It was so easy for Trump to blame other countries like China. Not American corporations however for happily taking their money to other countries where labour was cheaper and greater profits to be made. (Capitalising profits and socialising losses at tax payer expense is also hardly new.)
Apple's treatment of poor Chinese workers desperate for work made for a disturbing hour long BBC documentary.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-30532463
There is plenty more of the same like the Bangladeshi factory garment workers who provide cheap clothing for Western women but who don't have Instagram to espouse their liberal values.
As a previous commentator said it is cheap enough to espouse them at home.
There have always been those for a raft of reasons, who had more than others and there always will but the degree of that difference if excessive and too much inequality has historically tended to lead if not always to bloody revolutions, to social unrest and unpredictable consequences which these days can also easily travel across national borders. There may be easier ways to go for some of the very rich than building a bunch of apocalypse proof bunkers in New Zealand.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/88712766/Super-rich-preppers-buying-up-...
4
If people are going to applaud corporations such as Delta and Hertz for their suddenly more hostile posture toward the NRA in view of Parkland, shouldn't they also demand the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Act, repealed by Bill Clinton in 1999? I ask this because the NRA and president Clinton's act derive from a similar spirit---that freedom is expressed through absence of constraint. Conversely, does anyone think corporations would ever articulate that we need aforementioned act again?
As is well known, Clinton's decision nearly 20 years ago greatly contributed to the market crash of 2008, one from which the world is still recovering. An espousal of a libertine definition of liberty has characterized the Reagan era, and until Americans realize that meaningful change can be facilitated through govt intervention, there will be no progress on the legislative front which will reflect a desire for change at a societal level.
I think Americans are perhaps recognizing the consequences of drinking a libertarian kool aid for nearly 2 score, and it isn't a pretty picture, either. At it's worst, it has produced the Trump presidency, one of nihilism.
6
Corporations are very poor vehicles for serving communitarian needs and yearnings. Sure they may provide health insurance, (aged) pension plans and a place not just to work but to socialise and play (I mean particularly the contemporary tech start-up environment). However they do provide the police and fire fighters that protect their employees in their residences and workplaces. They do not maintain the streets and roads between their employees homes and work. And they do not provide hospitals and schools and other facilities that their employees desire and require.
The irony is that if they were forced to provide these things and services they would find that paying tax to a government to provide them was - or would be - cheaper. Governments (with the help of institutions of civil society) provide the community people need. It is sadly all-too-common to hate paying tax and to forget what one gets or provides by paying it. And what one would have to pay for one's self if one still wanted or needed it - likely at greater expense - from one's increased take home pay or profit! Argh!
3
Talk about a complete swing and a miss. CEOs MUST maximize shareholder equity to the exclusion of all else or face shareholder lawsuits per today's corporate charter.
So, if a CEO is doing something "humane" or "collective" or "liberal" you can bet there is some way it is improving the corporation's bottom line.
4
Since corporations are people they'd better be very good people or they will be pulled down by their employees and customers and competitors. They must be held to a higher standard and they must lead the way. Otherwise it's time to deploy socialism against the toxic mess of capitalism.
The time is up for corporations and their lobbyists and paid shills (aka politicians) who think they can shaft us for profit. We know who they are.
Those corporations that are too mealy-mouthed to choose sides in the battle for social progress - they too have to go.
As an example of recent positive change, the odious processed food industry (responsible for millions of deaths) and their lobbyists, the Grocery Manufacturers Association (comprised of pesticide producers and junk food manufacturers), as well as their propaganda arm, the International Life Sciences Institute (funders of fake science -"sugar is good for you!") are now going down.
Fifty members have left the GMA including Campbell Soup, Nestlé, Dean Foods, Mars, Tyson Foods, Unilever, Hershey, Cargill, Kraft and DuPont.
If a corporation puts profits over people, they need to be targeted and destroyed along with all their investors. Every corporation needs to choose political sides. No more trying to have it both ways at our expense.
Let the best, most progressive corporations win, and terminate the rest.
3
Ross ever had a concern for the wages of the working men and women though he makes the claim in paragraph 2.
Of course he never has. His whole column is really about helping to "sustain the Republican Party".
2
I would love to have someone define ‘woke capitalism’ for me. Is it a new version of republicanism or just more smoke and mirrors? I grew up at a time when republicanism was split between the conservatism/nationalism of Sen. Howard Taft of Ohio and the internationalism of NY governor Rockefeller and Gen. Eisenhower. The Goldwater/Friedman school of republicanism was yet to see the light of day. Moderate republicans sponsored Eisenhower-for-president to prevent a Taft-as-isolationist candidacy. All of this took place in an environment where religion, race, and sex were still minor issues.
Then came Goldwater/Reagan: Blow up Russia and China; bring religion back to the public square; re-localize education to defang civil rights. The Neo-cons sold colonization of Iraq and Afghanistan. Domestically, let’s get rid of waste, fraud and abuse and incidentally eliminate the social contract protecting the poor, sick and old. The current mantra is: Let’s use social security funds to raise the young. The old will die more quickly as a result. That is the theme of Goldwaterism. The Reagan/Trump program is to turn “management” of the country to the corporate elite. They get control over regulations and now, the tax tables.
