Italian Prime Minister: You Know What? This Public Spending Binge We've Been On Is Pretty Much Kicking Our Ass

When your outgo exceeds your income sounded awfully hick, but plain and true, didn't it?

ROME (Dow Jones)--Italy is adopting EUR25 billion in austerity measures because public spending is "no longer sustainable," Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said Wednesday at a press conference in Rome.

The expansion of "cradle-to-grave social protections" had triggered uncontrolled spending trends that went beyond serving true needs and now had to be reined in, he said.

His government approved the 2011-12 budget, which includes spending cuts worth that amount on Tuesday evening. The measures should reduce Italy's budget deficit to 2.7% of gross domestic product in 2012, as required by the European Union, Berlusconi said.

At some point you'd like to believe that general government spending (not just the Italian government, let's say, any government.. California, New Jersey, Boogerlump Mississippi) would adjust to the realities of lower top line revenues. Kinda like, oh I don't know, businesses, or families (economically pretty much the same thing) who have lost income and have had to adjust. In good times we tend to let it roll, in bad times we suck it in, that sort of thing.

Perhaps govt. leaders who must do arithmetic with numbers followed by six zeroes are capable of doing the same calculations as those of us who deal with only a zero or two.

You can move the decimal point to the left or right. The math is pretty much the same.

posted by Dave In Texas at 11:33 PM

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