Spending

“ It requires some training, perhaps, to accomplish this economy, but when once used to it, you will find there is more satisfaction in rational saving than in irrational spending. Here is a recipe which I recommend: I have found it to work an excellent cure for extravagance, and especially for mistaken economy: When you find that you have no surplus at the end of the year, and yet have a good income, I advise you to take a few sheets of paper and form them into a book and mark down every item of expenditure. ”

“ To enable comparisons to be made between the value of money incomes in different places, which is often an object of great practical interest; not only individuals contemplating residential changes, but also governments and other large spending bodies, spending money in widely distant places, having to consider this question. ”

“ This is a long list, but I wanted to make a point: my budget is active and compassionate. Discretionary spending grows by a healthy, responsible 4 percent, enough to meet our needs. We fund goals like education, health and defense. We reduce debt at a record rate. ”

“ By the removal of the unnecessary mouths, and by exacting from the farmer the full value of the farm, a greater surplus, or, what is the same thing, the price of a greater surplus, was obtained for the proprietor, which the merchants and manufacturers soon furnished him with a method of spending upon his own person, in the same manner as he had done the rest. ”

“ And this larger balance would be drawn, upon for the extra expenses, such as entertaining and amusements, charities, and the thousand and one pleasant ways of spending money that are open to the possessor of the larger income, and are rigorously out of the reach of the owner of 500l. ”

“ The spending of the fortune has taken a certain number of years (suppose ten) , and during that time 1,000,000 dollars' worth of work has been done by the people, who have been paid that sum for it. Where is the product of that work? By your own statements, wholly consumed; for the man for whom it has been done is now a beggar. You have given therefore, as a nation, 1,000,000 dollars' worth of work, and ten years of time, and you have produced, as ultimate result, one beggar. Excellent economy, gentlemen! ”

“ Many of them will tell you it's a blend of spending that will create jobs immediately, spending that will ensure investments for long-term economic growth, as well as some mix of tax cuts to put money back in the pockets of middle-class families and small business owners, and that a correct blend of that will get the economy moving again. ”

“ Finance.—The revenue of the republic is derived mainly from customs duties, liquor, tobacco and slaughter taxes, railways and steamers, the postal and telegraph services, and the gunpowder monopoly. The principal spending departments are those of war and marine, internal development, and finance. ”

“ A lot of other experimental schemes are being worked out by an administration of which the people demand action. We are spending huge sums of money, borrowed for the purpose, in an endeavor to squander ourselves back to prosperity. ”

“ Take, for instance, the common notion so plausible at the first glance, of the encouragement given to industry by lavish expenditure. A, who spends his whole income, and even his capital, in expensive living, is supposed to give great employment to labor. B, who lives on a small portion, and invests the remainder in the funds, is thought to give little or no employment. For every body sees the gains which are made by A's tradesmen, servants, and others, while his money is spending. ”

“ First, it shifts our emphasis in public and private spending from consumption to investment, initially by jumpstarting the economy in the short term and investing in our people, their jobs, and their incomes over the long run. ”

“ By this means each individual will be more careful and economical in his expenditures, and generally live within his income. He must be reasonable in spending, or his memorandum or record-book, if it be honestly kept, will stand to his discredit. ”

“ "Economy does not lie in sparing money, but in spending it wisely." ”

“ And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale. ”

“ They will not let them, for pride's sake, but keep them empty, aired, and the grounds mown and dressed, at a cost of four or five thousand pounds a year. The spending is for a great part in servants, in many houses exceeding a hundred. ”

“ This spending of the best part of one’s life earning money in order to enjoy a questionable liberty during the least valuable part of it, reminds me of the Englishman who went to India to make a fortune first, in order that he might return to England and live the life of a poet. He should have gone up garret at once. ”

“ The sort of economy we ought to practice may be effected, and ought to be effected, by a careful study and assessment of the tasks to be performed; and the money spent ought to be made to yield the best possible returns in efficiency and achievement. And, like good stewards, we should so account for every dollar of our appropriations as to make it perfectly evident what it was spent for and in what way it was spent. ”

“ It is through the expenditure of public money that the State works in all of its activities, and it is the first duty of the science of finance to determine their nature and scope. Finance accepts public expenditures as a fact. ”

“ And in particular, I pledge that the expenditures of your government will be administered with the utmost thrift and frugality. I will insist that the government get a dollar's value for a dollar spent. The government will set an example of prudence and economy. ”

“ In urging a course of strict economy we admit that it is hard, embarrassing, perplexing, onerous, but it is by no means impracticable. A cool survey of one's expenditures, compared with his income; a wise balancing of ends to be gained; a firm and calm determination to break with custom wherever it is opposed to good sense, and a patience that does not chafe at small and gradual results, will do much towards establishing the principle of economy and securing its benefits. Economy has, however, deeper roots than even this—in the desires. It is there, after all, that we control our expenditures. ”

“ In finance the most striking effect in America has, on the first view of it, certainly been good. It has enabled the Government to obtain and to keep a vast surplus of revenue over expenditure. Even before the civil war it did this—from 1837 to 1857. ”

“ The great end of legislation in matters of national wealth, according to the prevalent opinion, was to create consumers. A great and rapid consumption was what the producers, of all classes and denominations, wanted, to enrich themselves and the country. This object, under the varying names of an extensive demand, a brisk circulation, a great expenditure of money, and sometimes totidem verbis a large consumption, was conceived to be the great condition of prosperity. ”

