Let’s cut to the chase: they’re a load of wussies, plain and simple. Where men like Ford took risks and did great things, today’s “captains of industry” and “titans of finance” hoard their cash, trembling at the idea of risk, and bleating in terror about “uncertainty”. And no matter how much uncertainty the government eliminates, today’s wretched crop of business people are still too scared to let so much as a dime of their vast holdings be risked.

And this fearful attitude has effects beyond the the fact that contemporary profits and losses of our business community are largely based on paper: it lies at the root of income inequality, our crumbling infrastructure, and America’s diminished standing in the world. Here are some examples:

Number A: the failure of “supply-side” (AKA trickle-down, Voodoo, etc.) economics. It was based on the romantic notion that those wealthy few, who received the income that had been redistributed away from the working and middle class many, would INVEST that income and so create jobs and wealth, strengthening and deepening the economy. Of course, the loathsome p****farts at the top of the economic pyramid did NOT invest the billions they received via the Reaganomics scam. They held onto it instead.

Letter 2: income inequality is the direct result of the wimpy-assed plutocratic poltroons hoarding their funds instead of investing them. There is only so much real wealth to go around, and when 80% of the world’s riches are being clutched to the palsied bosoms of the wimpy rich, there isn’t enough left for the real entrepreneurs to create income opportunities for the majority of us.

Thirdly: much of American business’s “profit” no longer comes from making things or providing services: it comes from complex financial transactions that do nothing to generate actual value. Remember “credit default swaps” and “complex derivatives”? Right, that is how our business “leaders” create “wealth” these days.

This writer is not claiming that Henry Ford was some sort of saintly humanitarian: nor is it being said that the tycoons and industrialists of bygone days were perfect people. But it IS true that Ford and others of his ilk understood that real wealth creation comes from being willing to take a risk to get a reward.

And damned few of the wimpy wealthy class in the 21st century have even the teensiest weensiest amount of testicular fortitude that Ford had. It’s long past time that we called them on their cowardice.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky