Up until recently, I was unemployed. My monthly outflow of funds was admittedly small, but there were, none the less, places to make cuts. I did have a few bucks flowing in from various odds and ends jobs, but not nearly enough to cover my expenses. Thank goodness my financial institution has this little thing called a “savings account.” Now I don’t know if you have heard of these things, but apparently the bank holds on to your money and acts as a bit of a psychological barrier so that you don’t go hog wild with the money.

Well guess what, the state has one too! The colloquial word we use is the rainy day fund to describe this little account.

Now I have a crazy idea for ya… our state economy is probably in the worst shape it has been sense the great depression, surely this is what the rainy day fund was set up for. This current economy, after all, is in a fundamental state of transition that represents more than our usual 8-20 year blip of a recession – things may get a lot worse before they get better.

Now I am not saying we simply coast on this fund. Budgets should be reduced and inefficient programs should be cut all together. But why do we have to make drastic cuts when we do have some money stashed away? If things continue to go down we will continue to make cuts until we reach a bare bones state – but why do we need to harm good programs immediately simply because legislators refuse to use this option?

Of course we should strive to make a sustainable budget, but we also have to acknowledge that budgets hare susceptible to blips and downturns. We should use the funds from our times of plenty to lessen the pain when times are lean.

I don’t know, perhaps legislators are saving this money for the day when we enter a sort of “mad max” scenario wherein government has utterly broken down and modern currency is useless. I mean the landscape does look awfully familiar…