Are there changes in public policy that might help facilitate a paradigm shift in American Capitalism? Sure, but we would need to challenge or sacrifice some of the sacred cows. Here are a few thoughts from my book. I’ll be putting them into separate comments in this section so they can be discussed vertically as individual subjects:
Capital should not be ‘free’…when it is, it incents the wrong behaviors. If all companies were required to start paying dividends to their common shareholders, boards and CEOs would have to radically change the way they currently run their companies; they’d have to get back to creating real value and real profits to service those obligations.
Quarterly job creation metrics which boards and CEOs are measured against might modify their current behavior of habitual job elimination in order to make their numbers. It forces them to put more energy into managing the more difficult side of the profit equation…on increasing revenues instead of habitual cost cutting. Most of the layoffs I’ve seen in recent years weren’t trimming fat…they’ve long been cutting away at bone and muscle, often outsourcing or off-shoring core competencies turning what were once great companies into hollow shells.
If this Country supports NAFTA (?), it should also foster, encourage and support domestic manufacturing – “Made In America” still receives a thought of quality.
As much as one can never legislate ethics or morals in neither personal life or business, there is a strong need to enforce the current regulations. That said; there are enough regulations existing, and any more only hinder the start-up entrepreneur and existing businesses from starting, growing and expanding.
Even bernie madoff is quoted as saying he thought he was caught several times however; the auditors didn’t do their job sufficiently – and he went on to bilk billions!
Finally for this post; the government must stay out of the free market enterprise system entirely – stimulus, bailouts, union payoffs, political paybacks, etc., do not foster business growth, expansion or start ups!
Let poor performance feel the results of their practices – bankruptcy. Typically, when one company leaves the arena, another one (or more) is/are established to fill the void – and usually more efficiently than the previous company.
It’s the way the system has worked successfully for decades; let it work.
I want to agree with you…I drank the same Kool-Aid…I just wish it was that simple. The conflict of interest occurred when public administrators started putting public monies into equity funds that don’t pay dividends and were purely speculative…they’ve been caught on the horns of a dilemma ever since. They’re motivated not to let those large ‘safe’ funds and the large underlying corporations collapse, and have the power to keep propping up the investment pyramid with more public money allowing the problems to become exponentially worse over time. Wall Street wasn’t always the epicenter of Capitalism, yet it’s come to define our economy over the last four decades; we need to reverse that trend. Wall Street used to be the pit behind the barn where people went to place a few bets and roll the dice…that part of our economic model is in desperate need of reregulation. Go to page f) on the site…The Current Paradigm: What You Need To Know…and click on The History Of Deregulation. For fifty years from 1933 until the early 1980s, we had a safe, stable capitalist economy that was thriving. Then banks started lobbying for deregulation and the removal of all the controls over interstate banking. When banks were small and the industry was intentionally fragmented, you could afford to have one fail occasionally. But with deregulation and industry consolidation, they’ve become too big to fail…when they do, entire economies collapse. The question is, what do we do now? We can’t just go back to the way things were; the world has changed and time never runs backwards. And there’s no way to fix it piecemeal…the problems have become too large. The whole purpose of this blog is to work with you and others to find constructive answers, get alignment, and use the power of our collective anger to pull us forward. Thanks for your engagement.