The budget explained in simple English

It should be pointed out that much like a family, there are perfectly valid reasons you might want to carry 140k in debt on 20k a year in income -- owning a house or tools for your trade, investing in your children's future, covering short term cashflow issues, etc.

The problem is that our household really requires about the amount of money we're putting in to it (insurance, healthcare, utilities, etc), but part of our family keeps convincing everyone in the household to take lower paying jobs on the theory that we can use the free time to make even more money on a side project. So far, everyone took lower paying jobs, but the side projects haven't materialized. This mixed-state is definitely unsustainable long term.

I'd say it's just not realistic to have this low of a paying job, even if we did take on a lot of side projects for income, but that's a pretty contentious political debate. (I mean, I'd argue that history agrees with me, but doesn't everyone?)

Government debt is not like household debt

https://econproph.com/2011/07/14/private-debt-vs-government-...

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/01/14/why-public-...

https://mises.org/library/government-debt-not-private-debt

etc etc

Unfortunately, too many will look at this as a rationale to tax more rather than spend less.

What a relatable analogy!

I wonder if there is a cognitive rule / bias that explains how taking away zeroes makes comparison of figures much clearer...?

The budget misunderstood in simple English