[quote=poorgradstudent][quote=ctr70]But I would really love to see a REAL business person get the presidency (George W. was not a REAL self-made business person and Arnold was an actor, not a real biz person). Just like I was hoping a businesswomen (Meg Whitman) would have won the CA governorship vs. the career bureaucrat that won. No more lawyers and career bureaucrats that have never had real jobs outside of politics. I like to see someone that has had the responsibility of employing people in the private sector, running a company, innovating, running a balance sheet, etc… I have always wanted to see Micheal Bloomberg run.[/quote]
On paper this kind of thinking sounds good, but in practice Good Government is nothing like Good Business. Businesses exist to make money, governments exist to provide public services. As a business owner if you’re doing something that isn’t profitable, you can stop doing it. Government has an obligation to continue taking care of the disabled and the elderly and defending our borders, even though it can’t make money doing it.
Having worked in both private and public sector jobs, I’m surprised by the “government is wasteful compared to private enterprise” argument. Sure, inefficient businesses eventually fail. But on the whole, given the scope of what it does, the government does a lot of things very, very well. The last company I worked for was incredibly wasteful in how much we paid our mediocre CEO. Upper management made mistakes left and right thanks to not listening to the concerns of workers how their new initiatives actually reduced productivity. Middle managers often fudged numbers on their failed pet projects to save their skins. Show me a private company that doesn’t have plenty of waste and fat to trim, and I bet there are no more than 2-3 employees working there.
I will agree that because both sides of the political aisle are in bed with huge corporations, government does very little to really incentivize small businesses. Both sides pander around election time, but policy rarely cuts in favor of the little guy.[/quote]
You gotta be kidding me. Governments and Unions are terribly, terribly inefficient. One of the few competitive industries left in the U.S. is Silicon Valley b/c it is the purest form of capitalism left in this country and a “meritocracy” where brains and talent get you ahead. And there are no unions or seniority in Silicon Valley. Detroit is the opposite. They got their asses kicked in the 1980’s by Japan b/c of their bloated Unions, pensions and health care costs.
I worked in a Union Hotel in college and a non Union Hotel. People in the Union Hotel did not hustle, it was old, out of date and a crappy place overall. Workers only did what they had to do and nothing more. It is human nature when you have job security, seniority, safety, you stop hustling and innovating. Now most of Europe (except Germany) is imploding b/c most of it is one giant Governmental/Union body.
And the private sector has a right to do what they want with their profits and pay people what they want b/c their revenue comes from PRODUCT SALES, not TAXES like the Government.
But I also do believe there needs to be some Government and some regulation. There is definitely a place for some Government. And I do agree that there needs to be protections against big disparities in wealth and the abuses of that wealth getting out of control. We don’t want to live in a county with a tiny # of super wealth and huge amount of poor.
Some excellent Big, Big Government success stories…China and Russia in the 1960’s, North Korea, Cuba…all wonderful places we all would dream of living. They all needed fences to keep people IN instead of OUT.
