That'll Be One Latte, Thanks Very Much

Jillian Bandes | September 23, 2009 12:57 PM

The Washington Post reports that President Obama is getting his head honchos together today to tell them they need to trim $100 million from their personal budgets. This, after Obama's pushed for his $3.5 trillion budget outline in 2010 on top of a $1.2 trillion deficit.

Greg Mankiw, economics professor at Harvard University, puts these numbers in perspective. This has been done before, but it never ceases to amaze me.

...imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall. How much would he or she announce that spending had to be cut? By $3 over the course of the year--approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year.

HT Liz Mair