Plato, in his book The Republic, clearly defined the types of government. Especially Democracy. United States is both referred to as a Republic similar to what Rome was and a Representative Democracy. The United States is not a pure democracy because we vote, every two years for representatives in the House of Representatives and every six years for representatives in the Senate, mirroring the House of Lords and House of Commons in England. Rather than voting on every issue after debate. Something very difficult to do in anything larger than a village. The founding fathers also provided check and balances for our administration unlike England’s approach to the powerful Monarchy, starting with the Magna Carta, rendering its monarchy simply a figurehead or brand for the United Kingdom.

I have worked in business and industry as well as taught and worked in the administration of higher education. The success of business is always at risk and most start-up businesses, perhaps 90%, fail within the first year for various reasons. Government on the other hand, should be stable and should serve all of its citizens, in the case of the United States, its services and protections equally, according to our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

Unfortunately, throughout the history of the United States there were always people: indigenous people, slaves and immigrants considered unsavory and excluded from full citizenship like women until various amendments to the Constitution and laws changed that picture. And that struggle is not over and continues.

Business does not care about citizenship unless it is a narrow business based on a single ideology and profit from it. Business hires what it considers the best and the brightest to do very narrow and specific jobs to make the business make money and survive in a very cutthroat world that doesn’t honor governments or national boundaries, only the Almighty Dollar. The only real currency of the world over all the other country currencies that exist but do not have the power of US trade. Everywhere I traveled in the world, all businesses large and small wanted to deal with the dollar and not in their currency even in Egypt where it was against the law to use anything other than the Egyptian pound.

When Richard Nixon put a black mark on the Republican Party with the Watergate debacle, the leaders of the party got together and created a strategy for regaining power. It wasn’t based on providing for all the citizens, but based on gaining power by entertaining corporations and the very rich to get them to bankroll Republican candidates in the public school board elections, campaigns for judgeships, state and city offices. The real power base of the parties close to the people. Democrats call it the grass roots.

They also made the brilliant move of promoting a politically active Hollywood personality, Ronald Reagan, the voice of the General Electric Theater with the motto, “Progress is Our Most Important Product,” for president. Apparently, the most popular American during that time, Walter Cronkite, was unwilling, as an unbiased journalist seeking the truth, to take on the role of a political leader. While Reagan had, as president of the Screen Actors Guild, defending screen actors from the witch hunt of the 1950s by Republicans, notably senator McCarthy of Wisconsin, he had no regret in moving into a position to return the Republican Party to a prominent position with humor and grace that was his style.

Reagan’s big idea was “trickle down” economics. Basically, if the very wealthy corporations and privately owned companies were prosperous, the money would trickle down from the top of the organization to those working in the lowest jobs. Similar to the tipping system for services rendered. I think that everyone knows that the richest people tend to be the stingiest when it comes to giving tips. While a grandiose idea, a lot of Americans for multiple reasons, can’t compete in the job market and climb the ladder to success. Historically, these people were supported by their families, charities or villages where they lived. These citizens by birth could not benefit from trickle down money. The idea only made inequality in wealth worse. Over the years since, the rich have become richer, and the poor, poorer. Yet the theory, persists.

Taking advantage of the Reagan presidency and the pork barrel that is the United States Treasury, many laws were enacted to benefit corporations and wealthy individuals to reduce their taxes, until many wealthy people didn’t have to pay taxes at all. Perhaps the worst was the removal of the inheritance tax. Wealth could pass from generation to generation in wealthy dynasties without losing any value. Where most of the wealthy family members never worked except to promote their foundations and charities protecting their wealth from taxes and serving on boards of corporations and favored organizations.

Throughout much of the 20th century voters who went through perilous times like two World Wars, the Great Depression and the Cold War became complacent about whether their vote counted and tended to give their representatives and senators a lifetime job. Growing wealthier after World War II, most citizens began to favor heroes among the public that they had disposable money to go see or idolize from afar on television and the movies. Even travel to places where their heroes in sports and other segments of society were like Billy Graham and many other heroes that came and went in popularity. Like the highly popular and political Charles Lindberg was before World War II.

Through using state offices to create gerrymandered congressional districts based on the changing nature of a very mobile citizenry every 10 years in the census, the Republican Party has gained control of the Electoral College, effectively making it obsolete. Party control of congressional districts has been skewing election results since gerrymandering’s first inception back in the mid 1800s. Political party control of the presidential election using the Electoral College is simply wrong. Today, it’s all about the popular vote. The most popular or populist candidate usually wins. Especially when it comes to the presidency.

