The Business of America
Wendell, David T.
his eye upon a gaggle of party hacks entrenched in tawdry hoo-ha over the delivery of votes or the seating of delegations, he sees the War of the Worlds. He s e e s . . . Apocalypse. And he...
...He's now shaggy and beatific and reborn as Baba Ram Dass...
...This question was asked in a recent nationwide poll conducted by Louis Harris and Associates...
...Gatsbyis lush, true to Fitzgerald's brilliant novel of 1920s decadence, and mark it well: we're in for at least a year of Gatsbymania...
...Madeline Kahn does the Dietrich put-down to end them all, as Lili von Shtupp the Teutonic Titwillow...
...We wonder if any of them are aware that--thanks largely to the industrfs technological progress---the cost of gasoline has risen far less since 1957 than congressional salaries...
...This one is of kids making do after their mountain daddy dies...
...and Frankie Laine vocalizes...
...The average person today hasn't the foggiest notion that there is a vital link between profits and jobs, and between profits, technology, and the standard of living...
...b) Lack of Perspective: Journalists have been placing far more emphasis on their zeal for reform than on informing the public...
...Newman, Redford, the thirties...
...For example, a New York Times editorial cited the nearly 50 percent gain in oil company earnings during last year's first nine months as supporting the 'hq~cl" for subjecting them to an excess profits tax...
...The Alternative June-September 1974 29...
...Bruce Dern flexes his muscles and cheats on his wife Daisymhis Tom Buchanan is the best acted role in the film, the cast of which is uniformly fine...
...Boa Arthur zings as Marne's buddy Vera Charles, the sets are deliciously camp, but by now the tale has worn thin...
...It has been growing since the early 1960s...
...Mia Farrow delicate and chirpy as Daisy Buchanan...
...Dora De I~uise gives faggotry a bad name...
...When profits decline, companies are forced to cut back employment...
...Secondly too much apocalypse, laid end-to-end, when in reality great cracks are not appearing in the earth's surface and the moon has not collided with the sun, tends to destroy any journalist's credibility...
...But it won't get them unless more businessmen speak out on the economic issues that apply not just to their own fields but to the whole system...
...The Future, with Sean (Bond) Connery beefy and robotish...
...This is precisely the danger of throwing words together, as Thompson does, out of all proportion to their weight...
...Its long-range interests would be best served if the public understood that our economic system a) is the fairest as well as the most fruitful in the world, b) belongs net to the chosen few but to everyone, c) can adapt to change, and d) preserves and promotes the almost limitless freedom of choice in daily living which has been denied to most other peoples...
...Or are deeper reasons involved...
...Robert Redford wrings every last drop of vitality out of his role as the Midwestern parvenu become West Egg (Long Island) Croesus...
...lovable con men outwitting the baddies...
...Michael York, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Simon Ward, Raquel Welch (Raquel Who...
...And he expresses it in this overwrought string of words which do not, after so long, describe much of anything unless it be the author's own vision of "madness and filigree...
...b) Unlike wages and taxes, profits often fluctuate widely from one year to another --beth up and down...
...companies together have gone up, on average, by less than 5 percent a year since 1947...
...With all the frill subjects offered, few secondary schools in the country provide any instruction at all in this important area...
...Here are some facts the public needs to know: a) The profits of all U.S...
...9 Sunseer Ever wonder what happened to Timothy Leary's pal Dick Alpert, the LSD-guru...
...The interviewers also found that most Americans lack confidence in the leadership of nearly every major sphere of activity...
...Sobe it...
...B Mames Hn% let's see: first there was the book (1955), then the play Auntie Marne (1956), then Rosalind Russell in the Auntie Marne film (1958), then the stage musical Marne with Ar~ela Lansberry, and now-they've juiced up Lucille Ball (age 62), shot her through enough gauze and fuzzy focus to reduce her to mush, and set her hopping through those tired old tunes for the umpteenth time...
...9 The Super Cops: Are you ready for just one more...
...So it's impossible for most people to separate the wheat from the chaff...
...Where profits are poor or actual losses occur, competition stays away and directs its resources to more productive areas...
...e) Over three out of every ten companies lose money each year...
...For years now, the prize of public opinion has been sought by one group , such as elected officials, charging another group with a serious lack of moral integrity...
...and assorted jokes as old as the hills, in a mostly flawed pastiche that at moments is incomparably hilarious...
...The cyclical recovery in corporate earnings during 1972 and 1973 was largely responsible for the best kept economic secret of beth years-the creation of a record six million new jobs...
...9 The Spikes Gang...
...As for me, I'll take: _9 The Three Musketeer~ Whatshisname's classic again, filmed here as high camp...
