A Generation of Sociopaths: How the Baby Boomers Betrayed America

by Bruce Cannon Gibney

Distinguishing between investment and consumption is a subject treated at length in policy literature and worthy of considerable pondering by bureaucrats, but no voter has time or opportunity to do the same. When bond issuances arrive on the ballot, the options are “yes” and “no.” To resolve that binary in the three minutes allotted in the voting booth, a rule of thumb helps: if a project does not provide benefits for at least as long as the term of the associated debt, that project should be viewed with (nondispositive) suspicion. Projects with fleeting and unquantifiable benefits are likely to be disguised consumption. It should also (though it hasn’t, for thirty-odd years) go without saying that total ascertainable benefits should exceed total costs.* These are not rules to be applied with unthinking narrowness.