Question

Please conduct an analysis of the government and business relations of the United States. Give examples if possible.

Answer 1

Business and government relations are more extensive and more nebulous than generally understood. Far from being discrete entities, corporations and government contracting authorities are thoroughly entangled by financial obligation and personnel exchange. Government is at the same time patron, policeman, and pal to business.

The legal framework of business is not neutral, inherently favoring vested well capitalized interests. Businesses are completely reliant on government to protect not just the legal fiction of corporate personhood, but also corporate property, and contracts. Our system of courts and police are well designed to adjudicate contract disputes and property rights, and less well designed to protect people or determine where justice lies. Corporations rely on civil order, the police, courts and military to protect their property: and yet they do not pay the full value of its costs.

The government’s position is to ensure that citizens do not suffer harm resulting from business operations, such as selling tainted food or preparing foods in unsanitary conditions, causing ecological harm, or dealing unscrupulously in financial matters. The larger the government grows, the more it introduces regulations and taxes onto businesses.

The business’ position is that they want the government to stay out of their operations. Businesses believe the government has too much involvement in their affairs. In a poll taken in year 2005, 90% of Americans believed that large businesses had great influence over the government.

The Obama Administration states that Global warming is a very serious situation caused by human activities. As a result of global warming, hurricanes that rated in the 4 and 5 categories have practically doubled in the last three decades. The ocean acidity has increased; the trees bloom earlier than ever; glaciers are melting at a much faster pace, and certain water species will become extinct. To combat these issues some scientist suggests reducing emission are else climate change will worsen. If there is no reduction in emission the world will be faced with famine and drought in some of the poorest places in the world which will wreak havoc across the globe. In addition, in the U.S., due to rise in sea-level, the coastal areas could suffer significant damage to the environment and the economy.

Another business perspective on government is that government should favor businesses and incentivize business performance and investment because businesses are the main source of jobs, innovation, and societal economic well-being, and therefore government should support businesses with grants, tax credits, and subsidies.

Sustainable businesses, such as the companies presented in the case study chapters in this textbook—such as Stonyfield Yogurt, Oakhurst Dairy, and Green Mountain Coffee—tend to focus on their responsibility to the environment and societal impact and also tend to recognize that government policies and programs are often necessary to help them achieve their objectives and therefore are inclined to try to work with and even partner with government to achieve desired ends. It is always important for sustainable businesses to understand how their efforts to achieve profits and to serve a social purpose are both strongly influenced by government policies, and it is always important for sustainable businesses to manage their relationships with government (local, state, national, and international) effectively.

The tendency toward dividing and distributing power, long characteristic of the American political system has increased in recent years. The proliferation of congressional subcommittees; the growing independence of individual members of Congress who rely increasingly on personal rather than party organizations for election; the growth of additional legislative staff capabilities, individually through dramatically larger personal staff, and institutionally through the growth of committee staff and the establishment of new entities such as the Congressional Budget Office (created by the Budget and Impoundment Control Act of 1974); have made the Congress less dependent on the executive for information and have altered the nature of executive-legislative negotiations. Congress has a greater capacity to pursue its interest in micromanaging executive departments and agencies and has shown a preference for more detailed legislation granting the executive less discretion. effectively require super-majorities to pass legislation.

A new surge in the number of organized interests has occurred. The trade and professional groups that dominated the interest group landscape four decades ago has been supplemented by a host of non-profit and public interest organizations active in lobbying government. Gathering accurate data on this phenomenon is not easy and a variety of researchers have produced varying estimates but the direction and magnitude are unmistakable.

A proliferation of research institutions and "think-tanks" has supplemented the growth and increasing diversity of organized interests. Moreover, many of these think tanks devote much of their attention to generating and disseminating ideas primarily designed not to influence scholarly debate but to shape current governmental deliberations. In short, the arena in which public policies are contested and in which government and business interact is more thickly settled and is arguably richer with a host of ideas and analyses competing for the attention of policy makers. Greater openness and transparency. Fourth, the traditional U.S. emphasis on openness and transparency has reached new levels.

Recent years have witnessed the adoption and greater use of devices designed to illuminate what is occurring inside government and procedures to involve individuals and organizations outside of government more fully in shaping public policies.