America's Corporations and Investors Are Failing Society

What does it say about our society and business culture that the worth of a company is measured almost exclusively by financial value? If a company invests a meaningful percentage of its profits into cause-related initiatives that improve the state of mankind, unless there is a clear economic reward, there is negligible enhancement of the company's value, other than sociological and spiritual.

If a company invests to reduce carbon emissions but gains no economic advantage, there is no economic value -- just environmental. How can a company commit to environmentally friendly investments when those investments do not deliver the economic returns demanded by investors? How can fast food companies commit to reducing obesity when a fat America feeds corporate coffers? How do public companies invest in their local communities, in improved benefits for employees, educational programs, child care facilities? Even Google recently increased child care costs to its employees, citing the need to tighten its corporate belt as a result of reduced stock price. Companies stress brand equity and invest millions -- even billions -- in advertising to communicate brand messages. But which companies can we look to today as having clearly defined brand relevance in their communities and among their customers?

J.D. Power service medals are valued by auto and travel companies. But if good service does not directly translate into increased profitability and investor value, it quickly goes out the window.

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This post originally appeared at JackMyers.com.

Comments

[Paul]

Corporations care only about profits and this is why capitalist countries inevitably have an unbalanced diestribution of wealth. This is now happening to the US.

Under socialism, the economy is run for the benefit of the people.

Maybe we should try that.

[swift_goat_pet_for_truth]

No, we should not try "Socialism"

There is NO pure capitalist society. There is NO pure socialist society.
It is about drawing a line on the continuum between the two.

What we should do is look at the whole spectrum, see what works, what does not work, and try to emulate the "best practices".

For example, universal single payer health care works.
Infinite tax breaks for big corporations, trickle down does NOT work.

[usedtowander]

The executives of America's largest corporations have very little connection to America. The corporations operate around the world and derive most of their revenue and profit from other places.

American laws don't much affect their lives, except to give the corporation infinite life and those very executives almost total immunity from accountability for their actions. Even whent they do seriously violate the laws, any Justice Department investigation into their activities is, generally, wholly ineffective - as is much of the Justice Department - witness Enron and Peregrine Systems.

They work to drive down the living standard of their own employees.
The citizenry is deeply dependent upon these companies for their long-term financial well-being because their retirement savings and healthcare are increasingly dependent upon them - even government employees.

All the while they do this, the government gives those very corporations significant support in the form of tax breaks and just plain gifts.

The gamblers, the individuals who run drive them, the investment community, are only interested in quarter-to-quarter earnings, not the long run benefit of the stakeholders - the employees or it's shareholders. They drive the cult of personality with the executives that allows these executives to pay themselves hundreds of millions - even while the company goes bankrupt (Countrywide).

Americans are dependent upon companies, so why do we allow lawmakers to create laws so favorable to these executives? There are a lot more of us who are being abused by these corporations than there are of those executives making

[dissolvethecorporation]

The tool has become the master.