Pick-Me-Ups and Tide-Me-Overs

As our family knows, my wife and I make a sharp distinction between a pick-me-up and a tide-me-over. It struck me that this would be a useful analogy for what is happening with the federal economy bailout, oops, I mean rescue.

A pick-me-up is a snack you have when your energy is low and you want to give yourself a boost. My wife and I have a pick-me-up most evenings, as we find ourselves fading sometime between dinner and bedtime.

A tide-me-over is a snack you have when you expect that a meal will be delayed and you want to have some extra fuel to span the gap. I'm particularly sensitive to eating on schedule, so I use tide-me-overs to prevent grouchiness when I know a meal will be significantly delayed. My wife, who is particularly sensitive to my grouchiness, is vigilant in advising me when she thinks a tide-me-over is called for. 

The essential point about a tide-me-over is that it is preventive. You don't wait until you run out of gas; if you do, then you need a pick-me-up. But you can rarely be certain you will actually need a a tide-me-over. You may not find your energy flagging even if a meal is late. Or the meal may arrive earlier than expected. So you could save the cost (however you measure it: time, money, calories, whatever) of the tide-me-over, and instead count on having a pick-me-up only if and when the need actually arises. Note that this does not factor in the potential loss of the pleasure from the missed tide-me-over, which may be yummy.

My experience is that pick-me-ups are usually more costly than tide-me-overs. I'm quite hungry when I find myself needing a pick-me-up, but not nearly as hungry when I indulge in a preventive tide-me-over. And when the meal arrives, I often enjoy it less after a crash pick-me-up than after a well-timed, modest tide-me-over.

So where is our economy? It is in desperate need of pick-me-ups. Companies (and many families) are running out of money and now are desperately hungry for cash. Worse, many cannot figure out when the next meal, that is, a recovery, will occur, especially as the financial news gets worse and worse. 

Now, some companies (and families) that use a tide-me-over strategy are better positioned to withstand the downturn than those who eschew preventive action as a disdainful, wasteful practice of the faint-at-heart. Now the latter folks are begging for massive pick-me-ups.

I'm not optimistic about lessons being learned here. Human nature is more tuned to pick-me-ups than tide-me-overs.

Maybe we should just put my wife in charge. She has an uncanny knack for knowing when a tide-me-over is due.