Why is private sector experience so trumpeted by the GOP?

[etv78]

Running a private equity firm is NOTHING like running a country! The candidate I'm alluding to is just the latest to trumpet his private sector experience, not seeming to understand that government IS NOT a business.

[Voyager]

I assume you are talking about Romney. I think the idea is that government should be run like a business - be efficient in the same way, make money, have short term goals. Actually, I would think that Romney's experience with the Olympics is far more relevant. There he had to balance competing interest groups without the ability to fire all the people causing problems.

Here in California the voters soundly defeated this proposition, defeating two former CEOs, one reasonably competent and the other wildly incompetent.
I've always wondered what happens when a CEO assume political power, takes office, and then discovers that she cannot fire the state legislature, and that they give her a lot more trouble than her Board of Directors ever did.

[bump]

I think another thing is the concept that the private sector is more sink or swim than the public sector- if you're successful in the private sector, then being successful at the (easier?) public sector should be a piece of cake.

This assumes that public sector jobs, promotions and success aren't as merit based or sink-or-swim as those in the private sector, which is definitely debatable.

[etv78]

Voyager-Yes, I'm refering to Mitt, and I think I agree that salvaging the SLC Games is more relevent to being POTUS.

[boytyperanma]

It's trumpeted by the Republican party because that's where a lot of their people come from.

It doesn't matter if private sector experience actually translates to good elected officials. Convincing people it does leads to more people willing to vote for their candidates.

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by Voyager

I think the idea is that government should be run like a business - be efficient in the same way, make money, have short term goals.

Of course, a government is not supposed to make money, and is supposed to focus on long-term goals.

[BrainGlutton]

Originally Posted by etv78

Running a private equity firm is NOTHING like running a country! The candidate I'm alluding to is just the latest to trumpet his private sector experience, not seeming to understand that government IS NOT a business.

He ain't got a chance. His pizza sucks.

[Boyo Jim]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

He ain't got a chance. His pizza sucks.

His product sucks, but he STILL makes millions. That makes him a better CEO than those slackers who have good products.

But he would still make a terrible president.

[Little Nemo]

Republicans are also more inclined to the idea that the government is always part of the problem. This is already a negative for people who are saying this while supposedly trying to become part of the government. And it makes it difficult for a Republican to use government experience (outside of military service) as a credential for getting elected. So private sector experience becomes the default credential.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by etv78

Voyager-Yes, I'm refering to Mitt, and I think I agree that salvaging the SLC Games is more relevent to being POTUS.

But you see, at that point, no one was going to let the SLC games go down in flames, either.

SLC never should have been picked. They didn't have the facilities to host the games. But they bribed the IOC officials with gifts, money and in some cases, hookers, and got the nod, and it became painfully obvious they weren't ready. And if it all fell apart, it would be a major embarrassment to all involved, especially the Mormon Church (which runs politics in Utah.)

So in comes Romney and his Rolodex to save the day.

He was able to solve the problem because it was obvious what the problem was and how to fix it.

[Recovering Republican]

To answer the original post.

For a very long time, businesses have promoted the notion that Business is efficient, and government is inefficient. Of course, big businesses and governments have the same basic problem, they are so large that so many factors can go wrong. Having worked in both the public and private sectors, you usually have the same mixture of good and bad, smart and dumb, you get anywhere in society. You have very dedicated people who work hard, you have guys who are getting by, and you have guys who are totally worthless but never seem to get fired.

The problem is, businesses have convinced you that the government is only made up of the last group, while they are only made up of the first group.

Which is BS if you ever worked in an office anywhere.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

He ain't got a chance. His pizza sucks.

What, you don't like tomato flavored cardboard?

[Marley23]

I agree with what's been posted, and I'd add that in a way, it's just touting leadership experience, "the ability to make tough decisions," and so on. Romney is also putting a very rosy spin on what his firm did. While Romney made a ton of money in the private sector, let's also not forget that some candidate try to use business experience in a campaign even if they can't say they've had business success.

