McArdles catches budget sleights of hand:
Looking at each program in isolation is, unsurprisingly, a favorite trick of people in budget meetings when cuts are on the table--emphasizing the downside of the cuts, while protesting that the expenditure is but a small part of the organization's overall spending. Novice financial executives who fall for this soon realize their error: almost everything is but a small part of the organization's overall spending, and yet if you don't cut some of it, you will still end up in bankruptcy.