Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Corporate Leaders Today Are Different Than They Were During Great Depression

This article describes the role that business leaders had in supporting federal programs to end the Great Depression. The Chamber of Commerce, and many in government, believed that deficit reduction was the best way to deal with the Depression. FDR shared that view. In 1937 he raised taxes and cut spending in order to balance the federal budget. That made the Depression worse than it was in 1929. This hurt our large corporations that depended on domestic demand for their products, and they encouraged FDR to take stronger actions to end the the Depression.

The CEO's of our major corporations have a different outlook today. They no longer depend upon the domestic market as they did in the Depression. This is what the Business Roundtable, which includes the CEO's of our large corporations, recommends that we do to restore economic growth in the US. It reads like a wish list for making them more profitable and for reducing the role of government. They oppose banking regulation and major parts of healthcare reform even though they complain about the increasing cost of providing health insurance to employees. They want to reduce healthcare costs by using tort reform to limit malpractice suits and they favor using market forces to reduce costs. In other words, they sound like conservative republicans on most issues. Their strongest argument was for reducing corporate taxes.

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