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Soonerjeepman
1/20/2012, 04:44 PM
article by my brother...he's run 10 mil + small business company...for those that want to say it's just an obama hater attacking..he's actually fairly liberal in the social arena...but fiscally conservative...good points in my opinion...enjoy...

http://www.examiner.com/small-business-in-las-vegas/simplifying-the-government



President Obama recently announced a new plan that the White House believes will make it easier to do business in America. “The way the system is currently organized,” say White House officials, “every entrepreneur who needs to do business with the government has to navigate a maze of overlapping regulations and competing bureaucracy.” See http://www.whitehouse.gov/businessusa

On their web site, the White House said, “the President announces a plan that will consolidate the six major federal departments and agencies that focus on business or trade into one leaner, more efficient department tasked with boosting American business and promoting competitiveness.”

President Obama, in his speech announcing his recommendations said, “These changes would help small business owners like you. It would also help medium and large businesses. And as a consequence, they would help create more jobs, sell more products overseas, grow our economy faster, improve our quality of life.” He went on to say, “Right now, there are six departments and agencies focused primarily on business and trade in the federal government. Six. Commerce Department, Small Business Administration, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office. In this case, six is not better than one. Sometimes more is better; this is not one of those cases, because it produces redundancy and inefficiency. With the authority that I’m requesting today, we could consolidate them all into one department, with one website, one phone number, one mission: helping American businesses succeed.”
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The United States needs leaner government, more jobs, economic growth . . . and less political rhetoric. We saw a graphic indicating the consolidation of six agencies or departments, seven phone numbers, seventeen web sites, eighteen programs and eight sets of physical offices would be replaced by one department, one website and one hotline apparently with no physical offices for businesses to seek assistance. The message is that 56 resources (six plus seven plus seventeen plus eighteen plus eight would be replaced by three resources (one plus one plus one) and be leaner while creating jobs and economic growth.

Yes, sometimes less is better, but sometimes more is better. Imagine re-organizing part of your own business or life in this manner. Take all of your household’s clothes and apparel. Currently these items are segregated into the parent’s closet(s), the parent’s chest(s) of drawers, the kids’ closet(s), the kids’ chest(s) of drawers, the dirty clothes hamper, some shoes on the closet floors, some clean clothes waiting to be folded or put away not to mention related accessories like golf shoes and roller blades in the garage, coats and hats in the entry closet, with some soiled garments at the dry cleaners. We have lots of individual resources competing for our clothes’ storage. Why not put all our family clothes into one big resource? We could eliminate several closets and several chests of drawers. The space where the dirty clothes hamper was would now be free and available for other uses. We would free up garage space. We would not need an entry / coat closet or dry cleaners. Not only would we need one big closet with nearly the same linear footage as all the smaller closets, but the same would be true for chests of drawers and other clothes resources as well. Trying to locate an individual item would be become a nightmare and mixing clean and dirty clothes in the name of leaner clothes storage would be counter-productive.

Sometimes, more is better. More segregation into identifiable components can make organization, storage and retrieval much more efficient.

Less is better when the items – resources or whatever – are generally identical and interchangeable. So our households usually have one refrigerator since refrigeration resources are generally identical and interchangeable. Each member of the family can store their refrigerated food in the one refrigerator without the need for unique refrigeration for each person. Cold food storage space is cold food storage space – identical and interchangeable. In an office, common supplies may be kept in a common supply area because paper, toner and miscellaneous office supplies are usually identical and interchangeable (assuming the office uses office supplies intelligently, but that is another lesson!).

Combining disparate resources into one large resource container actually makes the resources less efficient. Sure, in this example of government simplification there will only be one department “head” instead of six, and some minor items, like office supplies, could see some efficiencies. But the overall result of combining resources with related purposes into one department may or may not create efficiencies and most likely will create confusion and inefficiencies.

There are numerous examples in the real world of the power of segregation and the power of economies of scale. Neither is inherently good or bad. Both can be good or bad in certain situations. The correct approach is to examine the underlying situation and apply an appropriate efficiency review. Finding an article of clothing once all family clothes are combined into one resource container is usually more difficult. However, finding an article of clothing among multiple resource containers can be made easier if a wardrobe simplification program is completed reducing the number, style, type and sizes of clothing options.

On the other hand, if we noticed that each family member had their own refrigerator, we could improve efficiency in refrigeration purchases because refrigerators are not purely sold by the cubic foot. One larger refrigerator is not the same price as the sum of individual family member refrigerators. Plus, individual refrigerators would each likely have some spare capacity such that the total family cubic foot requirement would likely be smaller than the individual cubic foot requirement. And, electricity use by buying one family refrigerator would be less than that required to operate multiple compressors, fans, etc. because there is an economy of scale in refrigeration.

Nowadays we have technology to assist us that was not available years ago. If a small business is seeking, for example, financing in Oklahoma for an expansion of a plumbing business, it’s now possible to use Internet access with a search engine to find solutions in a short period of time. Additionally, business advisors can direct business owners to specific resources because of the advisors’ expertise in the area. Reducing the number of options doesn’t automatically assist in the process. It might. It might not.

