Numbers Don't Lie: Why Our Nation Is In Serious Trouble

I think we're making way too much of this dichotomy between "business" and "government". It's really the same type of people in both. Think of it this way.
A person grows up with the determination to become big and powerful. So he goes to school, learns business administration, or whatever other field he is into, and then enters the work force. He will likely apply for both business and government jobs. Whichever he can get first. Once in, he will climb the ladder to the top. The only difference will be in the method of incorporation of the particular organization they have chosen (by legal charter or private).
So the people in either business or government are not separate species. They are the same product of sinful humanity who have the same values, goals, lifestyles and deteminations.

In fact, the line between business and govt often becomes blurry, the way some business leaders are appointed to boards and comittees in the government, where they can bear their influence. The result is favorable, not to "the people" (all of us), or even the company (as we see when they cut jobs yet give themselves raises and other perks) but rather to themselves. Yet no one will ever see that as long as we make this distinction between "good" business versus "bad" government.
They are essentially all the same. The events from the last few years should have finally shown us that, but alas, it apparently hasn't.

 

The difference between business and government is that (in general) a business perceives a need for a product or service and then risks it's own resources to deliver the product or service to the consumer at a cost that will result in a profit to the business.

The government perceives a need or service and then risks the resources of others (the taxpayers) to deliver a product or service to the consumer at a cost which is unrelated to it's value. With the usual result being that unneeded services are delivered (or not) at a cost to the taxpayer way beyond the value of the service (if there is any value at all).

 

My friend, I not only read Beck's article but also Cembalest's original work before making my post. I suggest you read them as well as PolitiFact's, opinions about them that you've referenced in your link.

Cembalest only regrets publishing the data because it has been used for political purposes - not because it wasn't accurate with his work. PolitiFact claims some errors in Cembalest's work and give's Obama's crew three more counts that Cembalest would. Cembalest sticks with his conclusion on two but does concede a mistake on one as noted by PolitiFact. Yet the bottom line is still that Obama's cabinet doesn't have the relevant business experience that other administrations have had.

 

Read Cembalest's original article! (See link provided in post 29.)

 

The title of this thread reminds me of the old saying, perhaps erroneously attributed to Mark Twain:

Obviously the title falls under "statistics."

 

There is indeed some serious lying coming out of the Obama administration. Bureaucrats do admire, promote, and defend bureaucrats even when they lie. But it may or may not have anything to do with his cabinet not having as many members with prior business experience as most other Presidents have had.

Cembalest's statistics, on the other hand, are very factual.

 

You've got it, Targus! Despite this lesson being learned over and over and over a lot of people still want the government to solve all their problems. They like how government bureaucrats think and act.

 

The character of the people may be similar but there are some real important differences in the regulating consequences of the two.

Business mismanagemnt has - should have - consequences and so should labor union mismanagement as well. The consequences are poor quality, high cost, lack of innovation, etc. that lead to loss of market share that leads to a "going out of business" sign.

Government, on the other hand, just raises taxes, blames someone else, passes the buck, etc. and expands the program or adds a new one to cover the mistakes.

Now if we'd just let those "bad" business fail they'd reap the consequences of their mistakes but enter the government bureaucrats to reward the mismanagement with bailouts whilst those who did well received nothing except part of the tax bill. While we're at it let's make the culpable labor unions part owners in the bailouts while cutting off all those non-union workers.

 

OK, you're still focusing on the two different kinds of organizations (which I did not dispute), but the point is, that the people behind them are fundamentally the same (not "similar"; people are the SAME!) They only do the same things, but in different ways according to the type of organization. Private industry milks the people in other ways, and their defenders have us blaming the government for everything, or excusing the ridiculously high prices they charge and high executive salaries (while quality often goes down) because of "the market" or whatever.
And again, don't forget how I mentioned the line between business and government becoming fuzzy at times.

So Conservatives are against the bailouts. I was kind of surprised at this, being that conservatives, or at least neo-conservatives were always the ones in practice supporting
"corporate welfare" (ironically, as much as they criticized social Welfare).
From what I understood, the rationale behind bailing out the auto companies was because they would damage the economy if they were allowed to fall. I'm nost justifying this, but it does seem to be the same line of reasoning behind the tax breaks and other forms of corporate welfare in better times. Even if you try to argue that they were being "rewarded" for doing "good" back the, but are doing bad now. This is debatable, as they were doing pretty much the same stuff all along (and everyone ignoring it, and blaming the liberals, or whatever); only now it had caught up with them.

