In the aftermath of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson’s murder in Midtown Manhattan, the most popular posts on social media are ones which express support if not ecstasy over the brazen assassination. In fact, UnitedHealthcare’s own bereavement message online was cruelly mocked by 77,000 laughing response posts, SNL ran into massive viewer blowback after they ran a skit mocking the response to the murder, and the etchings on the cold-blooded murderer’s bullet casings of “deny, defend, depose” have become rallying cries for many, all while the investigation of the cold-blooded murder has been impeded by those sympathetic to the murderer’s outrage.
I have studied CEO and business leadership for 40 years, and such dancing on the grave of a murdered business executive is one of the most abhorrent things I have ever seen. This vitriol and violence against business and business leaders is plainly un-American.
While abhorrent, it was sadly not surprising to see so many influencers mocking and celebrating Thompson’s death, and fits an emerging pattern of populists on both the far left and far right increasingly coming together to attack business, both drawing on a shared populist resentment of pillars of American society. This unholy alliance between the far left and far right seems to think that businesses cannot succeed without doing something unethical or hurting others. To Democratic Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, it is impossible to make money “without stepping over children sleeping on the street,” not dissimilar to Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s fiery attacks on businesses for “corporate communism.” Greene’s Democratic counterpart, Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez has railed against CEO pay, pointing out that while CEOs of major U.S. companies earned 21 times as much as the typical worker in 1965, they now earn 290 times more.
This anti-business vitriol and hostility is deeply misplaced, and historically, Americans generally do not resent businesses and the prosperity their successes have created. As the prominent American economist Thorsten Veblen pointed out a century ago in The Theory of the Leisure Class, running up through entertainment journalist Robin Leach’s Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous, Americans are fascinated by those who succeed and do not resent their success, as long as they are not scoundrels who cheat to get ahead. But if they succeed through honest hard work and innovation, the American public tends to admire those successful people and want to identify with and emulate them.
In fact, the 2024 Edelman Trust Barometer’s survey of 36,000 respondents across 28 countries shows that business is the most trusted institution by far. “My CEO” inspires far more public trust than all other figures in society, including elected officials, media types, clergy and academics. Some 77% even identify “my employer” as their most trusted source of information. This suggests that to a majority of Americans outside the far fringes, business leaders are seen as widely admired stabilizing forces in society, not caricatured greedy villains out to harm regular people.
Of course, businesses are not perfect. We have long been some of the loudest voices in calling out instances of genuine corporate misconduct, and do not shy away from naming and shaming individual executives when that misconduct occurs.
Similarly, it is understandable why Americans are angered by the opaque complexities of the healthcare ecosystem; and indeed we have been vocal in calling for reforms. Critics have pointed out that many are angry about long-running industry practices that health insurers have used to contain costs, including prior authorization, which requires patients and doctors to get permission from an insurer before a medical procedure, while arguing that UnitedHealthcare’s profits came in part due to suffering by ordinary Americans, pointing out that UnitedHealthcare was rated the worst in denying claims, turning down 32% of all claims, twice the industry average of 16%.
But at the same time, amidst such massive populist frustration, it is important to recognize that the U.S. healthcare industry, including health insurers, have been on the front lines of advancing public health across the world, leading to a doubling in average life expectancy since 1900 and with more vaccines, treatments and therapies available today than at any other time in human history.
Likewise, it is important to recognize the massive benefits wrought by American businesses writ large, and the net positive impact of business on society. At the end of the day, American businesses have provided not only U.S. citizens with a more prosperous life, but they have exported prosperity around the world in the form of wealth, innovation, ideas and improvements in quality of life. Furthermore, our form of American capitalism has made it uniquely possible for anyone to rise to the top of society, regardless of where they were born, and for normal people to access goods and services which were once reserved for elites.
Even as businesses and business leaders are not perfect, on the whole, they indisputably deliver for society, and the benefits and advancements in human civilization they bring are worth celebrating, not destroying. Even amidst such divisive polarization and widespread populist frustrations, and no matter what genuine challenges may exist, corporate executives should not be targets for vigilante justice, and even more concerning, that such acts of violence are apparently now celebrated by certain parts of society is plainly horrific.
The populist anti-business fervor of the far right and the left are sadly anchored in the anger of America’s past populism going back to William Jennings Bryan’s attack on all institutions at the turn of the last century, but they should not be a part of our nation’s future. We believe a vast majority of Americans share our fundamental belief that the vitriol and violence against business leaders is un-American in a nation which celebrates achievement and seeks to emulate those who succeed.
“The Yale School of Management is the graduate business school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut.”
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