Tuesday, December 1, 2009

No Private Sector Experience Please

This is truly an astounding chart - I picked it up at the American Enterprise Institute. If you take the average of all the administrations shown prior to Obama's, it works out to 45% give or take a little. Obama's is LESS THAN 10%.

The real significance of this is it leads to a myopia in decision making that is a little frightening. The benefit of private sector experience is an appreciation of risk. If you have spent your entire career in the public sector, you have never had to face things like budget cuts, belt tightening, not meeting a payroll etc. etc. etc. Without that appreciation, a sense of being "ten feet tall and bulletproof" emerges. The other dangerous trait that emerges from this is a disconnect with regular folk...you know, the kind that actually make the widgets, sell the houses, tend the patients. I am afraid we are already seeing the consequence of this shortfall.

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