Laserlight: Massive budget cuts

Thursday, April 30, 2009

A video illustration of how $100M compares to $3.5T

Lux Mentis said...: As illustrations go, that's brilliant.

On the other hand, if you're working for the department that cuts your job, it'll seem like a big cut to you. If you depend on a service provided that reduces or goes away, it'll seem big to you. The real reality of such things is that $100 million is a small part of the overall federal budget, until it impacts you personally.

In these cases, its an academic point that is remote from the individual anyway, until it impacts them personally. Thus in addition to not comprehending scale, we also don't have an accurate understanding of impact (either not really feeling it will have any or feeling it will have a lot of we are impacted directly).

This is a lot like most laws, government programs, statistical phenomena generally (including diseases, health problems, random events, etc).; May 7, 2009 at 12:05 PM
Laserlight said...: And that special interest of "it's MY job we're talking about" is what they rely on to keep the votes coming in. But what I'm talking about here is that they're raising spending by $35,000, and trying to present themselves as "fiscally responsible" by cutting $1.; May 9, 2009 at 12:17 AM

Laserlight