The Fundamental Payment Error

One of the most common thinking mistakes is what psychologists have long called the "fundamental attribution error," wherein we attribute mostly positive motives to our own behavior and mostly negative or malevolent intentions to the actions of others.  Yet, just as common would surely be our tendency to expect something for nothing, whether it is believing that the government and not taxpayers will be paying for the current spate of bailouts, or the governing board of a private independent school thinking that someone else should pay for the institution's future. Maybe we can call this the "fundamental payment error."

The reality is that someone always has to pay.  The only question is who and with what effect.  We pay with our children's future if the United States, the United Kingdom, and other countries insist on borrowing or printing their way through the economic mess.  And a school pays with its soul if it fails to fund deferred maintenance or neglects to attend to capital replacement.