The Business of Governing

If I have to listen to one more dapper businessman-turned-politician with perfect hair lecture me on his business experience and how it makes him the perfect leader of this superpower I call home, I'll, um, not vote for him.

For as long as I've been paying attention, there's been some millionaire, self-made or otherwise, telling the rest of us how their business accumen (and unmentioned good fortune) makes them better suited to the business of governing than the guys who were spending all those years actually running things. It's these same characters, with their uniformly gray temples topped with a minky pelt of combed black, who then lay out policies that would shutter a lemonade stand in an afternoon.  

I understand that running a business isn't easy, but neither is running a government. To pretend that they're the same, and then to propose truly anti-business decisions on the taxpayer, is flat-out insulting, and takes a cynicism that can only come from a lifetime of VO5 oil treatments and scalp massages by underpaid employees. I don't know much about business, but a few things seem glaringly obvious:

1. Every ledger has two sides: revenue and spending. Businesses like revenue and want to spend as little as they need to in order to get more of it. Government uses revenue to buy things that the public wants or needs, like guns or butter (or hair gel). A business without revenue isn't a business. A government without revenue can't do the things the public wants or needs. If business is such a good analogy for government, then how does cutting taxes (revenue) and getting into three wars (spending) make sense?

2. Debt is bad, default is worse. Whoever you are, creditors want to know they'll get their money back. Most businesses need credit to make large investments, to get through a rough patch, or to shore up their cashflow. None of that can happen if we stop paying the monthly minimum on our nation's corporate Visa. America has a lot of debt, but it has an 800 FICO score. Stop paying for even a day, and that score will drop hundreds of points. Imagine the harassing calls from our lenders, the threats to seize our property, and even once a deal is reached, the 20% APR and restricted use thereafter. We need to pay down this debt, but a default will make it that much more difficult. What sort of businessman would even think of sending that signal to the people holding trillions of dollars in treasury notes? Who has a hairline like that? Really?

3. Debt is good, if it's for an investment, getting through a rough patch, or shoring up cashflow. Ford doesn't have the capital on-hand to open 12 new plants in Michigan and develop that new car that runs on coffee grinds and banana peels. Ford makes a business case to lenders and then borrows with the promise of a decent, reliable return on the lender's money. Roads, bridges, a healthy, educated workforce, and many other things, are the promises that America makes to its lenders. Give us credit and we'll grow. Keep that bald spot hidden so I can look good kissing babies and shaking hands, and I'll be able to pay you back with interest once I'm elected. That's the ancient promise of moneylending. We can't pay anyone if we stop taking credit during a rough patch, run into cashflow issues, and stop returning the calls from the bank. That's exactly what these businessmen propose.

In the future, once we start making money again, we'll pay this down. Once we have leadership who can make the hard choices on both sides of the ledger, to spend less (at least on dumb stuff), and raise more (in smart ways), we'll be able to start making a dent in this massive sum of IOUs. And we should.

Future deficit spending should work more like a series of loans than a credit line. Give me thirty years and I'll pay back this mortgage. In exchange, I get to own this house and live in it. Give me five years and I'll pay this car loan. In exchange, I get to go places, like my job, where I'll get money to pay for that loan. Deficit spending is fine, but it would be better for it to be for specific purposes, and with a definite time to pay it back. Same goes for specific taxes. We want high speed rail? Issue rail bonds.We want a war? Enact a penny war tax. Or rail tax and war bonds, I don't care. The point is that we balance the books and we pay for what people need.

Enough with the pomade, false propriety, and pompous free-market piety. We have a country to run.