mellowtigger (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
mellowtigger) wrote2022-05-31 11:08 am
mellowtigger) wrote2022-05-31 11:08 am
good news: turning the capitalist behemoth
Here's one of the great points (among many) from Class 2 on the Wealth & Poverty series. It was around 1980 when so many trends started going bad in the USA economy. Both of these images are from Class 1 in the series, each showing real family income growth by quintile, before and after 1980. During the Baby Boomer period, everyone benefited in the USA. Since then... it's been bad, especially if you're already poor.
Much of the underlying reason for it can be found in one simple concept. For a few decades prior to 1980, the management of large corporations was viewed as a public trust.
But that changed when greed-is-good libertarian neoliberalism took over the economy. Afterwards, the duty was to private shareholders rather than public stakeholders.
Separate from the lecture, I notice that this point in time coincides with the rise in the USA of televangelism (The Moral Majority) and trickle down economics (Reaganomics).
"But wait," I hear you say. "This all sounds awful, more like a Moody Monday post. You tagged this one as Good News?"
In 2019, the Business Roundtable (BRT, with about 200 members including major CEOs) made a very important statement about "a modern standard for corporate responsibility". Basically, the plutocratic leaders of those corporations are now considering a change of heart. Sure, it's just lip service at this point. Undoubtedly, it's a response to many years of hard work in DEIJ by vast numbers of volunteers and employees, plus other threats to their primacy since 1980. Even if it's real, even if its something more than mere lipstick on a pig, it will still take years and decades to undo the damage that has been inflicted already.
But even so, it's still a signal. A small light in a great darkness. It's one of the things I told you about, a reason that I haven't given up hope for change.
Much of the underlying reason for it can be found in one simple concept. For a few decades prior to 1980, the management of large corporations was viewed as a public trust.
"The majority of Americans support private enterprise, not as a God-given right but as the best practical means of conducting business in a free society... They regard business management as a stewardship, and they expect it to operate the economy as a public trust for the benefit of all the people."
- J.D. Zellerbach, 1956, from Harvard Business Review (free archive)
- J.D. Zellerbach, 1956, from Harvard Business Review (free archive)
But that changed when greed-is-good libertarian neoliberalism took over the economy. Afterwards, the duty was to private shareholders rather than public stakeholders.
"We have bloated bureaucracies in Corporate America. ... I have to look out for the shareholder's interests, and I'm the largest shareholder."
- Carl Icahn, unknown source but quoted here
- Carl Icahn, unknown source but quoted here
Separate from the lecture, I notice that this point in time coincides with the rise in the USA of televangelism (The Moral Majority) and trickle down economics (Reaganomics).
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor."
- John Kenneth Galbraith, quoted from a "Stop the madness" interview in 2002
- John Kenneth Galbraith, quoted from a "Stop the madness" interview in 2002
"But wait," I hear you say. "This all sounds awful, more like a Moody Monday post. You tagged this one as Good News?"
In 2019, the Business Roundtable (BRT, with about 200 members including major CEOs) made a very important statement about "a modern standard for corporate responsibility". Basically, the plutocratic leaders of those corporations are now considering a change of heart. Sure, it's just lip service at this point. Undoubtedly, it's a response to many years of hard work in DEIJ by vast numbers of volunteers and employees, plus other threats to their primacy since 1980. Even if it's real, even if its something more than mere lipstick on a pig, it will still take years and decades to undo the damage that has been inflicted already.
But even so, it's still a signal. A small light in a great darkness. It's one of the things I told you about, a reason that I haven't given up hope for change.