All citizens of the United States including conservatives, liberals, alt right extremists, progressive extremists, politicians, including presidential candidates and naïve activists, and whoever else opposes capitalism, should reconsider and cherish American industry.
America has been the most successful democracy that the world has ever known, primarily because it has succeeded in business. America runs on the profits from its private sector. One hundred percent of the funding of our country comes as a result of the funds created by free enterprise.
Businesses are started by entrepreneurs who have an idea for a product or service. Those businesses are funded by someone or some entity that has investment capital from personal or business wealth. The entrepreneur then builds the business in a competitive environment—domestically and internationally. In order to make that business work, and leverage the effort of the owner, the business hires people to whom the business pays a salary. The business grows, creates more profit and more jobs as it is successful.
In order to be successful, the business must provide a product or service that people, or other businesses, are willing to pay for. In a world market, and in the vast majority of domestic markets, no matter what business model a country follows, competition will offer alternatives and substitutes within industries. It is obvious to anyone who understands economics, or has purchased a good or service, that competition for customer dollars is in the best interest of the customer—it improves the quality of the product and decreases its cost. Therefore, the survival of a business requires that it compete successfully.
In order to be competitive, a company must have a product or service that satisfies its customer and is produced for a cost that is low enough to convince a customer of its value. That dictates that the company must have a winning strategy driven by excellent information. Great strategy and information is always driven by strong management. Even if inept management trips over a successful strategy, the business success under such management is unlikely to be sustained once any of the rules of its industry change. This is the reason that quality CEOs are paid so much money. The true value and staying power of a company is derived from its strategy and execution which is a function of the quality of company leadership.
In order to execute a chosen strategy, business ownership/management seeks to hire the most productive employees it can find for the price (their wages/salary). Candidates have to be qualified, willing and committed. Ownership/management in turn must to recruit and retain great employees. That is also a competitive process—people who are more qualified, more willing and more committed are likely to be employed more often and for more money. They are also harder to hire because of the competition for those people. Alternatively, people who will not or cannot be productive to the level of minimum wage are unlikely to be able to retain employment even if they are once employed.
So, a business enterprise begins, offers goods or services that people want and sell them for a profit. The business pays tax on that profit. The business employs people who provide a service to the business for a salary. The employee pays tax on that salary. That tax goes to fund government.
Government is hired by the people it serves to perform certain functions—functions spelled out in the Constitution or in state or local government charters. Governments require funding to perform those functions. That funding comes from tax revenues derived from business and the people that business employs. Of course, government also employs people to perform governmental duties, and those people also pay tax. But their salaries and the taxes paid from those salaries are funded by tax revenue that come from private industry.
All of the funding that business, government, and the people receive is a direct or indirect result of the success of businesses that are started and built by entrepreneurs. The more competitive our businesses are, the more vibrant our country’s economy will be and the more successful its people will be.
Therefore, the success and strength of our nation is derived from the global competitiveness of US businesses.
The same is true of the people. The more productive individuals can become through hard work, education, initiative, willingness, and commitment, the more likely they are to obtain attractive employment and generous remuneration.
All Americans should cherish America’s private industry. Government’s focus, in large part, should be to help make American private enterprise competitive globally and help prepare individuals to be as productive as they can so as to prosper in a highly competitive environment. Of course, many short comings exist in our current economic system, including vast policy mistakes governing Wall Street, the tendency toward monopoly that must be regulated, loopholes that make people rich while adding nothing to the strength of the country, and the damage to the public good by the pursuit of profit in indifference to the environment. But those require fine tuning, not an overhaul to free enterprise.
Mountain Majesties 