The federal government as a business

[EQPlayer]

I hope the following isn't what they teach MBAs at Harvard:

You currently run a business, and it's doing fairly well. You are profitable, not making a killing, but a nice profit. Then you decide, well, I really don't need to make a profit (even though you have some debt you were paying off), since I REALLY like my customers, and I'd be happy just covering my costs. So you cut your prices, arguing that you may actually sell more of your product with lower prices (even though your prices were just fine to begin with).

Well, after you slash your prices (especially on your high end, most profitable goods), the economy slows down, and we have 9/11. So suddely your costs go up since you have to pay for extra security around your factories, which increases costs, but generates no additional revenue. So now your losing money -- sales are off, and costs are up. What do you do? You say, well, it's not really that bad, I don't need to raise prices or find a way to cut costs, I'll just go borrow more money. And year after year you say this.

Well, what happens next?

1) Your creditors start to downgrade your credit, not just because you're losing money, but because you're not showing any inclination or real business savvy about how to stop the red ink. This just increases your interest on your debt, making matters worse.

2) You make the price increases necessary for the people buying your products significantly steeper than if you raised them a little bit now. So instead of a 2% increase now, you're faced with a 5%-10% increase later. And that probably will hurt your business.

Any reasonable business owner would be unable to follow this twisted logic for running their business, but somehow the idjit in the White House is praised for having a Harvard MBA and following the same path? Can Harvard revoke it? And when will business owners realize that this guy is the worst manager in existence?

A little sacrifice now would require a lot less later -- but if you believe the rapture is coming soon, then you figure no sacrifice is necessary since we'll all be dead soon anyway. Kinda sucks for the rest of us who inherit your mess.

[ArthurDent]

1. You'd also:

fire a lot of your employees (layoffs), cut out unprofitable enterprises (almost all of them, particularly the ones liberals/progressives like), and do a lot of other things the goverment cannot do.

[bufffbison]

2. think we should do a mass mailing to harvard?

[lostnfound]

3. Your assuming that the idjit CARES about the financial health of the US.

He doesn't, and few in power do.

The Federal govenrment has become simply a tool of large corporations