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**SEPTEMBER 28, 2020**

Kuttner on TAP

The Government Should Be Run Like a Business

****

You may recall that long-standing Republican slogan. It was used by
traditional conservatives to mean that the government should be
innovative, accountable, prudent with its outlays, and balance its
books.

Well, that day has arrived, though not in the sense that old-fashioned
conservatives intended.

Trump runs the government exactly like he runs his businesses-based on
deceptions, frauds, stiffing of creditors (including both the IRS and
his contractors), and piling up massive losses and deficits.

It would be comforting to think that Trump is an anomaly. But he's
not; he's merely a crude caricature of what American business has
become.

Tax frauds to stiff the IRS have become routine. Creating artificial
losses to camouflage real, immense profits is what they teach at the
business schools. Hedge funds and private equity are simply more
polished versions of the Trump enterprises.

Ever since Reagan and the two Bushes, the tax code has been revised to
enable and semi-legalize these frauds on honest taxpayers. Trump just
pushes the game to its logical extreme.

The oasis of honesty in our system is what remains of the traditional
public sector, which is actually accountable to the public, and far more
transparent than developers, traders, Big Tech, Big Pharma, extractive
industries, and of course Wall Street.

So flip that slogan: It's time for business to be run more like the
government. That would be the hated deep state that serves so many
ordinary Americans, not Trump's corrupt government.

~ ROBERT KUTTNER

Follow Robert Kuttner on Twitter

Robert Kuttner's latest book is
The Stakes: 2020 and the Survival of American Democracy
.

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