A Business Decision

I keep hearing the expression “It was a business decision” and have begun wondering how the expression came to be. I know “a business decision” is almost never good news for workers. I have yet to hear it used when describing a plan to hire more people. That usually occurs under the rubric of “business plan,” not “business decision.”
“A business decision” appears to be a euphemism much the same as water closet, powder room, or rest room is used to describe a room with a toilet. The term “business decision” is a way to gloss over the harsh reality of firings or layoffs the way “powder room” softens the harsh reality of defecation or urination.
“Downsizing” is another term used by management to describe the same process, but it carries a description or forecast of what the move involves, so it is a bit closer to the truth.
What all of these euphemisms do to one degree or another is lessen the harshness of the message for the purveyor more than the receiver. If we call job loss the product of “downsizing” or a “business decision,” it makes power holders feel more civilized, more removed from the other end of the process that results in job loss. The power end of the chain of command maintains distance through language.
The ultimate example of this is Hitler’s use of the term “final solution” in World War II. Six million Jews met death under the term “solution” which, for the Nazis, even put a positive spin on a horrible atrocity. “Final solution” was the ultimate euphemism, the ultimate gloss over, the ultimate expression of distance from truth.
But euphemism is not the only mechanism by which power “manages” the less powerful painlessly (again, for the deliverer, not the delivered). It also does so through program and principle. For example, the Tea Party is calling for smaller government, the elimination or privatizing of entitlement programs, less regulation of business, and lower taxes. The idea is that free enterprise will be freed up to stimulate economic recovery and growth. The only things holding back a recovery in the U.S. economy is government and its rising debt, according to Tea Party thinking.
The truth is radical surgery on government, entitlements, and current debt would throw the economy into terrible chaos. Even the business community would rather see a gradual reduction in debt and government services over time than a radical upheaval of the status quo. It is about trajectory, not a screeching halt. Business can cope with, even benefit from, an encouraging trajectory for government spending. It cannot cope with uncertainty that either the maintenance or an upheaval of the status quo would bring.
Meanwhile, what about the workers? What about unemployment? Tax rates for the rich have been lower for about a decade, and unemployment is still high. Calling for even lower taxes is the economic equivalent of “blood-letting” if lower taxes have not stimulated the economy to grow since the so-called end of the Great Recession.
The greatest problem for the American worker is “out-sourcing,” another familiar euphemism developed by the business world to soften the harshness of more American job loss. According to the Wall Street Journal:
U.S. multinational corporations, the big brand-name companies that employ a fifth of all American workers, have been hiring abroad while cutting back at home, sharpening the debate over globalization's effect on the U.S. economy.
The companies cut their work forces in the U.S. by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing employment overseas by 2.4 million, new data from the U.S. Commerce Department show. That's a big switch from the 1990s, when they added jobs everywhere: 4.4 million in the U.S. and 2.7 million abroad.*
If major powers in the business community are not hiring Americans, who else is going to take up the slack? If the government reduces corporate taxes in the U.S. from 35% to 25%, will corporations hire enough workers to justify the loss of corporate tax revenue? I say let’s give it a try by reducing the corporate tax rate on those corporations that show a significant increase in domestic hiring, thus reversing the trend outlined by the Wall Street Journal. Do it on a corporation by corporation basis.
Until then we the privileged will continue to hear the euphemisms bandied about and drift along inured to the harsh reality of what it is actually like to be unemployed because we the privileged remain removed from the actual fray. We can sit at our computers and send out our verbal drone missives through space and hope they penetrate the best defenses of the dogmatic, agenda-driven extremists who are certain about their solutions, and give them pause to consider the possibility that there are human beings suffering out there in America, who, regardless of principles, need a long-term solution they can earn, embrace, or even endure that puts actual food in their mouths and an actual roof over their heads. “Out-sourcing,” “business decisions,” and “downsizing” will not answer.

*http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704821704576270783611823972.html