When a company fires employees, it benefits the company. The harm to those people fired is softened by the government offering financial aid and help in finding jobs. But we should realize that the firing also benefits the general economy. We live in an economic system (call it capitalism, if you want) that requires a substantial pool of unemployed because the whole system, much larger than any individual company, always needs to have available unemployed people to hire when some company needs to expand or new companies are created. Zero unemployment means the whole system begins to die. Employees don’t have to think about that, but bosses do, so they can fire people with an attitude of “out of sight, out of mind.” The economy will take care of the problem.
But the country is not a company. Many voters who elected President Trump thought that having a businessman as president was a good thing, and the many bosses that now run the country seem to have the same misconception. But if a company fires people with expertise, those persons might find jobs in other companies that need that expertise. The economy will absorb them. But if the country fires you because your expertise is to care for the country, do you go to another country to find a job? All that has happened in this country is that it has been diminished, its expertise wasted, unemployment increased without sparking economic activity that will make the overall economy grow.
It is perfectly true that if the government fires everyone, it can save money, and the less it does, the more money it saves. But then the real issue is not saving money, but what a government is supposed to do. We are watching the development of different idea of what government is for.
From what is transpiring, it seems that government is not supposed to protect the health of the country, its people and its nature. The government’s “business” is not to conduct studies or to maintain data and provide information derived from those studies and data to advance knowledge and practices to better life. Its “business” is not to educate people. Its “business” is not to better living conditions of people. It is not supposed to care for the elderly or the disabled or the unfortunate. It’s not in the insurance business. It should not provide backup for the jobless. It does not protect people from cheating, bribery, and other unsavory practices that our president says are simply “normal business practices.” It does not guarantee equality or fair treatment or impartiality in law. It doesn’t provide weather or climate reports. Product safety issues are not its concern nor is traffic control. Its “business” is not even the economy.
The only direct reference I have seen to the government’s “job” is that it should have a military that can win wars and keep foreigners out. Indirectly, of course, it seems that business people’s business is private profit (which we used to call “taxes”), and we can expect, soon, all to be users of Visa’s coming X-card with which we can pay our taxes and conduct every conceivable financial transaction through a “public/private” Megaccount. Government as slush fund.
This well written piece could also serve the community well if sent as a letter to the editor of the Sentinel, which may have a different readership than the Citizen.
Than you, Max. The behavior of this administration will put to rest the notion that we should run the government like a business. How much damage and suffering it will take in the meantime is the question.
I wondered when Mr. Yeh would recover from the election. Your article, like most of the left complains about Trump and Musk, is missing one common thing, a reasonable alternative. I’ve listened to politicians (Republican and Democrat) all my life acknowledge the seriousness of the national debt. Some have campaigned on doing something about it. Yet when they get to Washington its just too difficult and instead they pass bills adding to it. So I’m just asking, if you’re going to complain about what the Trump administration is doing, could you please provide a definitive workable alternative? And of course I would expect it to keep all the employees, continue to provide all the services with a balanced budget that will pay down the national debt in a reasonable period. I’d love to read that plan and then maybe we can debate.
Mr. Mullenax, you’ve been listening to politicians for too long. In today’s world, it’s a career, with its own expertise and knowledge. You must have asked yourself what politicians, some of whom decide to do that when they are in high school, know? How to get elected? And you must have understood that getting elected means being an expert on how to get people to give money and how to appear likeable, how to sound definite and sure, how to bash the opposition, and support the party? Are these the people you want to define for you what the nation’s problems are and how to solve them? Hasn’t it crossed your mind that all those politicians arguing about the budget know very little about political economy. You recognize that balancing the budget is difficult, but have you thought about whether it is really an issue at all? So before you go around asking for a plan, maybe you should ask what is desirable or undesirable about a balanced budget. As I wrote, a government is not a business.
I don’t know if a balanced budget is wonderful for us as a nation. I do know that people’s heads get twisted by fake economic arguments. Take, for example, the big stink being raised by politicians over “balance of trade.” It’s just an excuse to get people to be angry so the tariffs can be raised so prices can go up (and they never really come down, do they?). When you buy something at the store, say a drill. You pay money for it and in exchange you use the drill. Every transaction in the market is that kind of exchange: dollars for use. If the US buys more from foreign countries than it sells, we call that an imbalance, but only in terms of money, one half of the transaction. Overall, we buy because we use, and if we buy more than we sell, we are benefiting from all that use. In trade, there is no imbalance. It’s ridiculous for the US to think that foreign countries are cheating us because of we buy from them. That is like you thinking Walmart cheated you because it took your money for the drill. Do you really think one should get the drill for free?
