15 May 2010

I could put strychnine in the guacamole

Budgeting experts for households will tell you that it's the big stuff that gets people in trouble. Buying too much house, too much college, too much car. The nickel and dime of cutting back on 5 dollar cups of coffee and packs of smokes will help you stretch for those things. But they really don't matter much over the long run and anyway often have plenty of hedonistic value that isn't as easy to figure as the mistakes people make in paying for the really big things that may offset the problem anyway.

We've got way too much house on the federal (and state) dime just in those future entitlement programs (Social Security and Medicare/Aid), not to mention dozens of major programs outside of the big two hogs (FDA, DoA/food subsidies, hell we've still got tobacco subsidies, DEA/Drug war, DoE/NCLB) that could stand to go away without much grief from anybody who could consider themselves a "fiscal conservative".

So instead the solution is... to save a penny. Or actually less than a penny.

That scam "works" in Office Space only because he moved the decimal point over a couple spaces by accident. And they did it a few thousand times a day. Let me know when something crosses into the 9-10 figure dollar range per year (not per decade) at least on the chopping block. I'll take this more seriously.

(there is one idea there that does qualify, but welfare reform is best thought of as not giving as much money to people who are wealthy first, which is probably on the order of 10-12 figure range per year in costs in terms of wealth transfers from poor to rich through the tax code (HMI), public pensions, agricultural subsidies, many forms of college subsidies, and non-means tested social security and medicare).

5 comments:

not undecided said...

I HATE when there's strychnine in the guac! Even more so than when there's cilantro.

Sun Tzu said...

I haven't tried it in a while, but cilantro was usually the least of any issue with guac. The onions are a bigger deal.

Not sure what the deal with cilantro is that it has all these people who hate it and consider a poison.

not undecided said...

LOL. I think some places make it onion-free. So do you not eat salsa, either? Because you don't see that onion-free very often! Cilantro...doesn't bother me quite as much as it used to...but it still tastes like...soap. I wouldn't go as far as poison. I'd just put oregano on everything if it were up to me!!

Sun Tzu said...

Oregano, thyme, and rosemary (and obviously garlic) seem to be the essentials on the spice rack. I only use cilantro and basil when they're fresh.

I eat the non-onion parts of salsa or find a more blender-ed version where the texture issues don't crop up. Chopped up peppers and seeds are more my speed.

not undecided said...

Hahahaa. I have to laugh when Mike busts out the little chopper to blenderize the salsa...the onions are still THERE...but the texture thing makes sense. I just never thought of onions as textured, since they're so TASTY. And....USEFUL. Like...HERBS. LOL.