[Elmer J. Fudd]

I'm hard pressed to think of an extremely successful businessperson who was also an extremely successful elected official. Michael Bloomberg, maybe, but who else?

[Jas09]

I would add a slightly different take on it - many GOP candidates touts private sector experience because it's what they have. It's not like Herman Cain has any other experience to tout, right?

Add in a healthy dislike for government (and the inevitable compromises that come with being a governor), and it's easy to see why Mitt Romney would rather talk about running the Olympic committee than running one of the most liberal states in the union.

[SpoilerVirgin]

One other factor in the GOP supporting candidates with business experience is that the GOP's financial base is big business, and part of their platform has always been making things easier for businesses. The people who are most likely to believe in tax breaks for businesses, reducing regulation, etc., are people whose experience is in business, so the GOP has an interest in supporting them.

I personally agree with the OP that business experience, aside from general leadership ability, has little or nothing to do with the ability to successfully govern.

[Little Nemo]

I'm not going to dispute that Romney did a good job running the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. But does running an Olympic committee really qualify as private sector experience? It's not like it was competing with other committees to manage the games.

But for the record, Romney does have legitimate experience in the private sector running Bain Capital.

[Chronos]

Quoth Little Nemo:

Republicans are also more inclined to the idea that the government is always part of the problem. This is already a negative for people who are saying this while supposedly trying to become part of the government. And it makes it difficult for a Republican to use government experience (outside of military service) as a credential for getting elected. So private sector experience becomes the default credential.

You could take this further. Since Republicans think that government is the problem, what they want is someone who can run the government into the ground. So they naturally seek out people who have experience in running other things into the ground. So we end up with folks like George W. Bush.

[Exapno Mapcase]

The question you're asking is when did the Republican party become the party of business interests? The short answer is: it always has been.

Brace yourself. Here comes the long answer.

After the Civil War, the Republicans were by far the dominant party. This is also the period when businesses start really growing and the economy turned into a manufacturing-based one, By the turn of the century, more than 300 industries had been consolidated into trusts each dominated by a few individuals, each of whom therefore had unbelievable piles of money and the delusions of grandeur that go with money. People who think that Congress and the states have poor representatives today have zero comprehension of history. The moguls literally bought entire legislatures to pass their laws and hurt their enemies, and many of them got themselves appointed to the Senate when legislatures still did that.

In a spasm of justice, Congress passed the Sherman Anti-Trust Act in 1893 - under a Democratic president. It was ignored. That set up the election of 1896, one of the few real turning point elections. Cutting through the thick blather that's been poured on, the reduced version is simple. McKinley was the hand-picked candidate of the business interests, led by Mark Hanna. William Jennings Bryon was the apostle of the working man. The workers had gotten themselves hugely into debt after the Panic of 1893. They wanted large amounts of inflation to make it easier to pay back what they owed. This was economic craziness and they properly got trounced for it.*

Exit the Populists, enter the Progressives. They had saner goals to make the workplace and the country better, safer, and more egalitarian. The New Deal and our entire present understanding of government is based on this. But they won only because of the accidents of history that allowed Teddy Roosevelt to become president, after which he had to battle a conservative business Senate every step of the way.

After a short Democratic interlude when Roosevelt and Taft split the Republicans and Wilson snuck in, the 1920s were all business all the time. That also sank the country and Roosevelt led the Democrats to ascendancy. The Republicans still had moderate, even liberal wings until the 50s, but have slowly been cutting them out of the party.

So why did ordinary non-plutocrats vote for Republicans? The Democrats had bad odors clinging to them. First they were the party of slavery and then of Southern backwardness. In the North they were the party of the majority immigrants and ethnics that led to the booming growth of cities. Then, as much as today, rural voters hated the cities, those sinkholes of sin, liquor, and people who Weren't Like Us. (Red states still have Democrats winning most of the large cities.) Until the one man, one vote laws of the 60s, legislatures were gerrymandered to ensure rural dominance.

