One of the most beloved children’s stories tells of an emperor who is tricked by two fashion hucksters to buy the most beautiful clothes—that don’t happen to exist.  The emperor, so taken with his new look, marches in a parade, covered in his new garments.  It is revealed, of course, that in the end, the emperor is totally naked.  The emperor saw only what he wanted to see.

Stories are not only about plot, but about how they are told.  What if we tweak one little element to see what happens?

The emperor, desperate to do right by his ailing kingdom, seeks counsel from an unlikely source: a pair of visiting merchants.  The merchants tell him to simply wear his old clothes, not shiny new ones; for if he looks more like a common man, he will be trusted.  So, in preparations for the parade, the emperor puts on his most elegant robes; but underneath, he is wearing a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers.  Right before the parade starts, the emperor removes his expensive robes, hands them to an attendant, and marches down the street in common, old clothes. Several of the emperor’s enemies at court were furious, and afraid that the emperor would be seen as trustworthy, so they start spreading rumors that the emperor is, in fact, naked.  “Your eyes are deceiving you,” they say.  “Didn’t you see him remove his robes?  The emperor has no clothes!”  The enemies’ allies spread the news far and wide, so that even those that saw the emperor wearing his old clothes begin to wonder if their eyes are deceiving them.

In the original, the story focuses on a manipulative merchants looking to make money for themselves and a vain ruler that was easily fooled.  But what if the ruler isn’t vain and what if the merchants speak honestly?  The whole story changes.  It stops being a cautionary tale about an individual’s vanity and becomes a story about corporate manipulation.

Right now, I’m becoming quite concerned about the continued description of budget gaps in federal and state budgets as being only about spending.  Many keep telling us it is about spending, rather than the dramatic decline in revenue due to both investments and the loss of taxable income.  Trotting out the family trope, these gossips tell the people that “those people” are in desperate financial conditions because they spent too much and used too much credit.  All that spending!  That spending was $20 jeans from Old Navy and a house with only 250 more square feet (the equivalent of one more bedroom), and yet it cost 50% more than 30 years ago due to inflated pricing.  Then they were tricked into a home loan that escalated its interest 300%.  Of course, this wouldn’t be so bad if the primary wage earner had not lost his job and the secondary wage earner had received a raise in the last 4 years.  But it must only be about spending.  I have to shoehorn it into my ideology, even if it doesn’t fit.  It couldn’t possibly be about anything else.

Now many Republican governors are complaining about the Jobs bill because it only gives them money for 2012.  It doesn’t deal with “the systemic problem” and will “hurt” their budget next year, they say.  There is only a systemic problem if we ignore half of what makes up the system.  If we ignore revenue, then any spending is a problem.

But the ironic argument is the rejection of money today simply because it won’t be there tomorrow.  What if the above family, which is already strapped for cash, has a daughter going to Harvard.  She has great scholarships already, she’s beginning her Junior year, and started before her father lost his job.  A one-year scholarship comes along that will cover the difference.  But her Dad, already worried about money, rejects the scholarship and then demands that her daughter transfer to a local university.  The transfer would not only mean losing her Harvard scholarships, but make her unable to apply for scholarships at her new university, leaving her with the same budget problem.

Of course, that story can have a different ending.  With a junior year covered, she only needs to deal with one more year, and over the course of that year, they can make new plans, and perhaps seek new scholarships.  She can also take out a low interest loan.  More choices and more time to make those choices.

See, the spending charade confuses the crowd.  With their eyes, they know that revenues are down because people are out of work and that once people are back to work, revenues will go back up.  But there are people whispering all around them to pay attention only to the spending—ignore what you only think you see.

And “pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”

Related articles

• The Emperor’s New Clothes (espliego.wordpress.com)
• just hopelessly stupid (kimflum.wordpress.com)