Sterling’s Truths for Life #15

A person who earns his money and has to carefully choose how to spend it in order to provide his needs and wants will do so very carefully. A person who earns his money and is buying the needs and wants for someone else will typically be pretty careful. A person who receives a gift of money will spend that money on his own needs and wants somewhat carefully. A person who receives a gift of money to spend on needs and wants of someone else has very little incentive to be careful.

The last case is the condition of the government bureaucrat. Of course, the government bureaucrats, as often as not, find a way to fix it so that the money they are gifted to spend on behalf of others is spent in a way that benefits themselves somehow. This might mean spending it all so that the budget next year won’t be smaller. It might mean buying things that are for the office that are more extravagant than frugality requires. It may mean reappropriating the money to spend it on things that aren’t really the intention of the money but still manage to fall within the letter of the legal requirements place upon the money.