After the 60s, social conservatism became the beat of the Republican base's heart, but the business interests still ran the party. The inherent conservatism of business, which prefers monopolism over any other ism, meshed well with their beliefs. They all hated Democrats, at least the perceived stereotype of them, equally. Creating jobs, cutting costs, performing efficiently, were excuses that allowed the cognitive dissonance of voting for people whose actual interests in terms of deeds and bills passed did not actually mesh with their personal needs. That government is the antithesis of business and needs to be run in a totally different fashion by people of a totally different mindset is irrelevant. Few people know what it takes to run either.

The fun in the next year will be all those reports showing that Romney made his money by slashing jobs and causing businesses to go bankrupt, making him the reality behind the picture of the evil businessman of caricature that is taking jobs away from Americans. How the Republicans voters will handle that reversal will be the stuff of dissertations for a long time.


*Why the right today, in identical economic circumstances, hate the idea of inflation and want the deflation of reduced spending is a mystery. The Populists at least understood what would be good for them personally if not the country as a whole.

[Patty O'Furniture]

It doesn't matter. As soon as they get elected, they get assimilated, Borg-like, becoming just one more drone in the hive mind of government bureaucracy.

I experienced this over the last two years when then Mayor Fenty appointed an innovative and aggressive young man as our new agency director. Bryan Sivak was the founder of InQira (a dot-com software company), and was supposed to bring in some fresh new private sector ideas. He came in with some grand ideas, and tried his best to change the way government works by eliminating inefficiencies and envisioning new & innovative ways to do business. Cloud computing was one of ideas he seemed to like the most. I attended many a meeting with Sivak, and I really liked the cut of his jib. But I thought most of his ideas were simply too progressive. As I listed to him, I often thought to myself "yeah, good luck with that".

There were some small victories but in the end, the machinery of government was simply too big and too complex to be changed in any meaningful way. As per standard procedure, Sivak tendered his resignation when Mayor Gray took office, even though it took Gray five months to appoint a replacement. During those five months the agency was essentially headless and, as you might expect from a headless beast with a hundred legs, wandering randomly in a hundred different directions. I am unhappy to report that we are now back to government as usual.

Edit: An interesting post-script, I notice that Sivak has become Maryland's new Chief Innovation Officer. It will be interesting to see if he has better luck there.

[Crown Prince of Irony]

The real irony is that the GOP is all in a lather about "executive experience" this, and "CEO" that - when it's the overexuberance of the private sector to pursue profit above all else (with the willing participation of the average American consumer, yours truly included) that got us in our current economic predicament.

And a lot of the corproate decisions that got us here were largely driven by lavish executive bonus packages that rewarded executives for risky short-term growth without regard for the longer-term consequenses.

[zamboniracer]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I'm not going to dispute that Romney did a good job running the Salt Lake Organizing Committee. But does running an Olympic committee really qualify as private sector experience? It's not like it was competing with other committees to manage the games.

But for the record, Romney does have legitimate experience in the private sector running Bain Capital.

Running the SLCOC, wasn't his solution just to throw money, much of it from the US Government, at the problem?

Bain Capital, as I understand it, is a consulting firm that specializes in moving companies and their factories offshore. If that's true, (and it may not be, it is just my impression of Bain Capital) is it something to brag about as a candidate for POTUS?

[suranyi]

This is something that has always really bugged me.

Yes, there are a few ways in which government and business are similar. They both should be run in an efficient manner, for example.

But they are fundamentally very, very different. At the most basic level. For example, the goal of a business is to create a profit, in fact to create as much profit as possible. Now people differ on what they think the goal of government should be but I don't think there's much disagreement that the goal of government is NOT to create a profit.

[Onomatopoeia]

Originally Posted by Recovering Republican

What, you don't like tomato flavored cardboard?

Hey, I thought Dominoes had the market on tomato flavored cardboard.

[Boyo Jim]

No, Domino's has cardboard flavored tomato.

