The idea that you should run the government like a business...

to its commitment to its shareholders.

Which makes it even LESS appropriate for governance.

I think that government programs should be required to have performance measures. Government's best goal is quality of life for all citizens and we should link expenditures to results so that programs and practices can be voted on.

generally the gating measure and "quality of life for all citizens" comes in as a secondary concern.

that lets its vendors write their own purchase orders. It is a business that does the bidding of other businesses with no regard for its own financial condition. It is like a giant Citibank that needs a bailout every 15th of April.

be the catalyst for dynamic change. TPTB, the 1%, the $$$$$ controllers will not make any change, because well, it's the right thing to do.

kick and rec

If that were how they defined it, no prob. But they cling to the monetary definition, which is why the "run it like a business" idea doesn't' work.

And to spend it on the welfare and well being of the American citizens. It's therefore run by elected officials, who are put in their offices to run the government and to see to it that the citizens are the beneficiaries of said government.

I don't see how anyone can confuse the roles of business and government.

like a business.

It's time to make them own it.

A government cannot do this. A government has to serve the people no matter what.

... because not only was total nonsense, nobody ever challenged it.
Why didn't Obama and supporters challenge Romney to do something more than just repeat this mantra?
Exactly how would government-as-business work?
Make a profit?
Have a board of directors and investors?
What?
It was a bogus panacea, propagated by people who think that 'business' is the only social institution a society needs.
It was The Big, Stinking Lie.
... and nobody ever called them on it.

It wouldn't last a year, probably not even a month.

* Let's not raise any money
* Let's not spend any money on things that people want, things like infrastructure, but on antique military products
* Let's not compete with private businesses that provide similar to services as us
* Let's not provide our people with benefits

that would be most valuable would be negotiating - not the profit motive. There are clearly a lot of hard line negotiating tactics that must be used in government and his claim is that a C-level executive is the type that can tactfully maneuver through those negotiations. I agree to a point, but it is hard to trust that the negotiating skills being employed would be for the maximal benefit of the country over selfish aspirations.

is the lenders are often forced to make adjustments through out the fiscal year if funds are not going to match the expenses.

they start sputtering after that. Usual responses are along the lines of "well, we're the owners" or something just as inane or worse.

State and local governments are not allowed, by law, to run into a deficit at the end of the fiscal year. They have to cut stuff as the future shortfall is known.

But the basics of accounting are lost on these idiots.

Every government agency is required to go broke on the last day of the fiscal year.

There is a government agency called the National Reconnaissance Office. They run our spy satellites. Satellites are very expensive and so is all the equipment that supports them. In the 1980s they got a director who decided to run NRO like a business. He got Congress to fund him at levels proper for his agency, and then he hired the best negotiators he could to deal with suppliers and the like. Over five years this asshole saved up enough to build a new $220 million headquarters without an additional nickel of tax funds.

When Congress found out they shit bricks and went into "we must make sure this never happens again!" mode. I thought they should have figured out a system of controls to prevent fraud then allowed every government agency to do the same thing. Requiring them to spend it all does not motivate a sense of thrift in our bureaucrats.

My thinking is, we allow agencies to retain the funds they don't use in a safe investment vehicle they can get out of quick. They report their interest earnings to a Congressional office. They can use the money as rainy-day funding or to buy capital equipment. And in the event their interest earnings reach one percent of what Congress gives them, Congress can have the option to reduce their funding by half their interest income.

I can see some government agencies being run exactly like businesses. Take the Army and Air Force Exchange Service - the PX system. Right now, it's only open to the military. There is no reason why AAFES could not change to a two-tier price structure - 10% off for military ID card holders - and open their stores to the public. The additional profits would go to the government to reduce the deficit. The added volume would allow AAFES to negotiate better prices from suppliers. And the "troop profit" (those guys sell to soldiers at a profit now; the profit earned up to the price soldiers pay will be called troop profit) will go toward supporting soldiers. Only allow them to build next to military bases, so we don't have another Walmart on our hands, and only let PXs on the edges of installations, or new ones built outside the gate, do it for security reasons.

We also have two manufacturers in our government: Skilcraft (National Institutes for the Blind) and Unicor (Federal Prison Industries). Why can't these two sell to the public? Most of their competitors manufacture in China, and people want to buy American.

Never in government's wildest excesses has it ever done anything as destructive as ENRON, World Com or the housing bubble. Why would we want it to work like a business?