Sample Essay On Should Government Run As A Business?

Sample Essay On Should Government Run As A Business?

Introduction
Businesses establish to provide goods and services with the main aim of making profits, run insofar as they are profitable, and adjust prices to meet their objectives that may be prohibitive to a major portion of the population. Governments on the hand provide public goods and services and not driven by making profits but provide services considered peoples’ rights like domestic security, defense and public health. Thus, the government acts as people’s voice as opposed to businesses that have no regard for the rights and liberties of the people. In business terms, government products are the services it provides like security, public health, medical care, transportation and the price it charges refers to the taxes collected from provision of such services (Bond & Smith, 2008).

The government has no money of its own but what it has is from the citizens through taxation. It can only make profits by taxing its citizens too much that would be harmful to its citizens who have created it. The government aims for sufficient efficiency while businesses target maximum efficiency. Businesses are merit based and cut off from employment those people considered unproductive but the government aims to protect the disadvantaged members of the society. This shows that government and business are distinct entities that have different mindsets and obligations (Wurtzel, 2006).
Democrat versus Republican views
The democrats view government and business as two separate entities and there are societal functions that businesses cannot fulfill. It is the role of the government to provide security for its citizens, and this requires huge financial investments that businesses would not have the financial incentive to provide. No private institution can provide national defense and although the expertise of business becomes important to produce things like military hardware, it is outside the competence of businesses to control and coordinate national defense. Although businesses are capable of providing goods and services, they lack financial motivation to do so at socially optimal levels and thus the government becomes indispensable in such circumstances (Wurtzel, 2006).
In the business world, managers make major decisions and if this happened in government, it would not be democratic but autocratic. The democrats hold that the citizens have a right to be involved in the decision making process because the decisions made will affect them. If the government runs as a business, the rights and liberties of the citizens would cease (Wurtzel, 2006). The democrats advocate for raising taxes in order to get enough revenue for government spending that in turn would help generate businesses. They use the public funds to finance projects that pump more money into the economy. Democrats believe that prices tend to remain stable any spending whether by the government or by consumer would grow the economy (Bond & Smith, 2008).
Republicans are of the view that government should run as a business; they believe in cutting down on taxes in order to lower prices for the government products and services, which is friendlier to citizens. This however would lead to deficits that are unsustainable because revenue decrease and this would necessitate lowering operational costs in terms of laying-off workers. Republican view of cutting down prices of its services in form of lowering taxes has led to enormous national debts in America and cut down on essential services like Medicare and social security because the decreasing revenue cannot finance them and they blame the problem on overspending rather than tax cut down (Bardes, Shelley, & Schmidt, 2008).
The Republicans are opposed to programs on social spending like Medicare and are of the opinion that private institutions should run such; the democrats opposed this as they felt this would be a threat to the existence of Medicare (Bardes, Shelley, & Schmidt, 2008). The Republicans say that the government should tax with the aim of raising money for its essential services only like infrastructure and national security. They believe in a low tax policy that would help Americans keep more of their money and make future investments and that this would help grow the economy. The Republican policy is of more benefit to the wealthy while democrat tax policy benefits middle and small businesses (Edwards, 2005).
Conclusion
Republicans believe that it is the responsibility of the citizens to run the government and do not support welfare programs; they established a low tax system with the aim of not over-burdening its citizens but  that led to low revenue and high national debts.
Democrats do not believe in the concept of running the government as business and believe it is the responsibility of the government to care for its citizens. They believe that people should share in the economic burden through taxes and support welfare programs to support the poor in the society and this approach has led to a stronger economy and reduced national debts.

 References

Bardes, B. A., Shelley, M. C., & Schmidt, S. W. (2008). American Government and Politics Today 2008: The Essentials. Canada: Clark Baxter Publishers.
Bond, J. R., & Smith, K. B. (2008). The Promise and Performance of American Democracy. Boston: Suzzane Jeans Publishers.
Edwards, C. R. (2005). The Republican Revolution 10 Years Later:Smaller Government Or Business As Usual? Washington: Cato Institute.
Wurtzel, A. E. (2006). Trends in Contemporary Ethical Issues. New York: Nova Science Publishers.