Good For Business

            Is everything that’s good for business really good for America?  Consider some examples:

• Have authorities or contractors shoot / bludgeon people striking for fair wages / conditions;
• Defy safety rules, just pay fines, even if there are recurring work fatalities;
• Reduce resource extraction costs by strip mining;
• Reduce costs by irresponsibly handling toxic waste;
• Let taxpayers pay for workers’ subsistence needs resulting from poverty wages;
• Hire undocumented workers, pay them even less, and deport them if they complain;
• Cheat investors, steal money, and let taxpayers bail you out;
• Hide knowledge of product safety flaws; just pay a few settlements to victims  or their families;
• Blackmail States into paying you to bring jobs to their State;
• Take benefits America provides, but pay taxes overseas;
• Fracking.

           Too often, someone says, “If it’s good for business, it’s good for America; America needs to be run more like a business.”  Around here we think America needs to run from this flawed thinking.  Government is not business.  Government is sometimes what people have do together to clean up after some businesses.  Sure, government needs to be efficient, responsive, adaptable, technically astute, innovative, transparent, and accountable.  Nothing new about that—it’s just good management.  Many businesses even aspire to these qualities.  However, government is in the long game, not tomorrow’s profits.  That’s how it is with education, human services, environmental & safety issues, providing for the common defense, and you know, promoting the general welfare.