Should the governments budget be Income or Expenditure based?

[Cranston]

Income based. Govts will always find new and 'important' (to them) things to spend money on, they cant be trusted.

[Phil P]

Originally Posted by Willy702

To make by income work you would basically have to tell everyone who gets a check from the government that what you receive from us won't be known until we cut you the check and its going to be kind of late since we first have to count every source of money and expense and then figure out what goes where so we have a perfect balance.

So if you were say a concrete contractor and were working on a new road, you better have enough to pay all your workers and your suppliers first and then hope what we give you is enough to cover what you paid out. Repeat this exercise at all levels for a myriad of jobs and you can see it doesn't quite work well.

The obsession with a balanced budget is unrealistic. Its a great thought, but it just doesn't happen. What is wrong with the whole debate is how so many forget when times are good you must generate a surplus and pay down some debt drawn when times were not so good and set a little aside for future rough patches.

The issue in this debate is not so much the timing of the expenditures - whether we use last tax seasons money or ones to come - as it is which takes precedence. Should the governments expenditures be the principle to which the income is dictated or vice versa.

[Willy702]

Originally Posted by Phil P

The issue in this debate is not so much the timing of the expenditures - whether we use last tax seasons money or ones to come - as it is which takes precedence. Should the governments expenditures be the principle to which the income is dictated or vice versa.

Doesn't matter what period you use, its still difficult to be income based. Sure my example was extending things a bit, but I still maintain if you want to have an orderly society you really have to assume fairly stable spending levels with modest inflationary growth. Hiring and firing of the civil service because of how the tax collector did last year is no way to run a government.