Monty Brewster is to blame for out of control government spending

Joshua Goldowsky blames a fictional character

Monty Brewster is to blame for out of control government spending

Posted on May 28th, 2009 by Joshua Goldowsky

In Brewster’s Millions, Richard Pryor’s character Monty Brewster was given the challenge of spending $30 million in 30 days. If he was successful, he would get a $300 million inheritance from a long lost rich uncle. If he failed, he got nothing. The catch was that after 30 days, he could not have any possessions bought with the $30 million, and could return to the lawyers’ office with only the shirt on his back. (That shirt, coincidently enough, was a Chicago Cubs jersey.) The point, his deceased rich uncle told him via a pre-death recorded video, was to teach him to not squander money by making him so sick of spending money that he would think twice before doing it.

Apparently, the previous administration, as well as the current administration, have seen this movie and have subscribed to this method, hoping that if they spend enough money, a rich uncle — Sam? Mao? — will come up with the cash prize. Spend a whole bunch of money on failing banks, money that you will not see any returns on, and have no tangible assets once you are done (sure the government now owns parts of these banks, but 40% of nothing is still nothing). Same goes for the auto bailouts. Yeah, we own a bankrupt General Motors, America!

But not all the money is thrown away on bad investments. Some money is spent on pure spectacle — Monty stages a ballgame between the New York Yankees and his former minor league baseball team; Barack sends Air Force One to scare the crap out of New Yorkers. And the cost of those Teleprompters, paying off Hilary’s campaign debt, and keeping Joe Biden’s mouth shut, while well worth it, doesn’t seem to be producing any tangible results.

Conversely, just as in the film some of Monty’s purposely long shot bets paid off — he bet on some college lacrosse game that he was sure he would lose but won; he bought stock on some hair-brained scheme involving icebergs that wound up making him a lot of money; he won the New York City mayoral race as a third party, no party candidate — maybe, just maybe some of these things that the government is doing will benefit the taxpayer instead of leaving us with nothing but the shirts on our backs. But again, there is the catch. Since Monty made this money from the $30 million he had to spend, he was still obligated to spend it within the specified amount of time. I’m looking at you Social Security and Medicare.

Monty’s story ends well. He, at the last minute, is able to rid himself of the $30 million and wins his full inheritance. The obvious difference here is that we are the ones spending and not leaving an inheritance. The rich uncle may well turn out to be our grandchildren. Monty is the example our wishful-thinking government is following — that all this Keynesian spending will prop up the economy and eventually pay for itself and then some. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t. We may not know for another generation or more. Until then, I’m voting for None of The Above.