No. What I'm saying is that you can compete based on what you deliver or based on who you know. When disproportionately large unearned government contracts come into a district, the entire business community loses. Since I deliver quality (and have far more demand than I have the resources to meet), I don't play the connections game.
If you really do this, it is in response to declining sales. But, what is the cause of the decline. We are not talking about people all of the sudden being on the dole because Rayathon gets a contract to build missiles.
I see this very differently than you do, and it's not the (mostly) competitive contracts Raytheon wins that damage the community, it's the earmarks to do something of no value that distort the local economy. If we're building a large Museum of Chewing Gum (my previous community had something just as stupid), and those controlling the contracts want the money spent for the sake of spending government dollars, that massive waste raises my prices as well. Your reasons for cutting back in 2008 through today, uh.. have more to do with an economy that is tanking generally rather than the pork barrel policies of your congressman. Get real. Now this may have been a good move.. but you will have to dig deeper to explain a why.
There are slightly deeper reasons, but it's not the economy. I have a whole lot of business and financial flexibility, and I could go into more detail, but the bottom line is pretty close to the fact that I don't like socialism.
Be careful about jumping to conclusions.
When disproportionately large unearned government contracts come into a district, the entire business community loses. Since I deliver quality (and have far more demand than I have the resources to meet), I don't play the connections game.
This is digging deeper.. but it isn't a reason for the community surrounding the target of the earmark to suffer specifically, just a general philosophic argument that doesn't propose a mechanism.
However, do the trick of attempting to think how a person could be right.. in their choice..(that being you) and then attempting to think how.. I came up with a possible explanation that I posted to you as Post #16 in this thread.
That a large number of earmark and even bid based Government jobs encourages folks to vote Democrat for their Congress Critter and if they don't ticket split and go for the Democrat ticket.. they screw themselves like Detroit did with higher government spending, taxes and regulation. Killing their local economy.