What does this pic (slogan) really mean?

The Straight Story

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Sun Nov-27-11 04:57 PM
Original message

What does this pic (slogan) really mean?

A friend on FB posted this, and I have some questions about it:

To which I have replied:

Nice slogan, but what does it actually mean? Government grows as the population does (serving more people, more military needs, etc) - costs increase over time (repairing roads, education, etc) and just like a business - costs increase.

Does it mean a bigger government as in Patriot act, TSA, Homeland Security?

Does it mean more regulations? Should we leave banks, manufacturers, etc, alone and let them self regulate - and if they dump waste into the creeks, bring down the economy, etc, do we really think they will stop all by themselves? Should we remove rape, robbery, etc from the laws in hopes that people will just do what is right - if so, let's get rid of police.

As the world and the population grow it is a natural thing that government employment and needs to support the population will grow - I think the main idea here is that it should grow in an intelligent manner. JP Morgan has grown a lot over the years, more employees, more internal regulations, etc. As the number of customers grow (population) the business has grown and there are more managers there now than there were 50 years ago.

I keep hearing that if we ran the government like a business how much better it would be, should we tell businesses that growing larger as your base does is bad and that people who disagree are imbeciles?

Slogans are nice, and I agree some things should shrink - whiles others grow. It is a dynamic situation and a simple slogan won't fix the problems we have.

The government serves the people - all the people. From the poorest to the wealthiest. It may not be the solution to all our problems but the US government is the company we are doing business with. When costs increase at a big company we say it is a good thing because it raises more revenue to expand (like with an electric company, etc). When costs increase in doing business when it is the government we call it bad.

Make it more efficient, run it better, I am all for that.

So what does it mean, outside of a nice soundbite, "More Government"? We are not living in the late 1700's anymore - we have grown immensely over 200+ years. If a company runs itself the same as it did when it had 10 employees and now has 10,000 what will happen? No HR dept? No payroll division, only 1 part time lawyer, etc and so on?

Managed growth ... key word here is growth. As a business becomes more complex it hires more people, has more regulations/rules, and can serve more customers in a better way. New managers/ceo's come in and promise investors it can better manage the business (or in our case, politicians) - which is fine, but saying less is better is not really practical. Growth requires more in a position to aid that growth. More departments, more people, etc to handle the new and more complex issues that are being faced.

Maybe we should shrink the armed forces, less missiles, less generals, less wars, etc. Less government in these areas could mean more money spent on the real threats (health care, infrastructure issues, etc). Do you REALLY want less government, or just less when it comes to really helping out the people here who the government is supposed to represent and help?