This article appeared on the website The State.com on 1/22/2009 and was posted by associate editor CINDI ROSS SCOPPE. The article was intended for the public, lawmakers, or anyone else with access to the internet and specifically worded search engine query. The article was posted around the same time that word of South Carolina’s financial woes was reaching a national audience and addresses the reactionary analogies that are invariably bandied about in a situation such as this.
Ms. Scoppe’s argument is that although it is easy to draw analogies between government spending and a business/family budget, the immense scope of a government’s responsibilities will render any analogy moot. Although a sense of community is ideal, a single family ultimately must take care of themselves first. A business needs only to make decisions that benefit shareholders and the bottom line and don’t necessarily have a larger responsibility (again, in an ideal world they should). Government responsibility is to its citizens (all of them) and in this you find competing needs that still merit consideration. This means that although it’s easy to throw out a quick analogy, reality is not quite so tidy.
