Government

Increasingly, I hear of government contractors and government officials discussing cost-benefit analyses of public programs. There has always been something unsettling about this to me, although I have not been able to put my finger on exactly what was the troubling aspect. Listening to the news this morning, in a discussion of the Iraq war, still in progress after more than 5 years, I heard a government contractor discussing the potential for the region – the economic potential. He said “I’m not here because I’m interested in the people. I believe there’s money to be made – a lot of money.”

I believe in business and free enterprise. I believe that a company that can add value or do a job efficiently has every right to profit from these endeavors and that these profits will help the laborers at the company as well as reward the owner for taking the appropriate risks, making the right decisions, and providing their product or service to their customers. Government, however, should operate differently. Increasingly, it does not. Government is overrun with business-minded people and lacking in public servants.

Government, namely the United States federal government, exists to “form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.” They do not have any mandate to generate a profit. This government should be the long-minded policy developer to ensure that the profits of today do not damage the opportunities of tomorrow, to ensure that the benefit of some does not endanger the well-being of the population. While businesses should be free to explore new avenues for investment for profit, government should be engaged in ensuring that the policies it sets forward are for the benefit of the governed.

I do not see this opinion as naïve or overly idealistic. By limiting government investment to those areas where it may promote otherwise unavailable economic growth and those areas where the actions directly promote the common short-term and long-term benefit of the population, the government may operate on a limited budget, reducing the tax burden on the people, and may promote just policies that can be supported by the majority of the governed. Areas of public concern most notably include, among others, health care, education, sustainable development, economic stability, and equal protection under the law. A simple litmus test for any public policy could be “does this policy benefit the society as a whole?” Anything that does not pass this litmus test should be seriously questioned as a matter of public policy. In no way does this litmus test include any sort of cost-benefit analysis. Dollars and cents are the language of business; public well-being should be the language of government.