Calvin Coolidge
Killing the Goose That Laid the Golden Eggs
Most people have heard the expression, “killing the goose that laid the golden eggs,” but many cannot recite the complete story. It goes like this:
A poor farmer one day discovers a glittering golden egg in the nest of his pet goose. At first he thinks it must be some kind of trick. But as he starts to throw the egg aside, he has second thoughts and takes it to an appraiser. The egg is pure gold. The farmer can’t believe his good fortune and becomes even more incredulous the following day when he discovers another golden egg. Day after day, upon awakening, he rushes to the nest to find another golden egg. He becomes fabulously wealthy. It all seems too good to be true.
But with his increasing wealth comes greed and impatience. Unable to wait day after day for the golden eggs, the farmer decides to kill the goose and get all the eggs at once. But when he opens the goose, he finds it empty. There are no golden eggs and now there is no way to get any more. The farmer has killed the goose that laid them.
But there is another chapter to this story that goes untold.
Although the farmer rues his decision to kill the goose, he realizes that it is no grave misfortune. After all, he has become fabulously wealthy; he is no longer a poor dirt farmer. His financial future is assured. Although there will be no more golden eggs, there will also be no more poverty. Killing the goose, while unfortunate, does not entail a financial crisis. He will be okay.
This mythical fowl tail describes America’s current economy perfectly. Governments, both state and federal, have become a goose that lays golden eggs for America’s business community. Our governments have allowed that community to decrease the wages of workers, eliminate relatively high-paying jobs by transferring them to foreign nations where wages are considerably lower, and create an ever growing income gap between workers and corporate officers. These corporate officers have become the mythical farmer, and their greed is killing the goose.
America has become the greatest debtor nation in history. It’s now relies on foreign nations for essential products and American foreign policy has denigrated many of these same nations for ages. Because of this denigration, the peoples of these nations hold no affection for the United States. Some economists, domestic and foreign, believe that America is sliding from great power to third-world status. And it is not difficult to see why.
It takes no great smarts to realize that for businesses to prosper, their products and services must be sold. But an impoverished people cannot be prolific consumers, regardless of how cheap products and services are priced. So just as governments can be likened to the goose and the business community to the farmer, the consumer becomes the golden egg, and when he becomes the victim of a flawed business model, no more golden eggs will be forthcoming.
But why should the mavens of business care? In the meantime, they have become fabulously wealthy. Why should Bill Gates or any of his ilk care if America collapses into third-world status? If any of their companies go bust tomorrow, they suffer no severe economic consequences. They can shrug their shoulders as they walk away. Fortune magazine has just published a list of America’s worst performing CEOs. They are also some of the wealthiest.
Of course, this consequence is not new; it has happened before, and Americans, at least, were warned about how business practices bring this consequence about by Thomas Jefferson who wrote, “Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains.”
On January 17, 1925, when President Calvin Coolidge told an audience of newspaper editors that “The business of America is business” he made popular a legal form of treason that Americans have suffered under ever since. Our business community not only continues to prove that it can’t govern itself effectively but that a free market economy is a destructive myth.
©2008 John Kozy
About the Author
Retired professor of philosophy and logic who blogs on political, social, and economic issues at http://johnkozy.mindsay.com. The URL for his personal website is http://dfwdocuments.com.
Tends to avoid writing propaganda by insisting on facts and evidence.
Lil Wayne – Hit em up freestyle – Calvin Coolidge (white guy rapping HD)
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