By John Sachs
From everything we are hearing, Louisiana faces a terrific budget deficit in the upcoming 2011 fiscal year. The number heard most often is $1.6 billion. It makes a bigger impression when you see it numerically. So here it is. $1,600,000,000. Whew! Kinda takes your breath away, doesn’t it?
A $1.6 billion shortfall would pose quite a dilemma for most states. Most states would 1) quit spending multi-millions on state-owned golf courses, 2) reduce the number of football and basketball coaches at the junior high school through university level to something less than one coach for every player, 3) stop imprisoning for life people caught with so much as a whiff of marijuana residue in their pockets, 4) quit providing legislators with luxury housing for a pittance in rent while at the same time paying them a luxurious per diem, 5) and the list goes on ad nauseum.
Most states would look for reductions by addressing the list above before saying perfunctorily that education and health care will have to shoulder almost all of the cuts. They might, just might, even consider—are you ready for this?—restoring taxes that when cut were the primary cause for the deficit. No new taxes mind you, but just going back to tax rates previously in place that resulted in balanced, deficit-free budgets. Makes one wonder about the validity of supply side, trickle down, Reaganomics.
Cutting education and health care are the fiscal management tactics espoused by our governor. Makes me wonder if rather than majoring in some real world discipline at Oxford, he didn’t study pre-Renaissance fables and lore. I guess that explains why most legislation that he proposes begins “Once upon a time…” and ends with “… lived happily ever after.”
The time has now arrived for me to share with you some serious ciphering that I’ve done regarding this problem. Hang in there now. It ain’t too difficult.
The population of Louisiana, per the 2010 census, was 4,533,372 give or take an illegal Mexican or two rebuilding New Orleans or processing chickens in Farmerville. Therefore, the $1.6 billion deficit equates to $353 per every man, woman and child. And since the governor and legislature won’t dare even consider raising taxes or reducing expenditures on such voter-important matters as football and golf courses, the only way for us to protect our school and medical care programs is to do what we always do in Louisiana when times get rough. Have a bake sale. That’s right, a statewide bake sale. This time we will be selling Pralines and Jambalaya. And once again, Ruston will take the lead in this important endeavor.
Let me explain.
No one makes pralines better than Erma Hudson, and no one prepares better jambalaya than Bill Cox. So it will be these two “saviors” to whom the entire state will turn to bring us over our economic Rubicon. We will give Erma and Bill each a sales goal of $800 million. For Bill, this will equate to 160 million servings at $5 each. When those 160 million servings are divided among all 4,533,000 citizens, it works out to 35 servings per year each. That’s doable. It’s even doable if we exclude babies and Yankees. With them out of the mix, we can still sell enough to reach our goal if everyone will buy just one serving per week all year long.
Now, as to Erma and her goal. If Erma sells her pralines for $1 each, she will need to sell 800 million. However, we already have a problem with a large percentage—say 20%– of our population who suffer with type 2 diabetes and/or morbid obesity. We will excuse them from buying pralines. That leaves about 3,625,000 of us to buy the 800 million pralines. So if each of those folks buys 220 pralines per year, Erma can reach her goal.
I figure that both Bill and Erma will incur a cost for the ingredients of about $50 million each. But in the tradition of all bake sales, the providers of the goodies pay for the ingredients. I know these two folks. $50 million each for Erma and Bill is certainly doable. They are old school and have saved for just such rainy days.
Now I know there will be those who will want to exempt everyone making over $250 thousand per year and the top 2% making over $1 million per year from having to buy their fair share of pralines and jambalaya as they are the ones to whom the rest of us poor schmucks owe our very existence. The typical Louisiana voter will likely be duped into believing this is the case. Our recently elected moral high road U.S. Senator will see to that. But even if we exempt the wealthiest of the wealthy from purchasing their fair share of pralines and jambalaya, I think the rest of us can cover for them.
So, relax. Thanks to my sophisticated grasp of economic realities and my advanced ciphering skills, I, along with Erma and Bill, have this deficit mess pretty much covered.
You’re welcome. I do what I can.