Fiscal Conservatism in Saxetia

Saxetia, the prominent satrapy of the United Satrapies of Delusia, was noted for its sound and thriving economy in an often precarious and teetering spendthrift nation. In fact, a Saxetian satrap even ascended to the monarchy when the good people of Delusia had had enough of their government's wasteful ways.

The Saxetian king found a nation beset by high taxes, debts, and deficits. He soon took a strong hand, bringing tax relief to wealthy people and pumping trillions into foreign wars. His economic reforms transformed the economy completely. Soon he was racing for the Saxetian border, dripping tar and streaming feathers, and yet another king was ascending the throne of the USD.

Before the new king's royal butt had warmed the throne, his predecessor, having just crossed into the relative safety of Saxetia, turned and called, "Hey, it's all his fault!" And you should know this about the Delusianal people: they have the attention span of a cat with ADHD, the memory of an advanced Alzheimer's patient, and difficulty with words longer than five letters. But enough about that.

In the meantime, Saxetia had elevated a new satrap. While the new king was attempting to reconstruct the Delusianal economy, the new Saxetian satrap was lecturing the world about the virtues of the robust Saxetian economy, which was obviously superior to its national counterpart in every way. The Delusianal king was offering federal money to all the satrapies to stimulate their economies, but the Saxetian satrap refused it flamboyantly.

"Hah!" cried the satrap. "We don't need no stinkin' stimulus! We have a thriving economy based on sound conservative principles, while you are drowning in your tax-and-spend liberalness!"

This sold very well with Saxetians because, if Delusianals in general were the butter knives in the cutlery drawer, Saxetians were the soup spoons among the butter knives.

While the satrap was holding forth on the virtues of his satrapy, his chief minion approached to whisper that the satrapy did, in fact, face a 12 billion simoleon deficit for the next biennium. This did not faze the satrap.

"Curse you, profligate king!" emoted the satrap. "Keep your polluted stimulus money! Roscoe, go ahead and grab that 12 bill to balance our budget, ok? Curse you, I say! And also the horse you rode in on! Our righteous way is triumphant over your pestilential taxing and spending! Curse you, I say again! Our satrapy should secede from the USD because we're so much smarter and handle our economy so much better."

And so, with the budget balanced on federal money, the satrap continued to excoriate the national government for its fiscal sins. And the people ate it up. (These are the people, you may recall, that never got out of the kiddie section of the gene pool.) And this was golden until the end of the biennium, when a new deficit of not 12, but 27 billion simoleons loomed, and no further stimulus funds were in evidence.

Now, you may think that this little contretemps would, at the least, embarrass our intrepid satrap, but nothing could be further from the truth. Smoothly, he affixed the blame ...

"Bad people from outside the country are sneaking into our satrapy and ruining the economy, which otherwise would be super!" cried the satrap. "And the king isn't stopping them! That's a federal responsibility, especially for satrapies that threaten to secede! Fiscal conservatism doesn't apply in this case! So it's all his fault!"