Everyone is blamong Obama for this, but the president is really just a figurehead. Again, private business DOES have considerable influence in politics (either party), and can easily buy out politicians.

Since conservatives love Reagan so much, does anyone think he of all people would have done differently?

 

Private industry cannot "milk the people" unless they have an unregulated monopoly which, of course, does not exist. The marketplace does a good job of regulating what willing buyers will pay willing sellers for goods and services. It's not perfect but it works better than any other system. Yes, people can get very rich doing it but others have the benefit of the goods and services and the jobs generated to produce them. It works!

Government, on the other hand, can and does "milk the people" by the force of law through taxes. They don't have to have a willing buyer. They don't have to give you anything in return for your payment. No, they can just make you pay them so they can give your money to someone else.

The character of the human beings involved in any sector and at any level - rich or poor, business or government, buyer or seller - can certainly be the same or be totally different. That I do not dispute! I do agree that the character of business is changing towards a more government like form.

True conservatives have always been against corporate and individual welfare recognizing that it hardly ever works as planned, always costs more than expected, and sets the precedence for subsequent "corrective" action. We don't buy the argument that "we've got to do something now or else the sky will fall"!

GM, for example, could have - should have - gone bankrupt and someone would have picked up the business at a bargain and continued to produce vehicles for the marketplace. The new owners would have had a clean slate to pick good management and negotiate with labor for the jobs and working rules they needed. The economy would have survived but would have had to adjust. Instead, the government forced a restructuring, picked the management, and included the existing labor unions - culpable in the failure - as major shareholders.

 

I don't think it really "works" that well for everybody. As for the market, I address this here: http://www.erictb.info/rightwing2.html#cycle It mainly works for those at the top of priavate industry, and their political spokesmen simply get the rest of us to blame someone else for all the problems; hence we don't see that it is not working. It's all the liberals, or government's fault.
And again, I pointed out how private industry does bear a lot of influence in all areas of politics, and have probably bought much of it out.

They don't give us anything in return? Roads, and the rest of the infrastructure? There may be a lot of waste, but this is not even what is focused on. Now, you're saying we're getting nothing. A lot of pork barrel projects benefit middle-America. But everyone is too busy blaming this "someone else" (usually, the poor) for getting all this tax money.

I've never heard conservatives go after corporate welfare. Some libertarians, maybe, but never the conservatives. For one thing, they do not call it that, but that is rather what critics of conservativism have coined to show the double standard when they support the practice, and ONLY "individual" welfare is condemned, which is what I have seen.

(Daily News had a good guest comment or editorial on this today, but for some reason I can't find it on its website).

Well, I myself do not know either way which was better. My first thing would be to let them go bankrupt as well, but they did seem to have a good point as to why they couldn't fail, and I really do not remember seeing any word of prospecting new owners. Chrysler was owned by Daimler, and didn't they just sell them off? I'm not sure if what you say would have worked. There are a lot of other factors involved. We criticize the liberals for simplistic idealism that ignores other factors, but it seems conservatives do the same thing.
And just like Chrysler being owned by Daimler, and all the other foreign buyouts, any buyers would probably have also been foreign multinational corporations. I don't think we (and especially patriotic conservatives) want our country totally bought out like that, do we? (especially in our domain of private industry/capitalism!) That is a sure sign of loss of power.

 

Private enterprise works for you and me every time we go to the store and buy the food, clothing, medicines, building materials, appliances, cars, toys, etc. that we enjoy in this life. The only reason they make a profit is because we buy the goods and services they make. They don't make us buy anything. If we don't like one brand we can switch to another. We have lots of choices in nearly every good or service you can think of. There are some places in the world - especially socialist and communist countries - where there's only one choice and one price and supply is limited. Not in America! Our system works very well!

Surely some things such as roads have to be public projects. But public roads are a great example of the wasteful approach of government. Most road building projects are politically driven - not based on sound traffic engineering studies or long term assessments of the best transportation models. We keep pouring money into big city expressways that only encourages further concentration of people and thereby more congestion leading to more roads. The consumer has no idea what it really costs them and the users - including truckers - don't pay in proportion to their usage.

