Posted on 08/13/2010 6:53:50 AM PDT by Silverfiddle
Why? Because if private companies don't do things efficiently, they lose money and die. Unlike government, they cannot compel payment through the power to tax.
Notice how every government "solution" involves more of what caused the problem in the first place? And how more money and more bureaucracy are always involved as well? "Oh yeah!" Sneers the progressive. "What about public roads? Huh? Huh?"
Private enterprise does roads better than government
In 1995, a private road company added two lanes in the middle of California Highway 91, right where the median strip used to be. It then used "congestion pricing" to let some drivers pay to speed past rush-hour traffic. Using the principles of supply and demand, road operators charge higher tolls at times of day when demand is high. [...] Bureaucrats were skeptical. Now congestion pricing is a hot idea for both private and public road management systems.He provides two more examples from France and Indiana. Cheaper, better, faster is not in the bureaucrats' lexicon. E-470 that skirts Denver to the east is one more example right here in Colorado. Democratic governor Dick Lamm refused to fund a bypass, so businessmen got together and built one themselves, and it is a well-used, money-making road.
No corporation on the planet comes close to the United States government in sheer magnitude, or unimaginable, unprecedented power. The nation's top 100 corporations combined still fall far short of the behemoth in Washington, D.C., which conducts extensive operations in agriculture, weapons production, medical care, housing, real estate, education, mail delivery, policing, resource development, banking, the arts, security services, food provision, transportation and much, much more.
Within five years, federal spending will consume 25% of every dollar generated by the private economy.
...they (Tea partiers, and a growing cohort of independents) focus on the federal deficit "not because it presents an imminent crisis of its own, necessarily, but because it signifies a kind of institutional recklessness, a disconnectedness from the reality of daily life."
If government had to run itself like a business and follow the rules it makes everyone else follow, we would not be in the mess we are in.The public also understands that such recklessness, such unsustainable spending, would bring individuals or small businesses to rapid financial ruin; only the largest corporations, and the federal government itself, can get away with long-standing patterns of irresponsibility. The contrast raises the painful issue of double standards: the application of different rules for the people and the powerful (a designation that includes both governmental and corporate elites).
Defund all collectives including corporations and foreign governments. Defend the country, the individual.
$top $pending.
So do you really mean the government should cancel all its defense contracts with privately or publicly held corporations? Cancel all military aircraft contracts? Cancel all missile defense contracts? Bankrupt all our defense contractors? You aren't seriously proposing that, are you?
I don’t see where he is saying the government cannot buy anything.
You do?
Must be something in your eye.
You do?
Must be something in your eye.
Defund all collectives including corporations ...Depending on what the meaning of "defund" is, the post I replied to -- especially the words at the end of it that I didn't bother to copy, i.e. "stop spending" -- seems to broadbrush all government funding of anything involving a "collective" (including corporations). That is why I asked the question for clarification. (That's what that funny-looking little curvy punctuation mark at the end of the statement means.)
Absolutely not. Defense of the country is the primary function of the government. Examine every other collective that we giving money to and ask...why?
A zero-baseline budgeting process in which every single spending line item starts at zero and has to be justified would go a long way toward restoring some fiscal sanity. Too many outrageous items get funded for billions of dollars because rather than asking "why should the federal government even spend a penny on this item" liberal democrats and a complicit media screech "how can you impose such a draconian cut by only increasing this item by 5% instead of 15% this year?"
From your lips to God's ear.
I know it’s more a pipe-dream than a prayer, but that is what our federal budget desperatly needs.
I guess I’ll let PGalt answer for himself. But I took him to mean funding of businesses (green jobs, NASA research, etc, etc).
Thanks for explaining what “?” is. I never knew.
Glad to help with what “?” means. Since I couldn’t hear your tone of voice when you said “Must be something in your eye” as you typed it into the post, I’m not sure if it was intended to be as snarky as it read. I tend to return snark for snark. I probably need to work on that little character flaw.
Thanks for your reply, thread, post
...”why should the federal government even spend a penny on this item”...
YOU NAILED IT
$top $pending
...”why should the federal government even spend a penny on this item”...
WORTH ANOTHER BTTT!
...”why should the federal government even spend a penny on this item”...
Worth another BUMP-TO-THE-TOP!
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