I come out of the business world. I’ve had executive jobs in both the private sector and government.
This is the one reason I could not vote for you as President. Many, especially from the right, criticized President Obama for not having any experience outside of the public sector. It is a charge now being leveled against Sen Sanders as he makes another attempt at securing the nomination. It was, and is, one of the things I perceived as strengths for both, as government, especially at the federal level where dollars are created, should never “run like a business”.
People with the mindset and knowledge base developed in successful business careers see the world from a different, and wrong, in my opinion, perspective. The federal government is the ultimate service industry that should never make a “profit” and is most successful when it is least fiscally efficient. Those who are conditioned by their experience leading a profitable business, an efficient city, or a state government never seem to grasp the differences between those entities and the federal government in our economy.
Every dollar spent by the federal government is a brand new dollar created as someone’s asset in the private sector. The one thing your business experience should have prepared you for is understanding dual entry spreadsheet accounting and sectoral balances. Such an understanding would impart the knowledge of the impossibility of taxation as “funding” for federal spending. Ditto for “borrowing” by the monopoly issuer of the nation’s currency. Every dollar collected by any means by our federal government is destroyed by the debt that created it upon its entry into the government sector, and therefore CANNOT survive to fund anything.
It is simply not possible to effectively manage the federal budget process if one views the spending for the public good as a “cost” to the economy and not the “source” of dollars that it is. We would be better off with the limitations of the gold standard that, at least, allowed the value of our gold reserve in our economy without it being vilified as a debt that must be paid off. Our current and longstanding approach to spending at the federal level, while suited to any entities that are not the federal government, simply cannot effectively provide the level of funding necessary to solve climate change, or any of our many problems that could be mitigated by more money.
Only by understanding that such problems exist as political decisions, not economics can they ever be properly addressed. It is exactly your successes that would prevent me from voting for you. When a politician in a federal capacity asks “How will we pay for it?” in connection to spending for the common welfare the only right answer is “By seeing to your defeat by another who will never ask that question”. This has never been truer than now as we face choices that will determine our very existence as a species on this earth.
