"Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds nought and six, result misery."
For those thinking "huh?" on seeing something like "twenty pounds nought and six", here it is, modernised:
Annual income: $20. Annual expenditure: $19. Result: happiness.
Annual income: $20. Annual expenditure: $21. Result: misery.
In business, we call this "Cash Flow Management". AKA: "Cash is King". AKA: "a dollar is much harder to earn than it is to spend". [*]
Below are two very recent instances of Dems not understanding -- or refusing to understand, or ignoring -- this rule of life. A rule Mr Micawber understood nearly two centuries ago:
1. The Stephen Colbert firing by CBS.
The Dems say Colbert had the "highest rating show on Late Night TV". That the show was bringing in "piles of ad revenue". So: "why cancel??" Their answer to themselves is: the only reason CBS is cancelling Colbert is because he's a Trump critic and CBS need the approval from the Trump administration for merger they have planned with a company called Skydance.
They forget, or ignore: that Late Night has crumbled, and crumbled everywhere, to barely 20% of where it was under the likes of Johnny Carson. Being at the top of a pile of duds is just being at the top of other losers, like Jimmy Kimmel, Jimmy Fallon and Seth Myers.
Ad revenue has dropped along with the ratings. A show like Colbert's that made $400 million a year in advertising revenue under David Letterman, now rakes in just $60 million from ads. I heard Peter Dominick on CNN's Abby Philip show saying this is a "bunch of money" and of course it is. But the expenses of the show are $100 million! This was pointed out to him by the token conservative on the show, but Dominck just plowed on regardless. (Mind you, he's labelled a "comedian", so there's that... ).
But, as Micawber would say: "Annual income $60 million; Annual expenditure: $100 million. Result: misery. Result: $40 million loss, per year, and getting bigger every year.
Which is why CBS is cancelling the show as of May 2026. We're expecting Colbert's other Late Night buddies, Kimmel, Fallon and Myers, will soon drop off their perches as well. (Which tends to discount the Dems' theory that the CBS cancellation of Colbert is only to curry favour from the Trump administration for the CBS-Skydance merger).
2. The players of the Women's National Basketball Association
The WNBA are demanding more money. They wore T-shirts on court the other day saying "Pay us what you owe us". By which they mean that they ought to get more of the annual revenues. Currently they get to share about 10% of the revenues. They want 50%.
Which is a bit rich. Because...
I've seen a lot of them making their cases on TV. They sternly ignore, or don't know, or refuse to know, the reality. Which is that their league, the WNBA has always lost money and continues to lose money. Lately at rate of around $40 million per year. But they look only at the revenue (which Micawber called "income" [*]). They ignore, or don't know about, the costs, the expenditures. Which means they lose money every year. Which money is funded out of the net income that the MEN make. Yikes!
You see why their demands are a bit rich.
As wits have pointed out on X, the ladies of the WNBA actually owe the league money. Each of the 250 WNBA players owes the League $160,000 just for this year. Heh!
Other wags have suggested improvements that might make the WNBA more popular: lower the basket to make dunking easier, shorten the court; and...if that doesn't work... replace the women with men! Heh!
Maybe all these reality-denying folks who don't admit the importance of professional media and sports actually making money, not losing it, are mistaking their David Copperfields.
Instead of the wisdom of a Dickensian Micawber, in David Copperfield, they prefer magic numbers that can be conjured up by the famous Noo Joisey illusionist David Copperfield. Some day, some way, we'll make money... by magick!
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[*] Micawber's use of the word "income" can be confusing, as it's sometimes used to mean "net income", which is after expenses. Clearer would be to use "Revenue"
