Every once in a while, something will crop up on the CounterPunch site related to Michigan, but we were especially interested when a partial recent transcript of an interview with unorthodox economist Michael Hudson showed the author agreeing that presented Lansing’s Snyder administration was a sort of precursor to Washington’s Trump administration.
The transcript, “Running Government Like a Business is Bad for Citizens,” quotes Real News interviewer Kim Brown bringing up Jared Kushner’s recent comment that “government should be run like a company.” In the ensuing interview, she raises Gov. Snyder in an interview with Hudson, author of “J is for Junk Economics,” about why government shouldn’t be run like a business.
Brown called Snyder “a real world example of this,” “including appointing emergency managers … in effect rendering the will of the people obsolete, because now instead of being governed by elected officials, they are being governed by these hand-picked emergency managers.” Brown pointed to “the Flint water crisis” as “a perfect example” of what can happen.
Hudson finds the comparison appropriate, and says:
Running a government like a business means dismantling government; dismantling democratic control; dismantling voters; and really running the economy under emergency conditions.
See the whole interview here:
This article appears in Apr 5-11, 2017.
