By 2024 Musk and Trump Will Be Dead Meat.

Before I start this column, a quick November 8th note:

Go Maura!!!!!

Now to business.

In 1981, a chemical engineer named Jack Welch, was named CEO of General Electric. Despite the popularity of General Electric Theater, which an unemployed actor named Ronald Reagan began hosting in 1954 and would pronounce his ‘progress is our most important product’ for the last time in 1962, this storied company was about to go bust.

Homeowners just weren’t trooping into the local GE dealer any more to buy washing machines, dishwashers, refrigerators and all the other appliances which GE had been manufacturing since Thomas Edison began selling the incandescent light bulb in 1892. Now consumers went to the local big box discount store and bought household machinery made in China and Japan for half the GM price.

Welch didn’t just make a change here and a change there to boost GE’s annual revenues from $28 billion to $170 billion over his twenty-year tenure as CEO. He completely remade the company through massive layoffs, offshoring, outsourcing, buybacks, aggressive credit and leasing plans and acquisitions of…