[Little Nemo]

Originally Posted by zamboniracer

Running the SLCOC, wasn't his solution just to throw money, much of it from the US Government, at the problem?

Bain Capital, as I understand it, is a consulting firm that specializes in moving companies and their factories offshore. If that's true, (and it may not be, it is just my impression of Bain Capital) is it something to brag about as a candidate for POTUS?

I don't think that's a fair picture. The original leadership of the Olympic committee had been a pretty sad bunch - they were beset by accusations of corruption (both giving and receiving) and were doing a terrible job of raising money (mostly because a lot of potential sponsors didn't trust them with money). Romney took over and cleared out the corruption. That, and his connections with the corporate world, got the sponsorship money flowing.

Bain Capital is more of an investment company than a consulting firm. Their original mission was to find companies that had a good business plan but needed start-up money. Bain Capital would provide the money.

Romney did change the mission somewhat over the course of his tenure. He started investing in and gaining controlling shares in existing companies rather than primarily start-ups.

But overall Bain Capital made steady profits under Romney's leadership. When Bain Capital's parent company was experiencing financial problems, Romney was promoted to CEO of that company and made it profitable again. So he deserves legitimate credit as a successful business executive.

[Zakalwe]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

But overall Bain Capital made steady profits under Romney's leadership. When Bain Capital's parent company was experiencing financial problems, Romney was promoted to CEO of that company and made it profitable again. So he deserves legitimate credit as a successful business executive.

But wasn't some of the return to profitability based on the fact that he reduced costs by offshoring jobs?

[Little Nemo]

I'm sure there was some job offshoring in companies Bain was involved in. Bain Capital invested in literally hundreds of companies during the fourteen years Romney was running it. But it doesn't seem to have been a standard procedure for them. They don't appear to have been doing any more job offshoring than any company of similar size would have been doing.

The main offshoring accusation that's been made against Bain (and Romney) is over taxes. Bain apparently registered some of its administrative operations outside of the United States in foreign tax havens.

[Recovering Republican]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I'm sure there was some job offshoring in companies Bain was involved in. Bain Capital invested in literally hundreds of companies during the fourteen years Romney was running it. But it doesn't seem to have been a standard procedure for them. They don't appear to have been doing any more job offshoring than any company of similar size would have been doing.

The main offshoring accusation that's been made against Bain (and Romney) is over taxes. Bain apparently registered some of its administrative operations outside of the United States in foreign tax havens.

I think it's more the image.

When Ted Kennedy ran against Romney in 1994, when people were ready to hang any Democrat they could get their hands on, Kennedy successfully pointed out what Romney did at AmPad, where he put a bunch of people out of jobs, looted the company and eventually left the stockholders with worthless paper.

It is VERY bad form for a rich guy to put working people out of work and then hire illegal aliens to do his yardwork.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

I'm sure there was some job offshoring in companies Bain was involved in. Bain Capital invested in literally hundreds of companies during the fourteen years Romney was running it. But it doesn't seem to have been a standard procedure for them. They don't appear to have been doing any more job offshoring than any company of similar size would have been doing.

The main offshoring accusation that's been made against Bain (and Romney) is over taxes. Bain apparently registered some of its administrative operations outside of the United States in foreign tax havens.

His business experience is exactly opposite that needed for governing. My understanding is that they bought companies, cut costs, and sold them off. Offshoring is just one way of doing it. You don't buy hundreds of companies with the goal of improving their productivity and such, but it is much easier to do so when your goal is to improve their short term bottom line. However, you can't sell of chunks of the government in this way.
It would be interesting to track the success of these companies after Romney got through with them.
I've been through this. During the AT&T trivestiture Bob Allen set up a program to cut the headcount of what would become Lucent by offering a very generous severance package. This was done to make the numbers look better for the coming Lucent IPO. In my center about 20% of the staff left, and it all happened over a 2 week period with no secession planning or handoffs at all. I'm not complaining, I made a bundle splitting then, but it was hellish for those who were left. I wouldn't want a person who was successful using these techniques anywhere near the US government, and it has nothing to do with their morality.

