The Business of America...

The Business of America... (1984) is a landmark film probing one of our most treasured economic assumptions: that private corporations can be trusted to make the investments upon which all Americans depend.

The film contrasts two Pittsburgh steelworkers' conventional faith in private enterprise with the actual strategies and priorities of a giant corporation, U.S. Steel. It traces their growing realization that despite "supply-side" business claims, increased profits don't necessarily "trickle down" to working Americans. Decades later, this critique finds powerful statistical backing in Federal Reserve economic data, which shows that wealth concentration has surged to historic highs, with the top 1% of American households controlling over 31% of the nation's total wealth, roughly matching the assets held by the entire bottom 90% combined.

To discover why, The Business of America... interviews U.S. Steel chairman David Roderick, travels to Wall Street and visits Harvard Business School. The film reveals that shareholder pressures to increase profitability have led many American firms to transform themselves from manufacturing enterprises into financial conglomerates. It raises troubling questions about whether the prevailing emphasis on short-term profits provides for the long-term investments industries, and the country, need to provide economic opportunities to all Americans.

The urgency of these concerns has made The Business of America... a standard audiovisual "text" in many economics, sociology, management, labor studies, and business ethics courses, as well as a prescient warning of the ruin left behind when a nation allows corporations the unabated freedom to pursue profits any way they can.