The distate that Barack Obama, the community organizer who spent a year "behind enemy lines" in the private sector, feels for the corporate world is obvious. It has also become clear that he has no concept of the dynamics of capitalism:
"Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn't just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the internet," President Obama said at a campaign event in Kansas.
Most technological innovations that come along displace some workers but ultimately create more jobs than are destroyed. The Internet that is distressing so many industries (including -- curses! -- the newspaper business) will be no different than other innovations that have come along to challenge us to learn new skills for new jobs, and also allow us to have better lives.
In case you haven't seen it or don't remember it, check out this scene from "Other People's Money" in which the character played by Danny DeVito gives one of the most rousing defenses of capitalism's creative destruction ever put in the movies.
You know, at one time there must have been dozens of companies making buggy whips. And I'll bet the last company around was the one that made the best goddamn buggy whip you ever saw.
Now, how would you have liked to have been a stockholder in that company?
You invested in a business, and this business is dead. Let's have the intelligence--let's have the decency--to sign the death certificate, collect the insurance, and invest in something with a future.
