Should the Government be responsible for fixing the economy or should it be left to private business? Barack Obama thinks the government should take a bigger role, while his opponents in the 2012 presidential election think private business should. Who is right?
According to an editorial written by AP political editor, Liz Sidoti, it should be... well, she doesn't know. That seems like the general consensus everywhere. The president says the country was built with the help of government, Tea Party members say it was private business. In reality it was both, it was private business which created the demand for railroads and highways, and it was the government which helped build them. It can certainly be argued whether or not private business would have been able to expand without the help of government however, but if left up to government, the opposite is not true.
But the past is the past, and the question is what happens going forward? If you talk to small business owners, they all agree that government should get out-of-the-way and allow them to grow without interference from over-burdensome regulations and excessive taxes. Whether it is the EPA or the new universal healthcare regulations it costs the average small business more money to start a business than they can hope to get back in the first few years of being in business, typically the hardest time in the business cycle of a new business.
It is interesting to note how Barack Obama continues to claim it is small business which fuels the economy yet he hinders then at each step. He even fights big business when he can, curtailing their efforts to expand as well through his continuing interference with the labor board. The recent case of Boeing Aircraft is a perfect example where the Obama administration is suing Boeing for building a plant in South Carolina, a Right-to-work state. The administration is insisting that Boeing unionize this plant, increasing Boeing's costs.
The current administration and the Democrats need to understand what it takes to grow business and put Americans back to work.
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Comments: 3
When politicians start making business decisions, they do it based upon political considerations. That is why we are in the mess we are now.
My view is that governments role is to be the keeper of the boundaries that business work within, government should ensure that those boundaries are current and accurate, that they are a means to share available knowledge and the business working in those boundaries are assured that they will be consistently applied. There is nothing to suggest that the government has the knowledge to understand or are able to assess the risk and rewards for taking those risk so they should not try to be the control of businesses.
The reality is that governments and the politicians that direct them are risk adverse, while businesses are predicated on taking and managing risk. Business people are trained to weigh risks against reward and to be held accountable for their actions. Govenments are trained to avoid risk and personal accountablity. A simpel test is which uses metric as integral part of their operating system.
Just as in the current situation, the government is doing all it can to avoid the discomfort/sacrifice of a relative few and are prolonging the suffering of the ecoonomy as a whole.