No, it really is the finance department. Boards vote on the CEO and serve as his advisors and that is certainly not the correct metaphor.

More importantly, Congress sets the budget through the House and Senate budget committees, which then draft and pass appropriations bills. This is the point in the process where we are stuck.

The President is saying "bring me budget bills that have the things I want and I won't veto them" and Congress is saying no. It's nothing new really, barely anyone knows basic civics and so people are letting their emotions drive their opinions.

Both parties here are playing games that affect peoples' lives and are both worthy of blame.

This is 100% the CEO's decision. Remember, he rejected a perfectly good funding plan that was put forward by his own allies back in December, before his enemies took over the board on January 3.

In a corporation or other well designed systems there's a clear chain of authority. In the US we have two different branches that can both claim to have a mandate from the people that can get into fights. The designers of the US constitution did better than I would have with the information available to them but we've had lots of sorts of democratic republic tried since then and now we know that US style presidential systems usually end up falling apart fairly quickly. We're lucky that we had Washington as a good example of temperance and then then the weight of tradition keeping our system afloat.

Yeah. They analogy makes no sense. They can print however much money they choose to. There's no "profit" for government.

>It’s sad seeing people actually disagreeing with you.

It's because of a high-status meme that's gone around that "Governments Aren't Households" followed by a pedantic lecture about a few dimensions where they have interesting, but not fundamental differences. And it's true: reliable, trusted governments e.g. suffer lower costs from going into debt, and are able to recapture some of the expenses. Plus, they can default in a way that's technically legal (inflate away the debt).

But none of that changes the more important, relevant similarities:

- There are limits to how quickly you can accumulate real resources to pay off debts.

- There are severe consequences to being unable to pay debts.

- There are debt levels that are dangerous to have and which prevent you from raising funds for real emergencies.

All of these are true and relevant for both governments and households.

Yes, you can debate how close you are to the breaking point, but you can't simply avoid the comparison entirely just because Governments Aren't Households.

>Plus, they can default in a way that's technically legal (inflate away the debt).

Oh yes, along with my purchasing power. Amazing.

Sure.

First, many of the problems the government tries to solve are not problems with easy solutions. There are no businesses (that I know of, anyway) out there with the goal of providing free education to every child in a community. Or feeding and housing disabled people. And so on. THe failure of the government to perform better in these areas is sometimes referred to as "inefficiency", but what are we comparing government's performance against? Is there a baseline for how well any entity can do fighting a war on poverty?

Second, often, the government has goals fundamentally different from making money, eg in fighting and winning wars. We complain about the F35 being a bondoggle. But that's only true if you think the government's goal is to acquire a better fighter aircraft than China or Russia for as little money as possible. But that isn't exactly the government's goal. The government wants to acquire a fighter aircraft that makes winning such wars most likely -- in other words, it is maximizing the likelihood of winning wars. The cost of that maximization is clearly secondary. To a business, any expense past what you need to beat the competition looks like waste. To the government, any step you didn't take to maximize your chance of success looks like risk.

Third, the government holds itself to legal ethics standards that, inevitably, slow it down. Take government contracting. When the government lets a contract, it can't go to the obviously best qualified business and write a check. It has to advertise. How long it has to advertise for depends on the size of the contract, but it's rarely less than 90 days. It has to fairly evaluate all proposals. It gives extra points to small or minority owned businesses. It then writes a contract that is in keeping with the Federal Acquisitions Regulations (the FAR), which is a body of US Law that literally takes up an entire row on the bookshelf. Most of that law was written to protect businesses from potentially unethical government behavior, given that the government is more powerful than any business it is likely to contract with.

For instance, the interaction between the Contracting Officer's Representative (the COR - the primary liason between the government and the contractor) is strictly limited to reduce the ability of the government to ask for special favors. Violations of the contract or the law surrounding it as a result of behavior of the COR can result in the COR being personally liable, which is to say: if you, as a COR, result in either the government or the business losing money, they can come after your house and your retirement, all the ay up to the value of the losses. If the government loses a million dollars, the COR can be held liable for that amount. As a consequence, there's little incentive to streamline the way the government works with contractors, and every incentive in the world to make sure every t is crossed and every i dotted.

This list can go on and on. The ultimate reason the government is less efficient than a business is that it isn't one. It isn't solving the same problems, it isn't operating by the same rules, and it doesn't have the same incentives.