[Really Not All That Bright]

Originally Posted by Elmer J. Fudd

I'm hard pressed to think of an extremely successful businessperson who was also an extremely successful elected official. Michael Bloomberg, maybe, but who else?

Herbert Hoover was an extremely successful private sector engineer and businessman before being tapped to head several famine relief efforts during WWI. Then he more or less built the Department of Commerce from the ground up.

Then he was elected President, and that... didn't go well.

Anyway, I bring this up because Hoover was arguably the first prominent politician to promote the idea that government is inefficient and riddled with waste and the private sector isn't.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Really Not All That Bright

Herbert Hoover was an extremely successful private sector engineer and businessman before being tapped to head several famine relief efforts during WWI. Then he more or less built the Department of Commerce from the ground up.

Then he was elected President, and that... didn't go well.

Anyway, I bring this up because Hoover was arguably the first prominent politician to promote the idea that government is inefficient and riddled with waste and the private sector isn't.

Cite?

Seriously, the Republicans had been in power during the entire 1920s. They kept the government deliberately small and catered to business interests with Andrew Mellon as Secretary of the Treasury with more real-world power than the president. What waste and inefficiency was Hoover campaigning against? He did say repeatedly that government was not the proper institution to get people out of the Depression but the reality was that government spending went up every year during his term of office.

And he wasn't coming out of the private sector. In addition to what you mentioned, he got the nomination because he directed the governmental relief organizations during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. The private sector failed miserably then.

Can you defend your statement?

[Really Not All That Bright]

Originally Posted by Exapno Mapcase

Cite?

Here you go. I didn't say he was correct; merely that he was the first to make it a talking point.

[guizot]

Originally Posted by boytyperanma

It's trumpeted by the Republican party because that's where a lot of their people come from.

True, but fundamentally they do this only when they're trying to oust an incumbent Democrat. It's the "we need new blood" line of political rhetoric, and because the Republicans also try to be identified with "small government," it's most convenient to play this card when someone is coming out of business.

Romney is just as much an old-school politician as a business person. No one stays in government long without becoming political. That's the nature of the beast. Bush couldn't use the business angle for his reelection (though he really couldn't have used it for his first election, either)--instead, it was all "national security." He certainly couldn't have run on the "government has gotten too big," thing. In fact, "national security" was a way to make the government even bigger and even more wasteful.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Really Not All That Bright

Here you go. I didn't say he was correct; merely that he was the first to make it a talking point.

Here's the actual wording:

National politics

In U.S. national politics, the most prominent figure was Herbert Hoover, a trained engineer who downplayed politics and believed dispassionate, nonpolitical experts could solve the nation's great problems, such as ending poverty.

Attacks on efficiency

After 1929, Democrats blamed the Great Depression on Hoover and helped to somewhat discredit the movement, though the demand for efficiency and elimination of waste remains an important component of American values.

I can't see any way you can conflate these two sentences into to get at your claim. Dispassionate experts and eliminating government waste are historically separate trends in politics. The limited government of the 1920s was constantly called upon to do more rather than less. We had no Army, no social services programs, no health programs, no infrastructure programs. What wastes were people talking about cutting?

OTOH, wanting nonpolitical experts to solve problems was very fashionable at the time. There was a movement, in fact, called Technocracy which not only advocated this but became a minor force in response to Hoover's failures. It began before Hoover and he was never a big part of it.

The time has come in our national development when we must have a definite national program in the development of our great engineering problems. Our rail and water transport, our water supplies for irrigation, our reclamation, the provision of future fuel resources, all cry out for some broadvisioned national guidance.

That sounds like Hoover, because it was. He wanted efficiency but he didn't campaign against waste in government in any sense we would recognize from today's Republican Party.

Wikipedia is a good source for dates and facts from history. It should never, and I emphasize never, be used to explain why anything occurred.