...Incidentally, the New York Times scored a 65 percent profit recovery--two-fifths more than the oil firms...
...Nor do the basic principles change from one generation to the next...
...4) A Postscript: Aside from inflation, the economy must cope with two big problems in the years ahead--building more capacity in energy and raw materials and making room for 1.5 million additional workers each year...
...Chips gone to a South Carolina sea island to teach "colored babies," as the fierce lady principal says...
...U.S...
...About 40 percent of what remains is paid out to 31 million shareholders...
...Still and all, it is harmless froth and, damn it all, Ball makes it work, with no singing voice, the body of a gal half her age, and ain't she got fun...
...Profitability in this industry /s higher than in most other businesses...
...You cain't hardly emerge with a dry eye, honey-chile, it's that maudlin, but Voight is vibrant, the youngsters are the promise of Afro-Americanism and absolutely wonderful, and the dilemma of the individual versus encrusted societal regimentation gets another go-around, not entirely witless...
...economy to reach its present size and strength...
...c) Incessant Demagoguery: A favorite tactic has always been to charge that big corporations make their profits out of tax loopholes or by bilking their employees and customers...
...The drug industry--anether perennial punching bag--is also being charged with gouging the public...
...Then, just to make sure that the Hamners eat right this year, you construct yet another, shall we say warming, heart-rending tale of just plain folks...
...Yet continuously we hear public leaders--in government, education, labor, and the press--making or supporting foolish economic proposals that, if adopted, would cause untold damage and disruption...
...To illustrate, a toxtbeok used in an eastern university opens by saying...
...The ones that succeed in earning a profit receive an average net return of less than 5 percent on sales and 10-11 percent on invested capitalm hardly the ' ~ n d f a l l s " people thinl~ f) Nearly half of all profits are collected and spent by the government...
...Throughout Fear and Loathing runs the feverish notion, fostered b y Thompson's overblown prose (reminiscent, really, of Howard Cosell) of the terrible significance of the shallow maneuverings going on about him, in caucus rooms and hotel suites...
...Alan Crawford Lindley H. Clark Jr., the economic news editor of the Wall Street Journal, initiated this column with four essays discussing the practice of business in America~ The series attempted to bring to our readers' attention some of the problems inherent in doing business in America today...
...rm just about to run out and get me a pink rag of a suit too---and a cream-colored open car...
...It was net until late 1972 that they began to move back to normal...
...The senators now ~investigating" the energy crisis are blaming the oil companies for the price boosts...
...firms are responsible for two-thirds of the 868 major medicines brought out between 1940 and 1969 and to which millions of Americans owe their lives...
...Of these, only two were willing to say they believed in free enterprise and would assist in designing the course...
...The nation is in a period of great selfdoubt...
...I will say this about his diction, it's ravine-like, hairy, mad-bul]-like, crustacean, battering, craggy, shattering--and it makes no sense...
...You say there are other kinds...
...He and a bowlful of new consciousness swamis doing their thing, lovely to see, but it won't replace wife-swapping among the masses...
...In closing I summon Aristophanes to dispatch Thompson and his book...
...And because it is, drug companies are able to invest heavily in the research needed to develop health-benefiting and life-saving products...
...The blasts, played up in the media, are leveled for their emotional appeal and seldom contain any debate on the substantive issues involved...
...It didn't even mention that oil profits were poor in 1972 or that other depressed cyclical industries had bigger 1973 increases...
...Lois Chiles incomparably gorgeous as Jordan Baker...
...Neither problem can be solved unless profits, as determined by free and competitive markets, are allowed to fulfill their curcial role of adjusting output to the ever-changing demands of society...
...For the first time since the 1968 assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, a majority of Americans--53 percent--answered in the ~mrmative...
...Charlton Heston as Moses, er, urn, that is, Richelieu, plus fabulous sets, moments of fun, but don't say that seventeenth-century France was all sport and frolic...
...J U.S...
...Then you clone from that Apple's Way, by Earl Hamner, Jr...
...If so, o.k...
...After the 1969-1970 recession, most companies' profit margins were the lowest since the 1930s...
...Some of the factors behind present antibusiness attitudes are: a) Economic Illiteracy: Today's high school graduates know next to nothing about the system on which their whole economic future depends...
...9 Where the Lilies Bloom: See, you take TV's The Waltons, by Earl Hamner, Jr...
...The ABCs of American capitalism aren't very hard to comprehend...
...They lose their meaning, and after wading through 500 pages of such abused and garbled verbiage, the reader no longer entertains any suspicions that the writher might, after all, have something to say and not merely a decorative way of disguising the fact that he does not...
...2) The Seeds of Public Distrust: Why does the public hold its institutions in such low esteem...
