Business and government have different mandates

There have lately been letters to the editor and opinion pieces on how things like raising the minimum wage, upping contributions to CPP, etc., hurt business, do not solve problems and are generally bad ideas. Actually, not just lately, they seem to pop up regularly.

It seems to me that certain segments of our society feel that anything that helps the poor, the worker or the environment is bad because it hurts business. If, for example, you limit the workday to eight hours, doing this will destroy the economy, ruin businesses and you must fight tooth and nail against it.

The truth is the sky did not fall in and workers’ lives were greatly improved. Workers have had to battle for safe working conditions and fair wages.

Very few businesses have initiated rules to help the workers or the environment. Businesses are hard wired to be against anything that affects the bottom line. Yet slowly over the years, these improvements have been forced on the business world and businesses have flourished.

There is a sentiment in our world that our leaders should be business leaders, they would run the government like a business and this would solve all our problems. But business leaders and government leaders have different mandates. Business leaders’ goal is to make money, while government leads the country, protects its people.

Now making money is not necessarily a bad thing. But if your bottom line is making money, it is not the goal of government. Governments, certainly can be run better, but is running a government like a business the best way to go?

Carol Capper,

Summerside