Posted on 01/13/2012 6:14:08 PM PST by VinL
Furthermore, making a profit is only one component of owning a business. Whatever happened to the idea that you are responsible for your workers and to the larger community? Too often, people feel like just pawns in a ‘game’ of ever increasing largesse for the top dogs. The big shots are always the winners – often getting payouts in the millions when their companies fail — and the “losers” are left to figure out how to eat or buy clothes for their children. (A new study found that $100 million “golden parachutes” have become commonplace for failed CEOs).
Romney’s “class envy” claim is predicated on a lie we often here from the uber-rich and their defenders: the highest goal and achievement for Americans is to be wealthy, when all most people want is to be able to provide a decent lives for their families…
The unlikely hero in this tale has been Newt Gingrich, who has been making the most coherent argument for ethical capitalism. Says Gingrich, what we want is, “a free enterprise system that is honest. . . fair to everyone and gives everyone an equal opportunity to pursue happiness.” Criticizing Romney’s brand of free enterprise, (Newt)said, “It’s not fine if the person who is rich manipulates the system, gets away with all the cash and leaves behind the human beings.”
Be still my heart.
(Excerpt) Read more at hotair.com ...
Amen to pursuing happiness... in this case, seeing quislings Limbaugh, Coulter, Hannity, Rove, Malkin, Noonan et al collectively cry in their globally imported beers when they see their "boyfriend" implode. .
This is a time when Capitalism has become international so that downsizing sends jobs out of the US ...we have watched the strip mining of American industry to build multi nationals that make a small group wealthier .. ...all of that is at the feet of G H Bush..Clinton and GW who sold out US with the “free trade agreements “...
Newt is right.. American exceptionalism is lost by the greed of a few
GOOOO Newt Gingrich!
ETHICAL CAPITALISM
That sounds good. That the kind of Capitalism I have been practicing for the last 40 years. I guess that explains why I still live in a 1500 sq ft tract home.
We know Catholicism...and we ain't afeerd of it.
Mormonism, on the other hand, is a cult. Maybe we should dig into it just a little bit before we hand over the rains...
Mitt is bound up by his faith. He is not Harvard...he is Mormon.
Don't we need to know what that means?
Gingrich is a COMMIE!!!!!!
Only the business owner matters - if you think anyone else does, then you’re a stinking commie lib!
I’m wondering when “ethical” got to be a bad word.
That said, there’s nothing essentially unethical about private equity firms, M&A, and all that other stuff...and Gingrich never said there was. He challenged Romney on certain deals, since Romney has been portraying himself as a captain of industry rather than a speculative financier, and Romney has still not answered.
As for why Rush et al. are supporting Romney, I am totally mystified. There is no way Romney is going to win the presidency.
Yes, the department of fair markets, will that be a new cabinet position and how many billion to operate, 300 to 500 thousand employees should probably fix the problem. Back in, back in, back in, the USSR,
Well, first of all, Newt's last name is Gingrich, not Gringrich. Second, I'm not sure at all why quoting a NYC liberal commentator's opinion is particularly helpful to his cause.
He agrees with Obama then. With the exception of honesty, those “ethics” are enforced by the market. Some companies should be shut down so that the workers and assets can be used more effectively in a different enterprise. The notion that we shouldn’t allow any company to fail is a socialist one.
The author is Kirsten Powers, a lovely Liberal. Know the source.
Yes, fairness and equal outcomes, you can have whatever car you want as long as it is the same as everyone else. Yugo’s will make a come back.
You got it! These are questions that will be asked if Mittens, god forbid, secures the nomination. And asked pretty hard!
What the eF is going on? In 2008 the fools voted to demonstrate they’re not “racist”, now GOP fools are voting to demonstrate their not prejudiced against any religion?
Ditto what you said!
Well, your hero Obama is doing that right now. Why do you think he is folding all of the commercial and trade agencies into one entity that he can control?
Ethical capitalism depends on individual morality. There will always be hard choices, which is fine, and everybody realizes that. But one of the reasons for the rise of unions is that workers actually were very badly treated after industrialization (and even before, but they didn’t have the technological ability to group together at that point) by unethical people. So if you want to argue for lack of ethics and human morality, go ahead...but remember that you’re destroying the capitalist system, which is based on contracts and trust, when you do that.
Few people realize that the essence of capitalism is the contract, honesty and trust. If you undermine that, you undermine the whole system. And that was essentially what was being done by Romney with his rapacious deals and reliance on taxpayer support to make up the difference so that the employees would not come out after him with pitchforks after they had lost their pensions.
Is there something unethical about capitalism such that it needs to be qualified by the word ethical?
And sleeping well in that house, I'll bet. There's a lot to be said for that, a clear conscience.
The above was written by Wilhelm Roepke, the German economist who helped create the postwar German economic miracle. Roepke was a favorite of the old National Review, back when that magazine was worth reading.
The claim that a concern about business ethics is "socialistic" and "anti-capitalistic" would sure have been news to Russell Kirk, Eric von Kuehneldt-Leddihn, and any number of the conservative stalwarts who once wrote for National Review.
But that claim comes easily to the current crop of Republican stooges who are concerned solely about political power, and who absolutely don't want the business ethics of their boy Romney subjected to scrutiny.
Who said a company shouldn’t be allowed to fail? Restructuring is a classic thing, but that wasn’t what Romney was doing.
He was stripping assets (cash and pension funds) of companies that were faltering, dumping the corpses, and then expecting the taxpayer to make up the difference.
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