My master’s degree is in industrial engineering. My twin brother made a career of it by working for over 100 companies over the years installing efficient systems that primarily removed humans and human error from the process of making goods and services. When he retired as a private consultant efficiency expert out of Chicago he was making good money to downsize organizations. He learned that if he improved efficiency in a company that he worked for, he was rewarded by being let go because the company no longer needed his services. What we like to call the “low hanging fruit” made it harder to make additional cuts without cutting productivity and profit.

Up until the time of Reagan, accounting firms primarily served businesses large and small with accounting for requirements established by the government by handling their financial affairs and doing their taxes. At some point, it was accounting that could make improvements over and beyond what the engineering companies that had done with efficiency studies from Frederick Taylor around 1900. Soon, the Big Eight accounting firms became the primary efficiency consultants who restructured organizations, proposed cost saving strategies like outsourcing and going overseas where everything could be done at lower cost with more profit. Of course, the executives who hired these firms benefited the most from the money saved by their salaries increasing exponentially. A form of internal kickbacks out of sight and control of those lower in the organization doing the real work.

Accountants then moved into organizations and gave themselves high salaries along with all their “loyal” executives with escalating titles and salaries that often competed for what money was trickling down rather than serve the purpose of the company or its employees. After all, all of the graduates that the universities were pumping out needed a white collar job, not wanting to work with their hands on repetitive, dirty work anymore like their parents had. But sit behind a desk perhaps with a computer in an air-conditioned office and prove their worth as a member of the loyal administration rather than a productive member of the company.

This idea of improving efficiency and using the money to pad the salaries of executives and create larger executive organizations has greatly contributed to the growing gap between the richest and the poorest, not only in the United States but throughout the world. We are basically returning to the feudal system that was defeated by democratic governments when we equate good with wealth rather than egalitarian kindness.

Government, by its very nature, is slow to act and inefficient to operate. Especially democracy because all of the peoples’ will must be considered when making changes through debate and voting by the representatives sent to congress. it is the president and administration’s primary role to carry out those laws and changes made in the law. The president’s primary power is in emergencies to issue executive orders that later will be tested by the courts to see if they are constitutional and hopefully become part of the law of the land through congressional action. But like in a company where a company president or CEO makes a move that changes the direction of the company, only time will tell whether the move was a good one or not.

By 2000, business rules started moving into almost all nonprofit organizations with accountants taking over, first by coming in with one of the Big Eight accounting firms to evaluate the organization and find out if there were any fat or useless operations that could be eliminated or merged. Usually, after one of these audits, heads would roll. In addition, for most companies that were able to do it, parts and processes were moved overseas where they were much cheaper to produce, making the goods here in the United States much less expensive to buy and use as we wish. However, American employees who had originally done the work, were fired. If their work was highly specialized, they may not have been able to get another job and had to retire early or join the vast number of former employees who no longer count because they are no longer seeking work. A fallacy of the Jobs Report not providing the real unemployment rate.

PT Barnum, who declared that there was, “A sucker born every minute,” set the standard for all of those who felt left out attempting risky ventures to solve their personal problems–primarily overspending and debt based on so many extensions of credit available readily to the public–like credit cards and equity borrowing from assets like homes. Gambling has always been a part of American culture and contributes greatly the loss of individual wealth. Governments have capitalized on the addiction by creating state and national lotteries, legalizing casino gambling and horse racing, etc.

Americans have always dealt with their problems, both mental and physical, by using drugs, legal or not. The result is a massive use of drugs by Americans to solve their problems. Most often resulting in addictions creating massive profits and power for those controlling the production and delivery of drugs to consumers, US citizens. While Republicans have declared a “War on Drugs” the problem will never go away as long as this country’s citizens crave them, the war rages on in profit’s favor like the gun manufacturers’ profits from legal and illegal gun sales, worldwide. Fear begets more fear. More fear turns into more sales, legal or not.

There will be short term benefits to the people like a free lunch from these drastic, business like moves we are seeing with the new administration, but next year the public will be hungry again. In the long-term, it will be the citizens who will suffer while the rich will continue to grow richer. Why they have gathered around the Pied Piper of their cause with a brief relationship that will not be loyal at all, but cutthroat like business is.

When the rich get very rich and the poor get very poor in most countries, revolutions occur. Another civil war in the United States would be not only bloody, but set back history into a dark age that we may never recover from. It is time that we restructure government into helping people rather than making profit. It will not be an easy task but we must do it.

Copyright 2025 © Ronald W. Hull

2/16/25