...Ho hum, it does become rather tedious, what with so many reincarnations of this blue-eyed twosome at the same game, but this one is fun, the plot is juicy, and it beats Oral Roberts revival meetings on the tube...
...Capitalism stinks...
...This is a little slower than the typical paycheck has increased and it is only about half as fast as total government spending has risen...
...In markets where profits are good, new producers are attracted and competition keeps prices in line...
...Most of what the public hears is coming from one side...
...Furthermore, he adds, it is '~anguage to fry a man's brain...
...9 The Great Gatsb3n F. Scott Fitzgerald's works have never had it so good on the screen before...
...I mean, just one more about the copper duo (here called Batman and, uh hub, Robin) picking their way through police corruption...
...We are continuing this series now by publishing essays discussing the American condition from the perspective of individual businessmen...
...Yet the vast majority of its own citizens are back in the Dark Ages as far as understanding how their economic system works...
...Since virtually no material was available on this subject, he asked forty economics professors in the three state universities for their help...
...1) Is There Something Deeply Wrong in America...
...We can only solve our social problems by doing away with capitalism and the institutions that support it...
...9 The Sting...
...A1 Pacino is super...
...I t should instead be praised for reducing the average unit price of prescription drugs over the past decade, in contrast with what has happened to the price of almost everything else...
...Recently, for eT~mple, the superintendent of education in a western state wanted to institute a mandatory course in capitalism for the high school system...
...d) Industry's Achievements Taken for Granted," Whatever faults their managements may share with the rest of humanity, the oil companies d/d take the risks, invest the capital, and provide the energy at bargain prices which helped enable the 28 The Alternative June-September 1974 _9 Blazing Saddles: Mel Brooks' spoof of western shoot-em-ups, starring Black Bart, the Negro sheriff (Cleavon Little), villain Hedley Lamarr (Harvey Korman), fast-gun Gene Wilder as the Kid, Brooks as a Yiddish-spouting Indian chief and a moronic governor (What...
...9 The Exorcist: The debbil made her do it...
...Convinced that these activities affect the very planets in their orbits, he propagates the idea that at any given moment the whole show will go up in smoke...
...3) Some Basic Economic Facts: The profit-and-loss system is under attack as never before...
...Lee Marvin doing his grizzled old bandit number again, this time tying in with three innocent lads (Gary Grimes, ROn Howard, and Charlie Martin Smith, the last two out of American Gra~t~) turning to crime for fun and profit...
...Their comments on business are nearly always devoid of perspective that would shed light on the subject...
...This distrust is not merely the product of Watergate...
...c) Profits and jobs tend to move together...
...Hanging in there, for the season, most likely...
...Its industrial way of life has been widely envied and copied throughout the world...
...With all the special emphasis given to education in recent years, we seem to have raised the level of economic illiteracy...
...9 Conrack: Jon Voight as a hip modern Mr...
...When they increase, more hiring is done...
...Since the Arabs shut off the oil last October and nearly quadrupled the world price, the political demagogues have jumped on the bandwagon as an easy way to harvest votes from public dismay over higher oil and gasoline prices...
...They all die in the end, and the film is dreadful, but compared to last month's Billy ~vo Hats, of the same general theme, it is princely...
...Is it simply because Americans are becoming more cynical as their society comes of age...
...It'll get you, be forewarned, but the trend is already a crashing bore...
...Pretty colors, stupid dialogue, preposterous throughout...
...These funds finance expansion, create more jobs, and develop new ways of providing goods and services as efficiently as possibl e . All this lifts the nation's standard of living...
...Another 100 million people also benefit from the dividends received by such stock-owning institutions as insurance companies, mutual funds, trust accounts, pensions, and profit-sharing plans...
...g) Virtually everyone, including the government, is helped by the profits that are reinvested within the companies...
...At the college level, what passes for instruction about our system is often prejudicial...
...d) Profits have the role of telling businessmen where to place their emphasis in converting labor, raw materials, and energy into useful products and services...
...9 Zardoz...
...Most texts are less biased, but only a few give a balanced view of real-life economic forces and problems...
...It must be given all the facts...
...Which does not, I might add, take into consideration whether Thompson's brain was fried before or after he took pen in hand to give us this silly and worthless book...
...Each essay will be written by a businessman unless otherwise stated THE UNITED STAZ~ZS has provided greater abundance and longer schooling for more of its people than any other society in history...
...Published with permission from David L. Babson and Company, Inc., Boston, Massachusetts...
...9 Serpico: A bit rough around the edges, perhaps, but powerful in its delineation of the honest cop (a happy surprise) combating his unconscionably crooked peers...
Vol. 7 • June 1974 • No. 9
