Candidate Romney claims that his qualification for President is that he
is a successful businessman. What he does not seem to understand is that
government is not a business. A business produces products or services for a
profit for its shareholders. A government provides services paid for with taxes
collected from the citizens and businesses. If the government were a business
it could privatize the Defense Department. Following the Romney business
tactic, the Pentagon Corporation could sell our surplus aircraft carriers to China, as Russia did. We do not need seven nuclear aircraft carrier task forces when no
other country has more than one. We could level the playing field, sell off
some of our ships and pass on the profits to the shareholders. That’s what
businesses do.
If that meant laying off a lot of sailors, taking away their pensions
and medical benefits and dumping them onto the distressed labor market, so be
it. What matters to business is dividends for the shareholders.
Business thinks in terms of short term gains and quick profits.
Governments think long term. It takes years to plan a bridge, for instance, and
no private corporation is going to take that long range view. If Michigan’s
distressed highway department sold my company the Portage Lake lift bridge,
which is already nearing the end of its useful life, we could charge a toll,
make a profit for our investors, skip maintenance costs, and when the bridge no
longer functioned, sell it for scrap to milk every last dollar out of a
depleted asset. So what if the folks who had no bridge couldn’t cross the
waterway? That’s their problem. We can go elsewhere, buy some other bridge, and
do it again.
That’s why you do not want to elect a businessman to be president. It’s
the wrong mind set.
No comments:
Post a Comment