PrintNovember 19, 2010
Colin Powell's Algebra Lesson
Colin Powell said this to Larry King.[S]ome of the things that the Tea Party movement is asking for are not achievable. And I'm not sure it's right. It's not doable to say we want to cut spending, we want to reduce the deficit, but we don't want to increase revenue. This algebraic equation will not work.With all due respect to the general, that algebraic equation will work. The political equation probably won't work, but the algebraic one is completely doable. The algebra is pretty simple.Deficit = Spending - RevenueAs you can see, if we reduce spending without touching revenue, we reduce the deficit. In fact, if you trust my algebra, we could make the deficit zero by the following formula.Spending = RevenueThe algebra says that not only is there a solution to this equation, but that there is an infinite number of solutions. There is only one equation, but two unknowns: spending and revenue. It's something taught in algebra class. Both spending and revenue could be a dollar....(Read Full Article)