[Sam Stone]

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

Too many government officials hand-wave away the real costs they impose on businesses with their constant stream of commandments. That opens them up to the argument that they don't know what they are doing, and it would help if they actually had to try to meet a payroll with something other than taxpayer's money.

For example, I don't think the people who wrote the Obama Health Care plan had any kind of understanding of the real hardship the 1099 reporting requirements were. Hell, most of them are lawyers or finance people, so a few extra legal documents are no big deal. Most of them are also awash in assistants who take care of the details. Many of them have never been in the private sector at all.

They simply cannot relate to the small business owner who runs his own home renovation firm. Maybe he's got five or six employees, and would like to hire a few more. His wife is his accountant. He's got a lawyer who does a few hours of work a year helping to file his various business documents. Every time he goes to his lawyer or has to hire an accountant it's frightening because they charge big bucks and what they do is so far out of his wheelhouse he feels like he has no control over the situation.

When a person like that reads about a new requirement that will force him to track every payment over $600 and file a form with the government, it terrifies him. His wife doesn't have time to do it, and an accountant will cost him a fortune. His receipts are in a shoe box because he works 12 hour days and signs checks at a dozen places and never seems to have time to sort it all out. And doing paperwork is the thing he absolutely hates more than anything.

It's a person like him who sees the constant legislative changes coming out of Washington, and the constant threats of more legislation, who can't make total sense out of it and doesn't really know what it will do to his business, who winds up shrinking back and hunkering down instead of confidently expanding and hiring new people. And it's people like him who are responsible for most of the new jobs created in the U.S.

It would be nice to have people in government who understand what it's like to be that small proprietor - who understand it in their bones, from having lived the life. And it would be nice to have some who took a small business like that and grew it into a major firm, and understands what that takes and how government can throw wrenches into the works.

[Chronos]

Except that nobody in either party ever runs small businessmen as candidates. It's always folks who headed up nationwide corporations. The CEO of a big business doesn't understand the mom-and-pop level any better than does a politician: He's got people to understand all those details for him.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

Then get people from business running the regulatory agencies. Which is also a good idea because they may know the tricks and where the rats are hiding. Let people with government experience, from the bottom up, run the government.
We have a lot fewer unqualified people from government running businesses than unqualified people from the outside trying to run government - and the Governator is jut one excellent example. Meg would have been another - even she now recognizes that the people of California figured out that electing inexperienced but charismatic people didn't work out too well.

[suranyi]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

But you could say this about everything, because the goverment regulates everything:

"You want someone who was in the Army, because the government is in charge of the military."

"You want someone who was a teacher, because the government is in charge of education."

"You want someone who was a lawyer/prosecutor/prison guard, because the goverment is in charge of creating criminal law."

It's good to have mix of different kinds of experience.

[Absolute]

The entire country operates on money that the private sector earns. Even the government is funded almost entirely by taxes on that money (either by taxing it directly, or by taxing money that businesses pay to their employees).

It makes perfect sense to me that you want someone who understands the needs of the private sector in office. If you want the government to spend $XX billion on something, you need to either raise taxes, or figure out how to increase private sector revenue such that you collect $XX billion extra in taxes at the unchanged rate.

Some Republicans truly believe that the last option is superior to the first, for everyone involved. And someone with private sector experience is best-equipped to make that happen. Others are just greedy corrupt bastards, of course.

[Chronos]

The entire country operates on money that the private sector earns.

It's not like the money originates in the private sector, whence it flows everywhere else. You might just as well say that the entire country operates on money earned by union workers, directly or indirectly, and that you should therefore elect a union guy. Or that it operates, directly or indirectly, on money I personally earn, and so you should elect me.

[Little Nemo]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

They simply cannot relate to the small business owner who runs his own home renovation firm. Maybe he's got five or six employees, and would like to hire a few more. His wife is his accountant. He's got a lawyer who does a few hours of work a year helping to file his various business documents. Every time he goes to his lawyer or has to hire an accountant it's frightening because they charge big bucks and what they do is so far out of his wheelhouse he feels like he has no control over the situation.

