In the business world, lower profits reflect less demand for your product. But in government the opposite is true - demand for our services increases in hard times.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Although everyone does benefit from lower-priced goods and services, people also care greatly about the chance to be productively employed and the quality of their work. Declining employment opportunities feel real and immediate; the rise in real incomes brought by lower prices does not.
Government is the only industry in which we don't have a choice. If you live somewhere, you belong to that government. So we get bad service for high prices. This doesn't have to be.
It's counterproductive to lower my price, because I have to sell more units to make up for that lost revenue. Generating brand-new products can take a long time. Improving service is typically the quickest way that I can take market share. So aligning technology strategy to better service customers becomes an essential path to revenue growth.
When the government takes more money out of the pockets of middle class Americans, entrepreneurs, and businesses, it lessens the available cash flow for people to spend on goods and services, less money to start businesses, and less money for businesses to expand - i.e. creating new jobs and hiring people.
Because what happens is, as the economy suffers, tax revenues go down. But unlike businesses, where at least your variable costs go down, in government your variable costs go up: unemployment insurance, workmen's compensation, health care benefits, welfare, you name it.
Government works less efficiently when it begins to grow out of control and takes on more and more of the responsibilities that belong to the citizens.
If a few companies were less greedy, the people at the bottom woud have a lot more.
I'm much more interested in raising revenues for businesses than for the government.
What I would say is governments need assistance to run their organisations more efficiently just like businesses do.
Products are valued higher than services.