While you can try to run a nation like a family, you really can't run one like a business. The motivations are different.
Families take care of each other. They recognize strengths and weaknesses and act with empathy on behalf of members in need. They also keep a place for the rowdy and disagreeable even when it's not easy.
Businesses try to make a profit. Now there's nothing wrong with profits, but often getting there means neglecting the weak and casting off the disagreeable. Anybody whose ever worked for a company or in an industry forced to change its business model knows the drill.
"We are downsizing... it's a business decision." One way businesses have prospered in recent years is to absorb struggling firms, sell off what doesn't work, compromise the old pension plan and contract out production. "We'll keep the brand, but slap the nameplates on something we made overseas."
Running the nation like a business is a scary approach. Can you imagine selling off Cleveland, or Buffalo, or St. Louis just because aging urban centers are no longer profitable?
Coming out of the Great Depression, people did not have a lot of faith in bankers. They also expected businesses to change. Very little of the change that followed was voluntary.
Much of the New Deal wound up before the Supreme Court. While everything the president came up with did not work. Those things that did, have worked well for more than sixty years.
I'm not ready to trust a banker. I also do not want to see the country run like a business. That kind of mandate could lead to some very good people being declared surplus.
Families take care of each other. They recognize strengths and weaknesses and act with empathy on behalf of members in need. They also keep a place for the rowdy and disagreeable even when it's not easy.
Businesses try to make a profit. Now there's nothing wrong with profits, but often getting there means neglecting the weak and casting off the disagreeable. Anybody whose ever worked for a company or in an industry forced to change its business model knows the drill.
"We are downsizing... it's a business decision." One way businesses have prospered in recent years is to absorb struggling firms, sell off what doesn't work, compromise the old pension plan and contract out production. "We'll keep the brand, but slap the nameplates on something we made overseas."
Running the nation like a business is a scary approach. Can you imagine selling off Cleveland, or Buffalo, or St. Louis just because aging urban centers are no longer profitable?
Coming out of the Great Depression, people did not have a lot of faith in bankers. They also expected businesses to change. Very little of the change that followed was voluntary.
Much of the New Deal wound up before the Supreme Court. While everything the president came up with did not work. Those things that did, have worked well for more than sixty years.
I'm not ready to trust a banker. I also do not want to see the country run like a business. That kind of mandate could lead to some very good people being declared surplus.
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