Jared Kushner says government should be run like a company

Jared Kushner, whose long list of assignments as Senior Advisor includes "overhauling" the government, said in an interview last weekend: "We should have excellence in government. ... The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens."

What's wrong with that? Everything, according to Harvard Business School professor Gautam Mukunda:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Guatam Mukunda The first and most obvious problem with that is that American citizens are not customers. Someone has to tell Jared Kushner that citizens are his boss, not his customers. When you've inherited your job, that might be difficult to understand, but it's an important idea. ... Now let's talk about the differences between running a democracy and a company, which are profound. First, there are differences in ends. Companies are supposed to run at a profit. If your government is running at a profit, you have a problem; it’s not an indicator of success. More broadly, almost all companies have a level of authority that flows upward that much more resembles a dictatorship than a democracy. At the end of the day, a CEO can fire just about anyone who disagrees with him or her, and that's not an uncommon thing to do. Presidents don't have that option. However much Donald Trump wants to fire Chuck Schumer, the people of New York are not going to cooperate. So something as simple as that reveals how profound the differences between government and politics are. In business, the question of ends [is] far less important. Everybody wants the company to make money, and maybe we want to do that by treating our workers better or maybe we want to make money by treating our workers worse — but we all want to make more money. There's nothing wrong with that — this is the whole point of business. But the ends of government are far more debated. Is it, for example, the job of the government to provide health insurance for citizens or not? That is not a question of tactics but of objectives, and this is far different than the challenges you face in a boardroom.

(Much more in the article, and it doesn't mention that even if running the government like a business was a good idea, there's no good reason to think Jared Kushner knows how to do that.)

Kusher and his father-in-law need to read at least the preamble to the Constitution, which outlines the purpose of our government, and it doesn't say "we the businessmen of the United States, in order to maximize profits..."

Those people who thought it would be really cool if Trump ran the country like he ran his businesses are a modern parable of "be careful what you wish for." All of Trump's failures can be traced to him doing exactly that.

via International Skeptics Forum http://ift.tt/2p62QrL