Part two of a three-part series
Long gone are the days when American popular culture featured Horatio Alger-type heroes who rose from the depths of poverty and depression by dint of their own hard work and determination to succeed in creating great companies, invent miraculous new products and advance the frontiers of education and compassion.
Think about it — when was the last time you watched a documentary on PBS or one of the TV networks about why countries with free people and economies prosper, while those with socialized economies don’t?
As award-winning author Andrew Klavan writes, most of what we see on the TV and movie screens about businessmen and entrepreneurship is negative. Hollywood gives us Gordon Gecko and greed over and over. The irony is that Big Hollywood is made up of a few giant companies making billions in profits.
Terence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, looks at another irony: how the wealth of one generation of successful entrepreneurs so often ends up being spent a generation or two later by nonprofit activists and tax-exempt foundations with explicitly anti-business agendas.
And Amy Menefee, former managing editor of the Business and Media Institute, shines a spotlight on 10 journalists whose reporting seems invariably to feature anti-profit, anti-business themes.
Schedule
Today: Why is profit a dirty word?
– Klavan on no business like show business to bash business.
– Menefee on the most anti-profit journalists.
– Scanlon on the most powerful enemies of profit.
Sunday: New day coming for profit
– Lamm on keeping our balance on reforms.
– Jensen on the next great generation of entrepreneurs.
– Tapscott on wikinomics and profit.
Part 1 from Thursday: Tough times for profits
– Meese on why jail may be location for your next business meeting.
– Donohue on why everybody benefits when profits are plentiful.
– DeMint on what Congress must do to unleash entrepreneurs.
