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Enough with Drunken Sailors. We Want Shoes!
Maybe it's time to retire the phrase about politicians "spending money like drunken sailors." At least sailors earn their money--and their spending binges often leave no long-term ill effects on anyone else.
Writing in the op-ed page of today's Wall Street Journal (subscription required), David Boaz uses a different metaphor: "big-government conservatives [are] spending money like Imelda Marcos in a shoe store." Like the drunken sailor image, this one suggests over-indulgence.
But the sailor image brings to mind binge spending and drinking, while adding to the federal budget, much like adding to a shoe collection, is a long-term project. So the a long-term obsession with shoes may give a better picture. In addition, Marcos' shoe money, like that spent by Congress, is taken from the public at large. And I suspect, not having been a veteran watcher of Filipino politics, the shoes were meant to draw attention to Mrs. M, much like federal projects are meant to draw flattering attention to their congressional advocates.
Now if we could come up with another analogy that incorporates other facets of ballooning spending growth, such as cynicism, Kafkaesque regulatory requirements, crowding out of private sector initiative, rent seeking, etc.
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"Justice Louis D. Brandeis'?s metaphor of the states as "laboratories" for policy experiments ... had almost nothing to do with federalism and everything to do with his commitment to scientific socialism. .... To this day, it continues to inhibit a truly experimental, federalist politics." -- Michael S. Greve
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