Women Vs. Government: Who Spends More?

We women are some of the best spenders out there. Women in my demographic—young twenty-somethings—have a plethora of advertisements targeted directly at us, enticing us to buy the newest, latest, coolest things. And buy we do! Well, buy we did.

Ask any woman how easy it is to take a credit card that isn’t hers and spend, knowing someone else is footing the bill. She buys new shoes when she already has a closetful, goes to the spa daily, buys lunch for all her friends. Not too hard to imagine. But now imagine her benefactor suffers a huge economic blow and can’t fund her lifestyle the same way anymore. Would it be cruel to expect her to cut back on her spending? Not in the least, considering she never earned the money to begin with.

Now imagine that woman is the government. Isn’t it about time she is held accountable for the money she has already spent, before she starts demanding more? Is that really asking too much?

As the daily headlines scream bloody terror about the economy, whether or not we ourselves have been laid-off, furloughed, or suffered pay losses, we most certainly know people who have. The recession might not have hit our pocketbooks directly yet, but we are well aware that spending is declining, and either out of necessity or empathy, we are cutting back as well. A dinner party instead of a night out on the town? Check. Hitting up the sale rack? Check. Scoping out the best happy hour specials? Check check.

We learn to make do with the money that we have, because, well, we have to. No one is supplementing our incomes. Maybe we ladies are spenders when we can be, but we also know when times call for thriftiness.

Now let’s bring Uncle Sam into this equation. Times are hard. People everywhere are cutting back on their spending. Everywhere but in the government, that is. With the rest of America struggling to make ends meet, people defaulting on their mortgages, and the general economy at an all time low, why isn’t the government lightening the load a bit?

Not just in Hawaii, but across the nation, tax revenues have been declining as people earn and spend less money. Yet instead of reevaluating programs and looking for ways to protect consumers from higher taxes, Hawaii is looking to raise taxes! Right now the Hawaii legislature is considering raising the General Excise Tax, which directly hurts businesses and consumers; repealing income tax credits, hurting families; and increasing the transient accommodations tax, making tourism more expensive and thereby exacerbating an already hurting industry.

It’s not more taxes we need—it’s smarter use of those taxes which are already levied. Hawaii has one of the highest costs of living, and not surprisingly, has the second highest tax burden per capita. Of course we need to keep government programs running. Even in hard times, our roads must be paved, our keiki must be educated, life must go on.

Similarly, as consumers, we have those bills we simply must pay: food, rent, mortgage to name a few. But we cut back on unnecessary spending, simply because we have to if we want to survive. We eliminate wasteful spending, decrease our discretionary spending.

So if the government is looking at depleted resources like the rest of us, isn’t it a perfect time to analyze the efficiency and efficacy of government programs and spending? A website that informed us about how exactly the government is spending our money would be a fair way of letting us, the benefactors, see what’s stopping her from balancing the checkbook. It’s not that we don’t love her; we just don’t want her to get fat from all the free lunches.