I keep hearing that government should be run more like a business.
However, I also keep hearing that we need to cut revenues (decrease taxes) and curb spending.
Has anyone an explanation of a business plan based upon the idea of decreasing revenue? How, exactly, does that work? Sell fewer products at lower prices in order to make a profit?
Something about this seems counter-intuitive to me. I've always thought that the usual goal for a business was to increase revenues, in order to have money to pay their workers and their bills, to spend on investment like R&R, and to have something left over in the way of profit, to keep the business financially secure and able to withstand downturns, as well as to provide a dividend to investors.
Apparently, government is the only "business" some people think best operates by reducing revenues, spending nothing on R&R, and providing no products or services -- the goal of which, bewilderingly, is to avoid making a profit, being careful to NOT have enough surplus resources to withstand downturns, and to provide dividends, not to those who are their investors (actual taxpayers), but, rather, to people and corporations who don't invest in the business and who actively seek to drown the business in a bathtub.
It's all very confusing to me. Perhaps all those admonishments concerning how government should be run "like a business" were just rhetorical flourishes, designed to obfuscate the real goals.
Ya think?
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