It would be nice to have people in government who understand what it's like to be that small proprietor - who understand it in their bones, from having lived the life. And it would be nice to have some who took a small business like that and grew it into a major firm, and understands what that takes and how government can throw wrenches into the works.

And you think somebody like Mitt Romney understands that? Romney wasn't running a small business - he was running a multi-billion dollar investment company. He probably had more assistants working for him when he was in the private sector than he did when he was Governor.

[foolsguinea]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

When a person like that reads about a new requirement that will force him to track every payment over $600 and file a form with the government, it terrifies him. His wife doesn't have time to do it, and an accountant will cost him a fortune. His receipts are in a shoe box because he works 12 hour days and signs checks at a dozen places and never seems to have time to sort it all out. And doing paperwork is the thing he absolutely hates more than anything.

Accounting is a basic business skill. If your small proprietor isn't keeping track of every cheque written, at sums far less than $600, he'll be bankrupt and out of business inside 18 months. This argument is so stupid it argues for those regulations and against your ostensible point.

[Absolute]

Originally Posted by foolsguinea

Accounting is a basic business skill. If your small proprietor isn't keeping track of every cheque written, at sums far less than $600, he'll be bankrupt and out of business inside 18 months. This argument is so stupid it argues for those regulations and against your ostensible point.

Accounting for how you're spending money is completely different thing from filling out and sending a goddamn IRS form to every company you've spent over $600 at over the course over a year.

Someone buying a coffee a day at Starbucks spends more than $600 there annually.

I operate a small business. This would have been a nightmare and taken at least a couple days of my time. I would have had to send 1099s to every single office supply chain, Best Buy, various gas stations, airlines, restaurants, websites, hotels, parking lots, etc. It would have been just totally nuts.

[The Tooth]

I try to imagine the small businessmen I know being afraid to see their accountants or shuddering at the thought of keeping track of their business expenses, but it's just not happening.

[Exapno Mapcase]

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

This appears to be special pleading that is the exact (flipped) analogue to the argument that Judge Vaughn R. Walker had to recuse himself from the Proposition 8 verdict because only heterosexuals could understand marriage.

There are many things wrong with the argument. The most telling is that no one in the private sector operates this way. CEOs are fungible; they move from corporation to corporation despite often not having any experience in the industry of their new hire. Their compensation comes from having the special skill of being able to run a corporation. They don't need to have the skills of people on the line or in sales or R&D. They have a chain of reportees that amass this information for that. That is exactly the way the government works as well. Therefore the proper leader for a governmental position is someone who best exhibits the special skills of running a governmental operation.

The next most serious objection is that, pace Calvin Coolidge, the business of America is not business. Regulation of business is one tiny piece of the government as a whole. Very little of the executive branch, except possibly the regulatory agencies, and very little of Congress has anything to do with business regulation. Putting in someone from business to head any area will be counterproductive. As proof, let me present the seemingly billions of examples of appointees from business who while in office bend the rules to benefit their businesses and who go back to business at vastly higher salaries now that they know how to manipulate Washington. It is a public disgrace, not a sound governmental policy.

As for the 1099 reporting requirement, I'm somewhat less incensed than you seem to be. You see, I was actually the business manager for a magazine for 10 years, with one of my duties issuing 1099-MISC forms to the correct people. Since I kept full records in Quicken Basic of all money that flowed in and out, day by day, and dollar by dollar, creating the tax work at the end of the year was a straightforward procedure than managed to frighten me less, say, than a viewing of the new Atlas Shrugged movie. Adding vendors to the list would have entailed no more pain. In the year 2011 I'd wager that far more small businesses use Quicken or its competitors than shoeboxes. Making life immeasurably easier is one of the first tricks that small entrepreneurs figure out for themselves.

