Quote:
Originally Posted by txdot-guy
I’ve always been confused by people who think a good businessman would make a good President.
Without debating Trump’s business acumen the fact is that Government is not a business. I would much rather have someone who shows acumen for good governance rather than good business in the office of the president.
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I couldn't disagree more, txdot. Most of the people running the government are lawyers. They measure their success by how many new laws they enact. I would much rather see government staffed by competent "public servants" with business experience who know how to earn a profit - which in the case of government means running a surplus, not the perennial deficits of $2+ trillion year in & year out that we are currently saddled with!
Don't give me this crap about "government is not a business". That's just an excuse for boundless corruption, over-spending and waste - all of which are rampant throughout the DC swamp. There is no accountability, no incentive to deliver efficient results at reasonable cost.
In the private sector, if you screw up and start booking losses instead of profits you will be fired. In the public sector, if you screw up you just blame it on inadequate funding. Not only will you NOT be fired - you will be REWARDED with a bigger budget next year. How insane is that? The ranks of government are full of people who have failed upward.
Just to be clear, I say all of this as a seasoned Keynesian, someone who has long supported prudent public pump-priming during periods of private economic contraction.
Also to be clear, I don't mean to over-generalize or suggest there are no competent and dedicated "public servants" among the millions of government employees. Michael Lewis spotlighted a few of the good ones in his latest book.
But the people who actually control the nation's purse strings have proven themselves over & over again to be infuriatingly incompetent, untrustworthy and corrupt. I may scoff at Elon Musk's promise to squeeze $2 trillion in waste out of our current $6.5 trillion federal budget, but that doesn't mean I'm not willing to let him try!
Instead of lawyers, we should turn government over to business people who know how to meet payrolls and turn around failing organizations. If I had anything to say about it, I would require every aspirant for public office in this country to write an essay explaining the difference between debt and equity. The essay would have to be submitted and approved by a panel of non-partisan finance & accounting experts before anyone could run for public office.
If that sounds crazy, think about how long we've let the lawyers fuck everything up. At this point, what do we have to lose? My proposed screening process would tell everyone whether a would-be politician has the slightest clue about the real underpinnings of growth in a private market economy like ours - or if, alternatively, they just want to stick their greedy snouts into the public trough and chomp away like the pigs most of them are!
Trump as a Businessman
