Government can't be run like business

Every time I hear someone say government should run like a business it makes me cringe. Government is NOT a business, it is a SERVICE.

Could any business survive with almost 600 vice presidents (Congress) dozens of CEOs (Department Secretaries) and with each of the vice presidents micro managing any Department that the dilatant wishes to dabble in at any given moment?

Where few of the vice presidents knows anything about the departments they are fiddling around in and have only the interests of keeping themselves re-employed periodically and what self-serving headlines they can generate in the nightly news.

Few if any of the measures we use to evaluate the success of a business (and the moral appropriateness of some of those measures is frequently questionable) are appropriate to measure the success of government. Remember that amusing phrase "and provide for the general welfare"?

In business it applies to "me;" in government it applies to "us."

So the next time someone says "run government like a business," hold onto your wallet.

The sick, the poor, the unemployed would become a vast army of Bob Cratchits subservient to a ruling class of Ebenezer Scrooges amassing more and more golden fortunes. No, I think running government like a business is the last think we need; we need to recognize what government is.

James Prescott

Schaumburg