But it matters not. Since you conveniently leave it out of your post, I'd like to inform people that on April 14, "Today, President Obama signed a law that removes the expanded “1099” reporting requirement from the Affordable Care Act. This is a big win for small businesses."

The reason for the reporting was to cut one of the right's favorite loopholes when it comes to non-businesspeople. The reporting would force businesses to cut down on under-the-table cash payments that mostly would go unrecorded. IOW, money would flow in as reported taxes from places not reported in the past. So much for the billions in new revenue by attacking cheats and frauds. Apparently business had enough power to get this horrible example of justice, equality, and fairness quashed despite the desperate lack of business leaders at the top. We can all breathe easier now that it's been rescinded. At least until we find out what less powerful population will pay the price of not being business and so having rules changes imposed to pull the lost billions out of their teeth.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by Absolute

It makes perfect sense to me that you want someone who understands the needs of the private sector in office. If you want the government to spend $XX billion on something, you need to either raise taxes, or figure out how to increase private sector revenue such that you collect $XX billion extra in taxes at the unchanged rate.

Some Republicans truly believe that the last option is superior to the first, for everyone involved. And someone with private sector experience is best-equipped to make that happen. Others are just greedy corrupt bastards, of course.

Just about everyone agrees that option 2 is better. It involves not only more tax revenue from more economic activity, but reduced expenditures for unemployment and the like.

Republicans seem to be particularly bad at growing the economy to make this happen.

[mlees]

Originally Posted by suranyi

This is something that has always really bugged me.

Yes, there are a few ways in which government and business are similar. They both should be run in an efficient manner, for example.

But they are fundamentally very, very different. At the most basic level. For example, the goal of a business is to create a profit, in fact to create as much profit as possible. Now people differ on what they think the goal of government should be but I don't think there's much disagreement that the goal of government is NOT to create a profit.

I think that there is also a perception among some people that sometimes career bureaucrats are "out of touch" with the plight(s) of the common man.

Of course, this happens with corporate executives, too.

Or anyone "rich".

[Sam Stone]

Originally Posted by foolsguinea

Accounting is a basic business skill. If your small proprietor isn't keeping track of every cheque written, at sums far less than $600, he'll be bankrupt and out of business inside 18 months. This argument is so stupid it argues for those regulations and against your ostensible point.

I ran my own small business for 10 years. There's a big difference between sitting down with a list of canceled cheques and quickly entering each one into quickbooks, and having to maintain detailed accounts for every vendor, including their tax numbers, and then filling out a form for every one of them when you spend $600 there.

And don't forget that you have to contact each vendor for their tax information, and that since you're also a vendor to others, you're going to be hassled repeatedly for your own tax info by the customers of your products or service, eaxh of whom is also filling out 1099's. There also would have been an increased auditing burden - the IRS was going to hire an army of extra auditors in part because of this requirement.

It appears that even the Obama administration agrees with me, since they quickly signed off on the removal of the requirement.

Of course, that means they have to increase the estimated cost of the health care bill, since they can no longer rely on the revenue they thought they'd get from this.

[Robot Arm]

Originally Posted by BrainGlutton

He ain't got a chance. His pizza sucks.

How did Godfather's do under Herman Cain's leadership? I can remember a couple decades ago when they had restaurants all over the place; now I only know of one. I keep hearing that he's the ex-CEO, but not whether he was any good at it.

Originally Posted by Sam Stone

You guys have it backwards. Business experience matters not because you run government like a business, or because you want a CEO to make government more efficient. Rather, you want someone who understands business to be in charge of the government, because government is responsible for regulating business. If the regulators don't understand the pressures of business or the requirements for a business to be successful, they're not likely to do a very good job when telling businesses how they must operate.

Sounds rather like putting the fox in charge of guarding the henhouse. Regulations aren't placed on businesses for the fun of it, but to keep them operating in ways that are fair to everyone. I reject your idea that the best person to create and implement those regulations is someone who sympathizes with the burden placed on businesses to comply. I want those regulations handled by someone who has my interests at heart, too.