So go ahead, tell us why an imbalance between government spending and income is so terrible if the money goes into people’s hands, creates jobs, generates work, buying and selling, etc. Afterall, unlike a business, family, or individual, the government creates money, and money generates an economy. It’s money that does no work, that doesn’t circulate, that is a problem.
In other words, you don’t have any idea how to balance the national budget. So all you can do is criticize someone who is trying to do it. Just another Monday morning quarterback. I bet you don’t manage your own budget that way, or maybe you do!!
In other words, you didn’t read my reply or didn’t understand it. Not much of a debate. Let’s just say to be polite that you didn’t read the reply. Maybe I use too many words. Here is something shorter: before you ask for plans to solve the problem, please show that there is a problem. And please don’t refer to budgets of families or businesses, again. That is just a tired, overworked and irrelevant comparison that politicians use. Resist the addiction to repeat what politicians say. Think beyond the narrow boundaries of their chatter. What does “balanced budget” mean when talking about the entity that creates money? Why does creating money that bolsters the economy of the nation hurt the nation?
You are a history expert so could you please give me a few examples of thriving countries that have survived when they continued to “created money” that didn’t result in an increase in their GDP? That’s what increased spending on social programs and interest on our national debt does. You tell me not to refer to family or business budgets. What about other governments? Based on your description of how the economy works, why don’t states, cities, counties, etc. just spend what ever they desire and if they don’t have enough revenue, just ask the Big government that creates money to create some more for them? And I’ll bet you consider inflation just another unimportant word. Warren Buffet suggested that we limit government spending to a specific percentage of GDP. Of course maybe you understand economics better than him.
Thank you, Mr. Mullenax, for finally speaking to the point. I hesitate to answer your question about the history of the economic effects of central government spending because you specifically poohpoohed Monday Morning Quarterbacking, which is using hindsight and hindsight is all history is about. So, let me suggest we look at government spending relative to revenue today.
Please go to this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_government_budget. This list of countries is based on compilations by the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the CIA.
Please be aware as you read the article that the word “budget” is not used in this context as we usually use it to mean a before-the-fact plan of expenditures. We are talking about actual income and outlay. When we discuss a “balanced budget,” we are using the term in this sense, not in the normal sense. That is one of the confusions politicians use that make their followers (Democrats as well as Republicans, liberals as well as conservatives) to confuse themselves by thinking of family or business or state, county, or city budgets when trying to think of federal spending. Only the federal government creates money, and it does so to cover the shortfall in total revenues. It does not and cannot do it for local governments because the money it creates gets shunted out nationwide.
Please note in the list that the amount of “Grants” should be added to the amount called “Revenues” in order to arrive at the Total Revenues. AFter that addition, you can easily go down the list to see which countries have “balanced budgets,” which have surpluses and which, like the US, have deficits.
I don’t think you can conclude from this list that 1) the US deficit is abnormal and 2) that a “balanced budget” such as Germany or the Netherlands is superior to the US. Do you agree? I admit that we need to look at later GDPs of these countries to know how budgeting affects later GDP, but even with that information (how long after are we to look), we cannot be sure that there is a direct relationship between budget and GDP since there are other causes, many of them, that affect GDP, such as world recession. But generally, do you think that the US economy is so much worse than Germany or the Netherlands?
Please also note that the expenditures are treated by the writers of this article to be inputs into the economy, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
To return to your question, the introduction of GDP into the issue of evils of a balanced budget just muddies the whole issue. They are related in rather complex ways, but they are definitely different issues. You can tell that they are distinct issues by admitting that depending on many such related issues such as taxation policies or the size of the governmental work force, you can have a balanced budget at a very high percent of GDP. Hypothetically, if you have 100% of the economic activity done through the central government, it can have a fully balanced budget.
We are discussing, Mr. Mullenax, economics. I am not an economist, and I suspect from what you write that you also are not one. That behooves us to listen to economists rather than politicians. You cite Warren Buffet. He, too, is not an economist but a very savvy investor and business owner. He does deal with money and has to keep track of the economy, but those are only a small section of the economy and of economics. Buffet’s suggestion of limiting expenditures to a portion of the GDP makes practical sense in terms of stability in the stock market, but it is no endorsement of a “balanced budget” nor is it a demonstration that the budget ought to be balanced.
It still seems a bug-a-boo to me. Why don’t you present evidence that a balanced budget is bad for the people of the US? This is my third time asking you that question. Why are you avoiding an answer?
