Their Mo$t Important Product

Subject for a novelist of the Thomas Pynchon type: a vertiginous trip through the contemporary history of the world, with a certain corporation at the center of things.

While Kurt Vonnegut used some of his own experience at the company for the 1952 Player Piano, he had other themes to explore. But important features of life and mores in the novel's setting— a company town in the automated future—were inspired by Vonnegut's former employer.

Beyond any predictions likely to be made in 1952, much has happened.

Yes, countless workers have been replaced by machines, as predicted.

What wasn't foreseen: technology making it easy to eliminate reasonable wages and worker protections by moving production to any part of the world offering sweatshops—or virtual slave labor.

One company was at the forefront of 1990s outsourcing.

The company may not have anticipated launching a certain political career; Thomas W. Evans writes that

When he joined GE in 1954, Reagan was a Democrat and a self-described "New Dealer to the core." ... He had been a leader and organizer of California's "Labor for Truman." He was then serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, which opposed "Right-to-Work" laws. Two years later, he supported Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas in her U. S. Senate contest against Republican Richard Nixon...

Nevertheless, Reagan would be exposed to right-wing reading material that GE promoted throughout its plants. While president of his own union, he also began absorbing the influence of an innovator in anti-union operations

... GE's vice president Lemuel Boulware, whom many leaders in corporate America regarded as the most successful labor negotiator of all time, and Reagan himself sharpened his negotiating skills during this period when he served another term as president of the Screen Actors Guild. (An intriguing aspect of this process occurred in 1960, when Boulware was urging GE's workers not to strike at the same time as Reagan, as SAG president again, took his members out on strike against the Hollywood producers. Incredibly, the situation worked out for the benefit of both GE and SAG.)

To its long-range profit, the company would point Reagan toward politics; his ascent to power would enable GE and other corporations to remake this country.

In time, Lemuel Boulware and GE CEO Ralph Cordiner mounted a national grass roots campaign, recruiting major corporate allies, creating schools where GE employees and others could learn the fundamental political skills to win elections, developing shareholder lists for political mailings, and turning GE workers into "communicators" and "mass communicators" (Boulware's words) who could spread the message of free persons and free markets to a decisive number of local voters. In the course of this Ronald Reagan was taken out of the plants and put on what he called "the mashed potato circuit" of civic forums largely in the south and smaller states, often towns where GE dominated the economy, where he would be most effective. In due course, the "great communicator" was born. In today's parlance, most of these states turned from blue to red.

In the 1960s, among other activities, GE was selling nuclear reactors of questionable design. Some are among those currently uncontained after Japan's nightmarish earthquake damage; the U.S. has 23 of the same design and vintage.

Reagan left GE in 1962. In a review of Make Believe: The Story of Nancy and Ronald Reagan (among essays here), Gore Vidal writes that Reagan had become too publicly right-wing to suite the company:

For eight years, Ronnie was GE's host and occasional actor; he also became the corporate voice for General Electric's conservative viewpoint. During tours of the country, he gave The Speech in the name of General Electric in particular and free enterprise in general. Gradually, Reagan became more and more right wing. But then if his principal reading matter told him that the Russians were not only coming but that their little Red brothers were entrenched in Congress and the school libraries and the reservoirs (fluoride at the ready), he must speak out. Finally, all this began to alarm even GE. When he started to attack socialism's masterpiece, the TVA (a GE client worth 50 million a year to the firm), he was told to start cooling it, which he did. Then, "In 1962, pleading bad ratings, GE canceled the program."[Vintage, 1990; page 87]

In 1964, Reagan gave his nationally-televised speech supporting Goldwater for the presidency. His place in Republican politics now assured, he was elected California governor in 1966.

Once in the White House, Reagan's efforts on behalf of "Progress" included working to overturn Carter's previous attempt at a sane energy policy.

Fast forward to more recent years, and there's the company's synergistic involvement in everything from war to broadcasting (just a tip of the iceberg overview here).

Despite the early move to outsourcing, exploitation of cheap labor is not the only source of fantastic profits—

The company reported worldwide profits of $14.2 billion, and said $5.1 billion of the total came from its operations in the United States.

Its American tax bill? None. In fact, G.E. claimed a tax benefit of $3.2 billion.

...

Its extraordinary success is based on an aggressive strategy that mixes fierce lobbying for tax breaks and innovative accounting that enables it to concentrate its profits offshore. G.E.'s giant tax department, led by a bow-tied former Treasury official named John Samuels, is often referred to as the world's best tax law firm. Indeed, the company's slogan "Imagination at Work" fits this department well. The team includes former officials not just from the Treasury, but also from the I.R.S. and virtually all the tax-writing committees in Congress.

NYT charts here.

The Times piece caused a bit of bad PR for GE.

So bad, in fact, that the company Responds to Public Outcry - Will Donate Entire $3.2 Billion Tax Refund to Help Offset Cuts and Save American Jobs...

... Oh, not really: it was just a piece of brilliant guerilla PR, by US Uncut and the Yes Men.

The AP fell for the story; words beneath a GE logo clearly signaling important news from the masters of the universe.

If the document is actually read, that admission of wrong-doing along with the promise to turn over a new leaf are instant tipoffs: signs of honesty and altruism hilariously alien to "corporate culture."

A "culture" GE has done so much to Bring to Life.

As much as I loathe what Reagan's snake oil did to this country, he was a man of some real talents, which he was able to use for good [1948] or ill [California governor's mansion, January 3, 1967 - January 7, 1975; White House, [January 20, 1981 - January 20, 1989].

Despite the results of Reagan's presidency, the man may have had enough principles to object to some of his old employer's current practices.

According to the NYT's tax story,

"Cracking down on offshore profit-shifting by financial companies like G.E. was one of the important achievements of President Reagan's 1986 Tax Reform Act," said Robert S. McIntyre, director of the liberal group Citizens for Tax Justice, who played a key role in those changes. "The fact that Congress was snookered into undermining that reform at the behest of companies like G.E. is an insult not just to Reagan, but to all the ordinary American taxpayers who have to foot the bill for G.E.'s rampant tax sheltering."

Of course, history is full of ironies.

In the Pacific: the crew of the carrier USS Reagan exposed to "slight" radiation from those smoking GE reactors.