Economic Advice From the Chairman of General Motors
No, not the one the president fired, the one who served during the Great Depression, you know that economic downturn which lingered long after the implementation of FDR’s New Deal. This is from
Alfred P. Sloan, Jr., Chairman of the Board of GM from 1937 to 1956 and CEO from 1923 to 1946, written in 1940:
…..I begin to think about the situation that exists in business and industry in this great country of ours – a land of potential promise and opportunity – at least, so it always has been. As I write, we have millions of people unemployed, who seek an opportunity to work. Despite the fact that our government has been creating billions of dollars of indebtedness millions remain idle….We have hundreds of millions of dollars lying idle in our banks…. As a country, we are blessed, with out measure, with almost every essential natural resource. We have the finest producing plants supported by the most progressive manufacturing technique that ever existed anywhere. As a people, we are willing to work if given the chance. Yet in a land of such abundance we live in a state of relative scarcity, for too many have much too little.
Some political leaders have tried to convince us that our idle money is a result of a static economy. They even talk about the desirability of a tax to penalize efficiency, with the objective of reducing unemployment – incomprehensible to anyone familiar with the workings of our industrial system. Then they develop a scheme of taxation, supposedly for revenue but actually resulting in penalizing business and industrial development, and so confiscatory in character as to prejudice the whole profit motive. Then they preach the gospel that accomplishment is a crime – the greater the accomplishment, the greater the crime. They teach the concept of something for nothing. This, in one form or another, has influenced our national economic thinking for may years.
(H/t: Reader Ken)
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Amazing how Sloan’s words from 1940 remain true today.
Evan Sayet explains, particularly in his more recent speech (2009). Here’s the nutshell: modern liberals believe that nothing is authentically, morally better than anything else (except for themselves, for holding such an ‘enlightened’ opinion). Moral discrimination per se is “discriminatory”, in the bad sense of the word. Therefore, if one person or group or country has greater success than another, it cannot be deserved. It *must* have been stolen in some sense; some kind of cheating or greater crime *must* be involved, and the enlightened liberal shall now ‘unmask’ it for us rubes.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 3, 2009 @ 1:04 pm - April 3, 2009
That could have been written today. Very depressing that Maobama is so eager to repeat those mistakes.
Comment by Patriot Goddess — April 3, 2009 @ 7:08 pm - April 3, 2009
Maobama – great one, PG! I think I’ll alternate it with my invention, “The Dear Teleprompter”.
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 3, 2009 @ 11:56 pm - April 3, 2009
Maobama – great one, PG! I think I’ll alternate it with my invention, “The Dear Teleprompter”.
BTW I love your blog!
Comment by ILoveCapitalism — April 4, 2009 @ 7:53 am - April 4, 2009