If a cost verses benefit analysis were done on for you and me on each road building project that showed what we'd get for our money we'd want something else. The biggest flaw is the federal government collecting tax money from everyone and then "giving" some of it back to the states with tight strings attached requiring them to build their roads according to the federal government's decisions.

 

Glenn Beck! Now there's an unbiased source! :laugh:

 

Come on Robert, in your heart, you know he's right.

 

If so, then why does it overall seem so broken now? It's all because of the liberals, right?
(what you mention is just a small area, in which is is better; not addressing issues like overpricing and quality. Just because the people buy it doesn't mean it is as good, for when everyone sells overpriced stuff that is low in quality, and good quality stuff costs ridiculously higher, people will be forced to go with that, and many are led to just swallow it, and blame only the government when they have no money).

 

There are no unbiased sources anywhere in the world.

 

No. he's not unbiased.

But in this case, he is has correctly reported Cembalest's findings, bias or not.

 

Capitalism itself isn't broken but our implementation of it is being eroded by excessive government intervention.

No one is forced to buy much of anything unless they want to do so. The principal is a willing buyer and a willing seller that agree on a price for exchanged goods and services. That doesn't mean people aren't taken advantage of our of cunning, lying, stealing, or, perhaps, their own ignorance and even greed at times. Such things occur in all economic systems. They are not the product of capitalism itself because it occurs in all systems and, from what I've seen, even more so in socialist and communist systems that are ripe with corruption and abuse of power and privilege.

A role of civil government is to provide justice which includes a process for litigation of illegal business practices. Government has all kinds of rules in place to regulate monopolies, provide truth in advertising, regulate and license services, etc. - all designed to help protect people. There are even rules to prohibit price gouging in times of natural disasters. I emphasis "help" because people still have the primary responsibility to protect themselves. Never the less, in this way civil government provides some checks on the potential abuse of capitalism or any other economic system. That's a good thing when it's done with due moderation and respect for the underlying free market that makes the economy strong.

Where it goes wrong is when people start thinking that can create a perfect system through civil government by making a law against every possible injustice and instituting a government process to undo every mistake, failure, tragedy, or problem that its citizens may incur. They mistakenly believe that it is government's role to equalize all things between all men and that anyone who is without the same economic wealth as another is entitled to be made whole by the government. Enter much greater abuse, corruption, and waste than any free market could ever create. Such is where we are headed today.

 

Because, of the abuses of it. this does not just occur in a vaccum. Again; one side all good and innocent, and the other all bad, and just bullying the other side for no reason at all.

And the main difference is that what we call "socialism" is really state capitalism. It's just two sides of the same coin, and the only difference is which kind of corporate structure (and most government agencies are legally called "corporations") is controlling it.
Hence, my point being why I think too much is being made of this whole "business vs government" debate, rather than me arguing on the side of government.

And sometimes people are forced to buy things, or have to settle for something inadequate. Like my wife needs bifocals, and I forget which ones she's getting now, but she said the ones that reduce glare were $300, and that with a state agency insurance plan. Without, they're probably $700 or more. That's ridiculous, and I have gotten glassses for $50 with insurance (probably also hundreds without), that keep falling apart. Better ones are even under the insurance. And now we have all these debates on insurance policy.

The rationale from conservatives and libertarians sometimes seems to actually be that unless we have "pulled up our bootstraps" to become what "the market" says is "worthy" (which is basically, managers, owners, entrepeneurs, and sports/entertainers), we just "don't deserve" anything better.

There is no easy answer to this. When you have a laiisez faire system, there will be abuses, and concentration of power, which those who gain it will use to their advantage over others. So people want some sort of moderation of this, however, and they look to the type of institution called "government" for that role. But those agencies, as I have said, consist of the same sort of power-mongers as in the provate sector, so they they simply turn the advantage to themselves.
It's not a matter of one or the other, and yet it will be much harder to ever find a sbetter solution when we pick sides, and imagine one side is so much better than the other, or blame all its problems on the other side. Don't people realize that this whole power structure is based on polarization (i.e. "divide and conquer")? There are many observers who have written books pointing this out. Have us point fingers back and forth at each other, while the leaders of both business and government all chill on the Riviera, and all those other places they hang out at.