Category Archives: Social values

Three Corporate Myths that Threaten the Wealth of the Nation

Corporations are not working for the 99%. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special 5-part AlterNet series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and one of the leading expert on the American corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history, and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?

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Ken Jacobson: Whose Corporations? Our Corporations!

Corporations are not working for the 99 percent. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special five-part series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and a leading expert on the business corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?

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William Lazonick: How High CEO Pay Hurts the 99 Percent

Corporations are not working for the 99 percent. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special five-part series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and a leading expert on the business corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?

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Michael Hudson on Why There is an Alternative to European Austerity

Bonnie Faulkner of Pacifica Radio’s Guns and Butter show broadcast the presentation by Stephanie Kelton and Michael Hudson on “There IS An Alternative To European Austerity: Modern Money Theory” . presented at the Italian MMT Summit last month. You can listen to the recording here, or read key parts of the transcript below.

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How American Corporations Transformed from Producers to Predators

Corporations are not working for the 99 percent. But this wasn’t always the case. In a special five-part series, William Lazonick, professor at UMass, president of the Academic-Industry Research Network, and a leading expert on the business corporation, along with journalist Ken Jacobson and AlterNet’s Lynn Parramore, will examine the foundations, history and purpose of the corporation to answer this vital question: How can the public take control of the business corporation and make it work for the real economy?

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The Case Against Passion

“Passion” became fashionable in business at around the time other forms of emotional overshoot were hot, like “delighting customers.” While there may have been earlier efforts by Tom Peters and other corporate quacks gurus to infuse staid, supposedly rational business behavior with more pizzaz, the passion fashion seemed to take hold in the dot-com era. And that in a perverse way makes perfect sense.

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Wolf Richter: Taking Bosses Hostage – A Labor Negotiating Tactic In France

At 2 p.m on Thursday, the final day of the annually required wage negotiations that were going nowhere, Bruno Ferrec, the man in charge of the nine Fnac stores in Paris, and his HR Director were “retained” by 120 of his employees at a conference room at the Hotel Ibis in Paris. “For now, we do not know when we will let him go,” said the representative of the CGT, one of the unions involved in the negotiations. And the police did nothing.

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Dying for Satisfaction: Being Happy with Your Doctor is Bad for Your Health

There is an important study in the Archives for Internal Medicine last month, which escalates an ongoing row as to whether patient satisfaction is in any way correlated with positive medical outcomes. The answer is yes, and the correlation is negative.

This finding is of critical importance, not just in understanding why American medicine is a hopeless, costly mess, but also as a window into how easy it is for buyers of complex services to be hoodwinked by their servicer provider, whether via the provider being incorrectly confident about his ability to do a good job or having nefarious intent.

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World Bank Nominee Kim Under Fire for “Dying for Growth” Book

The US nominee to lead the World Bank, Jim Yong Kim, has come under attack for editing a book called “Dying for Growth.” It apparently performs the cardinal sins of questioning whether a relentless pursuit of growth produces necessarily produces good outcomes and taking issue with neoliberalism. From the Financial Times:

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On the Meaningless of Contracts and the New Optionality

An old saying is that contracts are only as good as the parties that enter into them. And the evidence is growing that when there is a meaningful power disparity between two parties to an agreement, the odds are high that the bigger player will elect to behave badly. This blog is rife with examples: pervasive contractual and regulatory violations in securitizations and foreclosures, banks exploiting not just ordinary consumers with “tricks and traps” but even billionaire clients; debt collection abuses; routine raiding of employee pensions while CEO pay and perquisites remain sacrosanct; and, of course, the pilfering of customer accounts at MF Global.

And conditions on the ground are even worse. Hoisted from comments:

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Adam Davidson Presents the Trophy Nanny as 1% Status Symbol

In his role as the Lord Haw-Haw of yawning income disparity, Adam Davidson reports on the world of elite nannies in his latest New York Times piece, “The Best Nanny Money Can Buy.” Child caregivers perceived to be good enough for the superrich (which means they might need to possess other skills, like speaking Mandarin, cooking restaurnt-level meals, being able to ride and groom horses or sailing) make big bucks!

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Mark Ames: The One Percent’s Plan for the Rest of Us – Livestock to be Milked for “Rent”

Yves here. Mark Ames’ post discusses the institutionalization of a regressive policy, that of trying to eke more corporate growth out of extracting more and more out of workers rather than sharing the benefits of productivity gains with them.

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Yes, Virginia, Heads of Nonprofits Get Egregious Salaries Too

One of the side effects of increased income disparity is the assumption in some circles that anyone who has a “big” job deserves a lot of money, whether or not the circumstances or their performance warrants it. It wasn’t all that long ago that the prevailing assumptions were radically different: CEOs (except maybe in the auto industry) did not see themselves as near royalty, and most well run businesses recognized that firing staff in downturns and rehiring was costly (search time and training are bigger costs than most top brass admit to themselves).

A great piece at the Village Voice, “The Nonprofit 1 Percent” describes how this logic plays out in the not-for-profit sector.

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