What do "Pro-business" politicians have in common with Bunuel's “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie"? They have ideals, yet they are not sure what they are until caught in argument. They have been lulled, much to their own disapproval, into a false sense that all is right with society when merchants are rich - even though that indicates a sick economy and ailing society.
I'll call out a fallacy of our times: that "pro-business" politicians can or should be in government. Otherwise, government becomes a rotund leach, slowly extracting wealth from the lower classes in order to deposit it into the upper. Some taxes, are of course for public benefit. Those that pay for a school system, health benefits, and so forth. Then, there are many others, that pay, circuitously, through torturous pathways, back into the bank accounts of those that litigate, lobby, and lead our country toward a "pro-business" agenda. It should be accepted that those in power will tend to look first to their own wallets - and if that means going against the public interest, so be it.
Just as Burke describes in “Reflections on the Revolution in France,” there is no problem with having leaders that are from a wealthy, landed class, for if they were not, they would have no incentive for the country to continue uninterrupted, and instead it would be in a state of constant revolution (Cuba might be a great modern example of this effect). At first this struck me as a weak argument, but it also has truth to it. Smooth continuity of government is very important to peace and prosperity, and should never, unless totally necessary, be abandoned. The energy, money, and lives lost to rapid changes in governance rarely are repaid by the benefits of a new ruling class (who soon become gentry themselves, of course).
Adam Smith, in “The Wealth of Nations,” demonstrated definitively how the market is best left to itself to find an equilibrium between supply and demand, without the burdens of tariffs, taxes, and subsidies. His theory is almost universally accepted by economists, yet not so well by leaders, maybe for the simple reason that the term "protection" and "pro-business" sound better to the general public than "free market" and "pro-public", even though it always leads to steady reductions in the standard of living for Americans, and all those around the world. Smith also demonstrated that many companies that work in a free market have an incentive to cheat consumers, and hurt the productivity of the market as a whole. He proposed strict regulation on business as the keystone to of the free market scheme, yet it has been almost totally discarded from the vocabulary of those that consider themselves to be proponents of the free market. These people are in fact proponents of their own profit margins at the expense of the entire economy and the wealth of all the people affected by it. In a reasonable free market system, the poorly-termed proponents of "business"would be kept wholly out of government, for in free market capitalism, we are all proponents of the market, not of special-interests over the consumer, which is what these people support, to the credit of their own institutions, and to the discredit of the United States.
Many people sense a disconnect in todays politics between the terms that leaders use and their true meanings. The example of 'Pro-Business' is a good one. We live in a capitalist, semi free market society. Our economic model is based on private business, so being Pro-Business should hardly be a surprise. In fact, this terminology, which sounds so economically beneficial, is a key word for a less beneficial cousin, Anti-Regulation. This idea, that less regulation benefits our country, and that regulations such as anti-trust, labor, and environmental regulations are bad for the wealth of the general population are so wrong, and so ignorant of economic principles, that they should be banished from the earth forever. Business can profit by manipulating the market. This is reinforced to us every time a business is caught cooking the books, evading taxes, or overcharging consumers. It is the natural tendency of businesspeople to increase profits by overcharging customers and disabling competition. Without strictly enforced regulations, these abuses quickly spiral out of control, and the burden is always borne by the tax payers.
