The presidency of Calvin Coolidge is a complex one. As with any elected official, it’s easy to look back and critique even his noblest efforts in hindsight. It’s often said that he could have done more to address key societal changes in America during his term, and that’s not wrong. However, one thing that many modern economists, especially Robert D. Atkinson, writer at the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, feel that Coolidge got right was when he said in a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, “The chief business of the American people is business. They are concerned with producing, buying, selling, investing, and prospering globally.”
Over the past several decades, this kind of blunt and openly capitalistic ideology has fallen out of vogue for many. However, while some say that the business of America is fair and free, Atkinson does not believe this. Rather, he states that Coolidge was correct in his original assessment and that it is essential to the strength of the US economy moving forward.
Business in America: 2025
With Trump soon to be in the White House and Republicans in control of both branches of Congress, Atkinson believes it is high time that the president-elect rejects such lofty ideologies and returns to the basics of what made American commerce function so well during Coolidge’s term. This “failed framing” has brought more harm than good and resulted in an economy and culture that is willfully vehement toward the notion of overt capitalism.
However, he clarifies that embracing business first does not mean giving every business a free pass. Businesses that break the law, like individuals, should be punished. As Atkinson points out, in Coolidge’s time, capitalism was not a four-letter word. Rather, Coolidge was a statesman, and he expected capitalists to be statesmen, too. During his term, wealth was a means to a greater public interest, as the richest US citizens utilized their wealth to measurably enhance the lives of others. ‘Trickle-down economics’ was in full swing (even prior to being coined as a term some fifty years later by Reagan) and still a semi-viable option, as opposed to the modern-day, where it has been disproven time and again.
The embrace of trickle-down economics and market-fundamentalist “Friedman-ism” from the Reagan administration through the end of Bush II led to enormous problems, including the financialization of the economy, reduced investment in capital goods, offshoring US manufacturing, excessive growth in income inequality, and, of course, the housing bubble and Great Recession. These and other societal problems generated the radical pendulum swing to the left that we now see in the anti-business, anti-growth, and anti-meritocracy strains of the progressive movement that holds sway in the Democratic Party. These strains, in part, contributed to Kamala Harris’ stunning defeat.
Who to Blame for the Collapse of American Business
In summary, Atkinson believes similarly to Coolidge that, so long as business and profits are treated as means rather than ends, we need not greatly fear them, and we should instead support them. While that is a sweet thought, it has become apparent over the course of the past several decades that none of this actually functions as Atkinson seems to believe it does anymore. The US marketplace in 2025 is vastly different from the one that Coolidge was speaking about all the way back in 1925, a full hundred years ago.
Dreaming about some pie-in-the-sky reality where businesses prosper actually benefits the workers who make up the backbone of those businesses or the communities who support them is a nice idea, but it’s entirely divorced from the present-tense reality of the US. Time and again, companies have thrived in the US marketplace, and time and again, that success has been sourced directly into the pockets of those at the top, leaving precious little for middle-class workers.
Getting back to business is a swell idea, but only if those at the top are willing to part with the selfish and narcissistic ideology that has been the root cause of the resentment toward capitalism in the first place. As Calvin Coolidge once said, “It takes a great man to be a good listener,” and the billionaires’ wealth is currently soaring off the back of Trump’s planned wealthy tax cuts and deregulation are not good listeners.