“ The proper business of finance, I take it, ought to be to consider of the means to improve the revenue, and introducing economy into the expenditures; to recommend general systems of finance, without having any thing to do with the actual administration of them, because, if he engages in the executive business, we shall be deprived of his talents in more important concerns. ”

“ I would ask, by way of finishing the picture which our friend from Carolina so happily commenced, and in order to settle the question of reckless expenditure, on which you all seem to exhaust your eloquence, how many of those that belong to our fashionable society can afford its expenses without impairing their estates?—how many of them would be able to continue them without the assistance of credit?—and how many of them, if their estates were to be settled to-morrow, would be able to pay fifty cents in a dollar? ”

“ The distribution of provisions, money, and merchandise in just proportions, according to times and places, is the true secret of finance and the source of wealth, provided those who administer it have foresight enough to suffer a present apparent loss, in order really to obtain immense profits in the future. ”

“ Take care that you know definitely what sum you can afford to spend on your household expenses, and make it a point of conscience never to exceed it. Market with ready money, if possible; but, if it is more convenient to pay by the month, or quarter, never make that an excuse for letting your bills mount up to double what you can afford to pay. With accounts, carefully kept, it is quite possible to regulate the expenditure to the income. ”

“ True money will be a present economy so far as it takes the place of the national debt, and it will be a future revenue to the extent of the increase of population. The rate of increase has been more than three and a half per cent. per annum, but taking it at three per cent. there are persons living who will be living when the population will be two hundred and fifty millions, and the currency proportionate. ”

“ Suddenly, agriculture raised her drooping head, for commerce beckoned her to prosperity. Your people began to pay their debts and to become rich. Public credit was restored; the Treasury began to fill readily. Sources of revenue were explored, certain of continually increasing, equally certain of being never exhausted, except by folly and madness. Indeed, sir, so perfect was the financial machinery that it admitted of no improvement. ”

“ I have heard a very experienced financier say, "If you want to raise a certain cheer in the House of Commons make a general panegyric on economy; if you want to invite a sure defeat, propose a particular saving". The process is simple. Every expenditure of public money has some apparent public object ”

“ The economic demands which make up the budget of a particular person at a particular time are clearly interdependent. A man's income or the greater part of it is usually distributed among various channels of expenditure in a certain fairly constant way. ”

“ One may build a house or purchase a motor-car instead of going abroad. And whichever choice is made, related expenditures must be made in consequence for which, on the assumption of a definite amount of income, compensation must be made by curtailment of outlay at other points. What seems clear316 in general is that one's total budget is relative to the general plan and manner of life one deems for him the best possible and that this plan, more or less definitely formulated, more or less steadily operative, is what really determines how far expenditure shall go in this direction and in that. ”

“ For five or six years the income has not been forty thousand, but there has been no reduction in the style of expenditure. Whence comes the money? Not a burden has been shaken off, fresh are annually heaped on. ”

“ Its expenditure swelled the money receipts of many classes and raise the total income of the nation at the very time when it was diverting national activity from production of the goods and services which ordinary people wished to buy. ”

“ Fourthly, Want of Money in such a Country as ours, occasions a greater Consumption of English and European Goods, in Proportion to the Number of the People, than there would otherwise be. Because Merchants and Tradeers by whom abundance of Artificers and labouring Men are employed, finding their other Affairs require what Money they can get into their hands, oblige those who work for them to take one half, or perhaps two thirds Goods in Pay. ”

“ The usual course of development is this: among an advancing people, the number of money transactions increases at first; later, when education has become general, and the people have grown habituated to the giving and receiving of credit, the circulation of money is accelerated, and an increase of the substitutes for money effected. ”

“ X.25 If the income of workingmen is under consideration, we have to deal with index numbers for prices of those goods entering into workingmen's budgets, and with index numbers of the quantities of such goods. The first will show the cost of living of the workingman, or the purchasing power of a workingman's dollar ”

“ The chief part, therefore, of what they receive in money, whether as wages or as the price of the surplus produce of their provision grounds, they can lay aside for occasional calls, and, when they set their minds on an acquisition or an indulgence, they do not stickle at the cost. ”

“ At the beginning of any year take the amount of real wealth in the hands of the non-producers. During the year the governments continue, the taxes are gathered and the expenses are paid: your debts, your expenses and all; the producers have continued to labour as usual, and at the end of the year find themselves just where they were at its beginning; but the property of the wealthy classes has increased about three per cent. ”

“ In harmony with this effort the expenditures of the Government should be revised and cut down to the lowest point consistent with efficiency. Economy will be an important ally. Even in small affairs it will be the witness to our purposes. Through these agencies our currency will be improved, and we shall be brought to specie payments, while the national credit will be established. ”

“ But if the reader still finds the picture unconvincing, let us shift the scene from domestic economy to commerce, and substitute for the careful housewife an enterprising business man. Now, as anyone who has a business man for his father will have often heard him say, the vagueness and caprice which characterize our personal expenditure would be quite intolerable in business affairs. ”

“ Our late excellent king's regard for economy led him, in the early part of his reign, to approve a new arrangement of the civil list expenditure, by which he accepted of a fixed revenue, in lieu of those improvable funds which had formerly been appropriated to the crown. ”