What's Good for General Motors is Good for America???

Since its inception, the United States has been pro-business.

There's a cliche that says every American believes they could become a billionaire someday. According to CNBC it's actually closer to 44 percent of Americans who believe that. Reality says that only 1 in every 377,000 Americans will actually become a billionaire, a 0.000002% chance. That’s a pretty big spread.

This attitude is part of the free enterprise bug that we're all raised to have. It's part of our history. The gold rush. Industrialization. Becoming a TikTok star. Lots of variations. Lots of propaganda.

But there's a sad truth about business.

You can love business, but business can't love you back.

This is a problem because our entire society pretends otherwise.

I believe this was most clearly expressed by onetime CEO of General Motors, Charles Erwin Wilson who said "for years I thought what was good for our country was good for General Motors, and vice versa." This usually gets shortened to "What's good for General Motors is good for America," which isn't exactly what he said, but it's the same idea.

Our ruling class, going back centuries, has essentially believed that the better business does, the better the country does. Ronald Reagan preached a variation on this with his support for "trickle down" economics. This is why our government has always tried to help support business in every way it can. Because business growth is national growth. The better business does, the better America does.

The assumption is that when business does well, we all do well. We are all rewarded according to what we offer society. There is an assumption, built into capitalism, that society is fair that way.

But that's where the logic breaks down.

America should be doing great right now. Business has been making record profits... that is, setting records for the level of profits that they are making - for decades now. If our only measure were financial, there would be no argument that this country is doing fantastic. This frequently confuses the editorial pages of papers like the New York Times or the Wall Street Journal. If all you know is rich people, life in this country sure seems great.

Finance, slaying… creative financial instruments that make money no matter what happens. The arms industry. Killing it! Literally. They have great profits as they push genocide and military aggression. So does the prison-industrial complex. Silicon valley, eating their young. We all stand helpless as AI figures out how to concentrate more wealth into fewer hands.

But if you're a part of the working class you see things differently.

Do you think we're doing great right now?

Nothing much trickling down. Record corporate profits sure don't mean record wage increases for workers. In fact, one reason there are record profits is because wages have been successfully suppressed by the wealthy and corporations for over 40 years now.

What's good for General Motors is good for America? Well, that's only true if you define “good for America” as business profits alone. This disconnect is killing America. Because you can't just define "America" as the business class. If you include the working class, life in America sucks.

You can love business, but business can't love you back.

Business doesn't care if you die.

Business only cares about one thing: Profit.

It's like Milton Friedman liked to say: "The social responsibility of business is to increase its profits."

Maximizing profits should not be a goal for our society. And it definitely shouldn't be a goal for our government. And yet that is the status quo we find ourselves in.

Let's look at the first words of our founding document, the Constitution:

Remember what the Constitution says: Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it,

It doesn't say that what's good for General Motors is good for America. It says that when things get so far out of wack that government loses the consent of the governed it's time for a new Constitution.

It's time for a new Constitution.

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Let’s make them pay.