My off-the cuff opinion of the so called “cost cutting” of the present government is to take money out of serving the people, circulating money through people’s pockets, in order to put money into the private corporations that will be needed to service the people’s needs (because those needs don’t go away). That means to me that the sudden minimizing of the federal spending will cause significant short term downturn turn in the national economy, because government spending is so much a part of that economy. But, in the long run, the economy will be restored at a higher cost to the people of this country because of the added private profits and loss of efficiency (as all comparisons of governmental vs. private enterprise structures have shown). I could not and would not try to defend that opinion, but the circumstantial evidence is sure piling up.
Finally, Mr. Mullenax, I would appreciate you not attributing statements, attitudes, believes, practices, party affiliations, etc, to me if you want to have a public discussion on this site. So far, all of these “I bet you…” statements are wrong, they only show that you are not talking to me but to some fantasy “Mr. Yeh” that you’ve created in your mind. That is hardly a basis for discussion.
Mr. Yeh, you are definitely right. I am not an economist but when I look at the arguments for and against a balanced budget I see the Hawks recognizing that some deficit spending may not be bad. And the doves acknowledge that too much deficit spending will cause problems. Of course no one defines what too much is. As a retired accountant/auditor and conservative spender I will generally favor the former position that maybe a little deficit spending isn’t bad verses finding out the hard way when we’ve reached that “too much”. Which brings me to your repeated question of the downside of deficit spending. We lost our excellent credit rating for a period which I believe is tied to that deficit spending. Within the last few years the news reported that there were world organizations contemplating replacing the US dollar as the standard. I certainly don’t know what that means for us as a country but it doesn’t sound good and again I believe that is tied to strength of our dollar, our deficit spending and the size of our debt. On a personal basis, when I traveled through Canada in 1986 my dollar bought $1.10 of Canadian goods. When I went through in 2017 it was just reversed. I had to spend $1.10 US to get a Canadian dollar’s worth of goods. I don’t know what is causing that but my guess is that we’re getting close to the “too much” deficit spending. The irony of this exchange is that I asked the wrong question when I initially commented on your article. I asked about the balanced budget because I saw that as the underlying reason the current administration was firing people. What initially concerned me was your tying the firing of probationary forest service employees to losing government expertise. Those folks don’t have much if any special expertise. And I believe those folks can find comparable jobs in the private sector. So who are the folks with expertise that Musk is getting rid of that we can’t do without? He acknowledges he may make some mistakes but he’ll fix them. When I see items on the list that the DOGE has compiled of money we’re donating to organizations all over the country at the same time we have the deficit issues I mentioned above, I’m like the majority of the voters in this country – not happy.
Again, you have the last word. I’m going to shift my attention to projects that are more enjoyable and important to me; restoring old tractors, building covered wagons and flying my little plane, if the wind ever lets me. Good Day!
Thank you, Mr. Mullenax, for a civil conclusion to this discussion. It gave me a chance to do some fact checking, think about the budget problem a bit, and to air my thoughts on the issue. I hope the few readers who have followed the discussion have been motivated by your statements to do the same.
Since you give me the final word, let me address the relationship between the balanced budget issue, general economic health, and international exchange rates (that is, the market for US dollars). Germany, as I indicated in my last reply, operates with a balance budget. It does so by law. Just today, the news came out that Germany is temporarily removing that requirement. The effects are huge, on the stock market, on interest rates, and on the exchange rates. Here is a link to a pretty thorough run-down of effects: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/mar/05/european-markets-soar-as-germany-lifts-debt-brake-to-raise-defence-spending.
Yes, there are connections between the US/Canadian exchange rates and the budget issue, but the relationship is not straight forward and involve other related and unrelated aspects of the economy. There are so many overlapping connections that we should not draw simple one-to-one cause and effect conclusions in economics, as politicians looking for votes tend to do.
One more final word, Mr. Mullenax, on the firings. You seem to think that because many firings are of “probational” employees, these people are not “experts” at what they do but beginners or unessential workers. This is not true, but I think the people doing the firings (the Musk team) share in this misconception (which is why the fired specialists on the bird flu are being rehired). Most federal hirings including high administrative officials and former federal employees, go through a probationary period. Here is a link to what “probation” means in the federal government, and you can see that it includes experts in their field and in experience: https://www.justsecurity.org/107230/federal-employee-rights-probationary-faqs/.
If the Musk team did not understand about probation, they are acting irresponsibly. If the Musk team did understand about probation, then this fact would support my belief that the firings are not cost-cutting, getting rid of waste (the camouflage), but that they institute a whole new idea of government in order to boost private corporate profiteering.
Thanks, again. The Citizen’s purpose is to promote civic and civil discussion.
I like Tomas Payne’s views on the role of government. To paraphrase, Government is necessary when citizens cannot or will not deal the with pressing problems within that society.