need to introduce a spitting tax, on anyone who spits in a public place. Then you can laugh all the way to the bank.. Banks will also smile (if not laugh) and probably recover from their NPAs, or whatever they call them these days (stressed assets is a euphemism often heard).

No comments:

XLRI Doctoral Colloquium 2024

 Pics from a well-organised event.  With TAS Vijayaraghavan, my classmate and XLRI prof., and Dr. Prashant, host. My talk on Building Academ...

These Were Liked a Lot