The title resonates well with mainstream dogma of capitalism being objectively good, ignoring that it was just one aspect of what made "the good years" and was in fact quite limited by both physical and legal constraints, and sometimes pure ideological bent of some behemoths of industry (i.e. messrs Hewlett and Packard, impact of US military spending, etc).
Welch exploited a combination of events when a lot of those limitations (especially legal) ended, acting in extremely capitalist ways.
>mainstream dogma of capitalism being objectively good
Is that what you perceive the mainstream dogma to be? When I observe use of the word "capitalism", it is usually in regards to rationalizations for interventions or other socialist policies. Whereas proponents generally use specific language, like market, market-based or laissez-faire. Opponents are can be observed using language like, neoliberal, deregulation, greed and capitalism.
>Although Karl Marx did not create the word, it was after his work “Das Kapital” (1867) when the term “capitalism” began to be widely used to describe an economic system based on private property as the means of production. Marx remains the great labeler: “capital,” “the capitalist” and “the capitalist system of production” appear repeatedly in his writings.
...
>Should we care if we lose the term capitalism? Assessing its popularity, or lack thereof, I recently reviewed the mission of 25 leading market oriented think tanks around the globe. I could not find a single one using the term. “Free enterprise,” “free-markets” “free-economy” and better yet “free society” will continue to crowd out “capitalism,” if not as a system, at least as a word.
A lot of the terms you recall are terms also coined by people who would be considered anti-capitalists today. That said, specific word use depends a lot on one's specific bubble. A lot of my personal contacts consider it implicitly bad, some with better understanding of why some not, but I do try to get out and see a lot of praise if not actually under the word capitalism, then under what was described yes by Marx as capitalism.
Personally (as I am not any kind of educated expert nor an oracle) I would say that a lot of "free enterprise", "free economy", "free society", even "market-based" terms are very much orthogonal to capitalism and behaviours described by it, but some of them push for conditions that enable said behaviours (deregulation - which I often encounter as positive term thrown around - or "laissez-faire". Or even absolute focus on "free" in "free market" to detriment of said market as bigger players destroy competition)
Welch exploited a combination of events when a lot of those limitations (especially legal) ended, acting in extremely capitalist ways.