The Sage Observer

Is What’s Good for Business Good for the Country?

Charles Wilson, Secretary of Defense under President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1957), was quoted has having said during his confirmation hearings before the Senate Armed Services Committee, “because for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors and vice versa”. Although he was talking about General Motors then, translated, his saying might be interpreted to mean “what is good for our country is good for business and vice versa”. That was too many years ago to argue about it now; but, whether or not the statement was true then, it certainly is not true now. What is good for business today is not always proving to be good for our country. In the beginning, when men began to trade with one another, business evolved from the simplest of their transactions, created by man to facilitate his pursuit of a better life–to provide man with product or service, to fulfill his needs. That was the primary focus and priority of a business–its purpose was to serve man.

 Today, everything has changed. Business has changed its purpose. Its purpose now has become the maximization of profit. Oh! I know. I’ll get all kinds of argument on what I have said. But if you will think deeply, with an open mind, about the distinction between profit and service, I think you will agree with me. There is no doubt whatsoever that profit is an absolute necessity for a business to survive, but it still is not the purpose of a business. Business exists to fill a need for man. Without a need, there will be no business. There will be no profit. The demand to fulfill ones needs is the real driver of a business, justifying its existence. This is true of any business.

Profit is an expense. It is an expense just like the rent, taxes, the utility bill, and so on. Profit, if any remains after all other expenses of the business are paid, is the expense of capital–in a manner of speaking, it is the rent paid to the investor for the use of his money and the risk he is taking in investing in the business.

This may seem to be just a play on words, but the distinction between a business’s purpose (priority and/or focus) being directed toward maximizing profit rather than fulfilling a need is major and critical. Think about it. If your main focus and priority is only money, your customers, vendors, and employees will come in last. So, also, will your country. Your only loyalty will be the attainment of profit. Do you want examples? Let me show you.

It’s my understanding that the average person lives to an age of seventy-eight years. I submit to you that in the last seventy-eight years, we who have lived those years have experienced the highest standard of living, on average, of any generation in the history of civilization (I, also, submit to you that, arguably, for the foreseeable future in this country, no generation will enjoy such a high standard of living again. Just look at where we are now. We’ll see.). In conjunction with this, the rich and powerful among us have prospered even more.

As I speak next, my mind is focused primarily on the large and powerful corporations in our nation–those which use to serve us and have now come to dominate us. In my lifetime, there has always been conflict of priorities within business between the pursuit of profits on the one hand and fulfilling customer needs on the other. Naturally, it is in the interest of a business to earn as much reasonable profit as it is able. Investors want that. In the last thirty plus years, however, it seems that fulfilling customer needs, loyalty and concern for employees, loyalty to our country–caring about anything other than the maximization of profits has taken a back seat. Under the guise of globalization, business has outsourced labor overseas to other countries (effectively resorting to slave labor–Uncle Tom’s Cabin has nothing on those poor people) in order to achieve increased profits. It is obvious that the massive layoffs in the past years, beginning before the financial collapse of 2008, have been much greater than major layoffs effected in prior years as average workloads have been increased and workweeks have been shortened. The utilization of robots in manufacturing has literally exploded with little or no regard for the displaced or unemployed.

There is another even worse aspect to this–the apparent complete disregard of business for our home country. From my viewpoint, American business, in their grasping for ever increasing profits, have completely abandoned any loyalty to our homeland. They evade (illegal) and/or avoid (legal) taxes every way they can, depriving our country of much needed revenues–especially in these trying times. Their money is “parked” in banks and locations outside the country, unavailable for investment within or, in some instances, the application of taxes. Also, I said above that they have come to dominate us. It is these powerful companies that are part and parcel of our Shadow Government, the power elite, about which I have written in other postings to this blog. Exercising their power through their lobbyists (there are thousands of them–more than our total Congress combined) they control our political campaigns, our Congress, our President, our laws, our news media, our country, bleeding our people dry. You don’t believe me? Study the new health care law, aka Obama Care. Read the book, Hijacked, by Dr. John Geyman, M.D. Also, I suggest you read Who Rules America?- Power and Politics, by G. William Domhoff. In addition, consider the severe redistribution of income in our nation from the poor and middle class to the rich during the past approximately forty years. Of course there are exceptions to what I have said, perhaps many, in this country of millions of people and businesses; but, as a whole, that’s where we are folks–at least, that’s the way I see it.

What do you think?

Ronald Miller

mtss86@bellsouth.net