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The Only Corporate Virtue Signaling That Counts
The world’s richest companies consider replacing the shareholder model with the stakeholder model. Are they right?
Which America do you live in?
The one with an economy that serves everyone, or the one in which many are left out?
How you answer that question may depend on where you fall on the political spectrum, but also on whether or not you are a part of the over 50% of Americans who are company shareholders.
From IRAs to retirement savings accounts to 401Ks; a majority of Americans have a financial stake in the success- or failure- of some of the worlds biggest companies and corporations.
For everyone else, the idea of retirement savings and stock investments is laughable; keeping the creditors at bay with a steady paycheck is the sobering reality. Many people in the U.S. are one illness, one minor accident, one routine calamity away from financial ruination and homelessness.
In America, some people have been served by the economist Milton Friedman’s assertion that the only moral duty of any company is generating return on stockholder investment; some people have not.
The result of this disconnect can be witnessed at any college campus across the country, where the disaffected youth of…