Imagine calling one 800 number for all things business. Press 1 for general training and counseling, press 2 for market research and feasibility, press 3 for international buyers, press 4 for market access and controls, press 5 for financing and assistance, press 6 to repeat this message. (These are the examples used by President Obama in his graphic describing the business-related government simplification initiative.) So, press 5 and then hear, press 1 for unsecured loans, press 2 for secured loans, press 3 for mezzanine financing, press 4 for factoring of receivables, press 5 for financing of exports and imports, press 6 for financing overseas expansions, press 7 for equity capital, press 8 to repeat this message. Then, another sub-menu, press 1 for small businesses, press 2 for medium businesses, press 3 for large businesses, press 4 for very large businesses, press 5 for international businesses, press 6 for foreign businesses doing business in the United States, press 7 if you have no idea if you are considered a small, medium, large or very large business by the United States government!

In the real world of business, most companies are going the other direction. They do not use one web site; they use many micro-sites to capture small niche segments of the market. The cost of technology has allowed greater segmentation. Combining resources into larger buckets does not create the savings it once did.

Government can learn from business. Why not hire a business process simplification expert to review the delivery of government services? Set a goal or set of required deliverables and put the project out to bid. Use qualitative and quantitative review methodology to choose the best proposal (not the lowest priced one) and use proven techniques for simplifying government instead of making emotional claims without allowing for rational debate.

It’s great to simplify the government. But if that is the goal, then let’s simplify the government instead of claiming to simplify it with grand posturing when it fact we do not know if we are. Most likely we are not.

And, don’t put all your clothes in the refrigerator even though you could do so and save on closets and chests of drawers.

For more information see:
Commerce – Department of Commerce www.commerce.gov
Ex-Im – Export-Import Bank of the United States www.exim.gov
OPIC – Overseas Private Investment Corporation www.opic.gov
SBA – Small Business Administration www.sba.gov
USTDA – United States Trade & Development Agency www.ustda.gov
USTR – Office of the United States Trade Representative www.ustr.gov

Continue reading on Examiner.com Simplifying The Government? - Las Vegas Small Business | Examiner.com http://www.examiner.com/small-business-in-las-vegas/simplifying-the-government#ixzz1k2N08U3H

cleller
1/20/2012, 06:43 PM
Obama, the business expert. Has he ever had a job? His whole life has been a paycheck from the government for recruiting voters to the democratic party.

I guess that's good business acumen. Getting paid to round up people to vote for you.

soonercruiser
1/20/2012, 09:41 PM
The number of new government employees since Obama took office is somewhere well over 150,000. I heard the number during one of the Repug debates. (And it hasn't been refuted.)

SoonerPride
1/20/2012, 11:10 PM
The number of new government employees since Obama took office is somewhere well over 150,000. I heard the number during one of the Repug debates. (And it hasn't been refuted.)

I'll refute it.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp

yermom
1/20/2012, 11:51 PM
it sounds more like he's going to put someone in charge of all those departments and add another level of bureaucracy

so now you call a phone tree with no option to speak to a live person

East Coast Bias
1/21/2012, 08:35 PM
I'll refute it.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp

The strategy is to repeat these things over and over, even when in most cases they know the assertions are false. This allegation has been debunked repeated times..... Hard to spin the facts.

cccasooner2
1/21/2012, 08:51 PM
I'll refute it.

http://www.opm.gov/feddata/HistoricalTables/TotalGovernmentSince1962.asp

Fom the table shown: Isn't 4,443,000 - 4,206,000 = 237,000? Seems well over 150,000.

East Coast Bias
1/21/2012, 09:18 PM
Fom the table shown: Isn't 4,443,000 - 4,206,000 = 237,000? Seems well over 150,000.
Yes, its true, you are the only one in the room that understands math. Just kidding, of course. The objection is a matter of context. The statistic that is the "real deal" is the number of Federal employees as a ratio to the population. So, yes it is true there are more federal employees under Obama's administration, but it is also true that there are fewer Federal employees as a per cent to population than at any other time in recent history. So, has he added or reduced Federal staffing? Yes and yes?. My contention is that the politicians that are saying these things(not cruizer) are being intellectually dishonest because they understand the context of the math represented here. Here is the obligatory link:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_many_federal_workers_are_t.html

SCOUT
1/21/2012, 09:26 PM
Yes, its true, you are the only one in the room that understands math. Just kidding, of course. The objection is a matter of context. The statistic that is the "real deal" is the number of Federal employees as a ratio to the population. So, yes it is true there are more federal employees under Obama's administration, but it is also true that there are fewer Federal employees as a per cent to population than at any other time in recent history. So, has he added or reduced Federal staffing? Yes and yes?. My contention is that the politicians that are saying these things(not cruizer) are being intellectually dishonest because they understand the context of the math represented here. Here is the obligatory link:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/federal-eye/2010/09/how_many_federal_workers_are_t.html
So the strategy now is to use actual facts but not put them in the context you prefer?

ictsooner7
1/26/2012, 07:37 AM
The strategy is to repeat these things over and over, even when in most cases they know the assertions are false. This allegation has been debunked repeated times..... Hard to spin the facts.

Take a republican idea and have Obama get behind it and watch them turn 180 degrees and attack it, classic.