CEO of the United States

Just a few weeks ago Hewlett Packard announced that it would be laying off twenty seven thousand employees.  The unemployment sentence was primarily a result of lagging profits and declining market share.  The employees have to suffer the consequences of poor choices by management that has made the company a mere shadow of its former self.  But it’s almost like a reflex move for decision makers when times get lean.  It’s easier just to let the little people go, the easily replaced cogs that do nothing but provide the brain muscle and manpower to work the details that management dictated like whims.  When you’re the job creator, you reconcile the decisions to let people go under the belief that a meager severance package and unemployment benefits will tie people over until they can find something else.  But that’s only if you care about the little cogs at all.

Hewlett Packard will do like so many businesses before it.  They will offer its employees so many weeks of pay for each year of service and an extension of healthcare benefits for a number of months.  They’ll offer so many dollars to go for occupation retraining to give the former employee some hope of jump starting their career in a new field of work since the old one may not be working out so well.  Many employees close to retirement or already fed up with their job or their supervisor will jump at the chance to get a fresh start somewhere else.

But many employees won’t let go of that corporate sinking ship for nothing.  The only way some people will leave is if management comes down to his or her office and makes it clear that he or she is not wanted , severance is inevitable, and the employee does not have a choice in the matter.  The package may not be nearly as good.  But that’s what happens when a company wants employees to go and nobody takes the hint.  Like a bear fresh out of a lake or river the company will shake excess employees off its back like so much water and step away without even looking back.

Now imagine the job creator of Hewlett Packard as President of the United States.  The country is hitting lean times and it is some job creator’s theory that all we have to do is shrink government by letting federal government workers go and reducing funding to government programs that employ others.  The unemployment rate will rise in response and more people will file for all types of government assistance creating an even more unsustainable situation.

The CEO of the United States with tons of business experience will go back to business basics.  The country is in a downturn and the country needs to just let people go.  The country’s upper management would probably think it a good idea if the country could shed a percentage of its citizenry.  If we could just get some people to leave, the people who stay behind will take the country forward in a more prosperous future.

If only the country would offer its citizenry a payoff to go elsewhere.  I can envision the country’s severance package resembling something along the lines of what corporate America offers.  For each year of citizenship the country will pay a certain percentage of cash.  People could keep dual citizenship for a number of months until they can get their footing elsewhere.  But eventually citizenship will be terminated and the country would begin to renounce the people.

But what if not enough people volunteered to leave?  The country would initiate its involuntary separation program.  This is the one where people will find themselves unemployed and with little healthcare options other than running to the emergency room whenever an unhealthy condition becomes critical.  Women will have the right to obtain an abortion but not within the final nine months of a pregnancy.  It’s the kind of program that will leave people with few options for a quality education because they personally cannot afford it or their community can no longer afford it.  People will find that their recourse for justice when a corporation runs amok and takes actions that injures people or damages property because of tort reform.  What’s left would be a haven for religious freedom as long as the religion meets certain criteria set forth by the majority.  Certain fanaticism will not be tolerated.

People’s right to vote will be protected provided that they don’t belong to a constituency that will vote against the wishes of people in power who won their election with the backing of people who control a virtually unlimited money supply.  Millionaires and billionaires will be free to express their freedom of speech by simply writing a check and buying an election on behalf of their candidate.

Under a business minded President, the United States will become more efficient by shrinking its population like a corporation would shrink its population.  Things will get better if we could just get leaner and jettison some weight.  That worked for the corporation that really doesn’t have much of a responsibility to the people.  A corporation is just somebody you go work for.  If things don’t work out, if you lost your job for some reason or another, things will be in place that will help you get by.  Lots of that help came from the government.

But now that government is being run more like a business, government might not want to play that role in our carefully balanced, spinning social economic world.  That might give people a little incentive not to wait too long to get that move on.