Big business is suddenly showing a conscience. But is that enough?
“To most Americans, the Business Roundtable might sound like a piece of conference room furniture, but the lobbying organization’s humdrum name belies the scope of its power and influence. Made up of chief executives from corporate giants including JPMorgan Chase, Apple, ExxonMobil and Walmart, the Business Roundtable is one of the leading voices of the financial elite. As such, it made headlines last week when the group reversed its official position on “the purpose of the corporation.”
“In a statement last week, the Business Roundtable abandoned its long-standing commitment to “shareholder primacy” — the idea, popularized by “free-market” economist Milton Friedman in the 1970s, that a corporation’s sole purpose and obligation is to create financial returns for its investors. Instead, the group conceded that businesses also have a responsibility to their customers, workers and communities. “While each of our individual companies serves its own corporate purpose,” the statement said, “we share a fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders.”
“It should not be controversial to believe that corporations owe some measure of accountability to the society that allows them to accumulate massive wealth. The investor class’s “self-serving and destructive” insistence to the contrary has “caused grave damage to the American economy and society,” Columbia University professor Jeffrey Sachs writes, including “a massive rise in inequality of wealth and income, environmental destruction, huge budget deficits, financial crises, and death and despair due to the egregious failures of the corporate health care and food industries.” If nothing else, the group’s about-face is a concession that corporations have failed to serve the public good. In that sense, the statement, uninspiring as it might be, is welcome.
“But don’t give these chief executives too much credit. After all, the companies they lead have done little to earn the public’s trust and plenty to lose it. In the years following the financial crisis, they and others battled to dilute any real reforms on Wall Street. They have consistently supported destructive trade and regulatory policies that do lasting harm to workers, consumers and the environment. They continue to cheer for President Trump’s tax cuts for corporations and the rich, a disproportionate share of which these companies and other similar firms used to reward shareholders with stock buybacks.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/27/big-business-is-suddenly-showing-conscience-is-that-enough/
These “people” aren’t there, yet, on impeachment.
They realize Democrats will be in control in 2020 and want to create an appearance they are self-governing.
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