“Boss Busters”

         Though, like many Americans, you might not be keen to expand your list of social sympathies, and though, by now, you are beginning to think that America has no majority, only downtrodden minorities, let me introduce you to one more group of oppressed people.
         You see them everywhere and every day, though you probably do not discern their plight.  I’m certain you seldom think of them as the objects of widespread discrimination.  But they are.  They just don’t look the part.  Victims look tired and disheveled, bent low under the weight of existence.  But these people wear suits and ties, or maybe a power dress from Versace.
         Can you really be oppressed if you carry a briefcase to work instead of a lunch pail, or if you push pencils instead of brooms, or if you pound out enormous business agreements instead of pounding nails?
         Yes.
         Even though they have been the greatest producers of wealth and prosperity in the history of the world, even though they have created more goods, more services, more jobs, and higher wages than anyone else on earth, past or present, American businessmen and businesswomen are the objects of formal and informal discrimination.  Perhaps some of it comes from you.
         Admit it.
         Many Americans think that successful owners and entrepreneurs are simply greedy, and that they all break the rules.  Many Americans think that successful executives live only to get rich, and that when they succeed it’s because they have cut corners on quality and cut deals with competitors.  They think that successful CEOs are a squalid mob of shameless profiteers who prosper only by the sweat of someone else’s brow.  They think that successful business leaders gouge consumers by demanding exorbitant prices for second-rate goods they’ve made sure you can’t get anywhere else.
         Admit it -- many Americans are prejudiced.
         To them, successful businessmen are all just used-car salesmen in other lines of work.  (Used-car salesmen--themselves businessmen--get almost universally bad press, as do lawyers, who are simply the entrepreneurs of litigation.)  Put another way, in the conflict between owners and workers, the owners are almost always presumed to be the decadent party.  The workers almost always are assured the sympathy of the media and the public.  Almost always, the employee, not the employer, is presumed to occupy the moral high ground.  Successful businessmen do not have the sympathy of the American public or of the American media, and most certainly not of the political left.  Even conservatives now blast the Fortune 500 CEOs.  To them and to many others, successful businessmen are merely modern Scrooges, who delight in grinding their hapless workers into crushing poverty and destitution.
         Even the politicians themselves and some of the laws they have passed discriminate against businessmen.  According to current law (both enacted and proposed) business owners ought to give 60 days notice before closing down an unprofitable business.  Being prejudiced, many Americans actually think this is fair.  They think this helps the worker.
         They are wrong.  Nothing that unilaterally drives up the cost of American products actually helps American workers.
         It is neither fair nor beneficial to require by law that the owners of dying businesses provide jobs for all employees for two months if those same laws do not require the employees of those dying businesses to stay for two months.  Current law does not require a worker who leaves his or her job to give his employer two months notice before doing so.  Only management must announce its intentions 60 days in advance.
         Regarding its own businessmen, Americans and their laws are often prejudiced.
         We must remember that all businesses are mortal.  None lasts forever.  All, at some time, will close.  We must remember that the high cost of continuing a dead business at full employment for two months, which both current and proposed law imposes on businessmen, has to be built into that company’s start-up expenses.  That is, the high and inevitable cost of closing has been artificially escalated by legislation, and this higher cost of closing must be added to the already high cost of opening.  If the high cost of opening becomes prohibitive, businesses do not open at all, and jobs are lost even before there are jobs.
         Not surprisingly, these higher costs must be reflected in higher consumer prices.  But, if a product’s price becomes too high, consumers refuse to buy it.  If the product does not sell, the producer goes out of business and jobs are lost.
         Such unsatisfactory and unintended economic results should come as no surprise.  When it comes to marketplace intervention, Congress has the opposite of a Midas touch; most of what it touches turns to garbage, not gold.  If Congress wants to help American businesses, it ought to get itself out of the marketplace as fully as possible.
         And we all should give the bosses their due.

date modified:
5 July 2006