And what do us suckers get? The right to commute on Eisenhower’s Interstate for $40 one-way? A defense establishment designed for the next world war when today’s and tomorrow’s wars are localized, ethnic and religious conflicts?
Is this all part of woke capitalism?
7
' “As much as we fear corporations gone wild,” Poulos concludes, “we love corporations that love us.” '
I once read a great quote from a laid-off middle manager: 'Never love a company. It will not love you back'.
This is of course true of employees. Your company can never be your family, unless, of course, you live in the kind of family that rates the kids' performance once a year and puts the bottom 10% up for adoption.
So, too, with corporations. As they cannot love, so they also have no morals. They do purely what is immediately expedient. At the moment, it is expedient to make a public show of backing away from the NRA, or firing a few allegedly bigoted or sexist employees, for the PR value. (In the latter case it doesn't matter if the charges have any validity: nowadays, accusation = conviction in the court of social media, slogans and memes = truth, and we don't need no stinkin' evidence, much less argue any possible ethical or philosophical nuances.) The corporate masters can wait out the storm, and soon the Perpetual Outrage Machine will chug in another direction.
3
To be “woke” one must be a person with a moral code of some type. For-profit, publicly-owned corporations are by definition in business to make and maximize profit, thereby increasing shareholder value (the share price). The officers have a legal, fiduciary duty to conduct the business of the corporation to do so, and if they don’t shareholders and their lawyers will file class-action derivative lawsuits against the corporation for shareholder losses. Anything and everything a publicly-held corporation does is aimed at creating profit and as much profit as possible. Period. But I think everyone knows that by now, surely.
Mr. Douthat - I hope you don't mind but I've change some words, omitted one or two others, from a section of your column. In my very humble opinion, the result has a currency - a current relevance - slightly less dubious then yours.
[BTW, your awareness of this usage of the term 'woke' - which was likely coined ~60 years ago - is a direct function of the Black Lives Matter movement. Truncating the definition at 'social awareness,' to the exclusion of
'racial justice', is a travesty.]
=======
..For others, though, the Peace of Palo Alto has rather less to offer. It confirms the blue-collar suspicion that conservatism is no longer organized around working-class economic interests, and it encourages cultural liberals in their feeling of general besiegement, their sense that all the major institutions of American life, corporate as well as intellectual and cultural, are arrayed against their mores and values and traditions.
Between them these trends and sentiments will help undermine the Republican Party as it lurches deeper into demagogy and paranoia — by making a vote for the Democratic Party the only way to protest a corporate-backed conservative politics that seems indifferent to the working man and an ascendant cultural conservatism that has boardrooms as well as Politicians and academia in its corner.
======
1
You might try reading this and reconsider: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/28/opinion/corporate-america-suppressing...
"Corporate America Is Suppressing Wages for Many Workers"
"Even after eight years of economic recovery and steady private-sector job growth, wages for most Americans have hardly budged. It is tempting to think that wage stagnation is intractable, a result of long-term trends, like automation and globalization, that government is powerless to do anything about.
"In fact, a growing body of evidence pins much of the blame on a specific culprit, one for which proven legal weapons already exist. But they are not being used."
"the ability of an employer to suppress wages below the efficient or perfectly competitive level of compensation. In the more familiar case of monopoly, a large seller — like a cable company — is able to demand high prices for poor service because consumers have no other choice. It turns out that many corporations possess bargaining power over their workers, not just over their consumers. Their workers accept low wages and substandard working conditions because few alternative job opportunities exist for them or because switching jobs is costly. In other words, in the labor market, effectively a small number of employers are competing for their labor."
12
Sorry this is ignoring the misuse of "woke" in this article, though Mr. Douthat does make a point that cosmetics are used to obfuscate the real issue, which is corporate predation. Corporations avoid compensating their lower-level employees adequately while diverting the profits for themselves and stockholders (note: executives often own stock, so this is also self-dealing).
9
By excessively misusing non-compete clauses, employers can hold workers in almost near servitude.
1
While Russ Douthat deserves credit for pointing out that both political parties have acquiesced to corporate power, he fails to really connect the dots between the resulting sense of political powerlessness among the populace and the move toward consumption from "woke" corporations as a desperate form of alternative politics during an age when neither political party represents the desires of most Americans for things like greater environmental protections, gun regulations, consumer protections, etc. The embrace of the seemingly "woke" corporation is a very imperfect solution to the seemingly intractable problem that our government represents the needs and interests of corporations and elites while ignoring the desires of most of its citizens. Shopping may not do much to bring about real and substantive change, but as it was for citizens of the Soviet Union who coveted Beatles records and blue jeans, it sorta feels like the only game in town when real democracy is only the stuff of dreams.
5
Very interested to see Ross proffer a solution. I agree with his thesis that corporations have co-opted liberalism (co-opt might be the wrong word, considering that liberalism functions to facilitate capital) through woke social posturing.
An obvious solution, which he dances around, is a full-throated leftism that openly acknowledges the inherent conflict of interest between workers and corporations that many Democrats currently hesitate to acknowledge. As another commentator pointed, this article seems like an endorsement for #Bernie2020.
The alternative, which Ross *does* acknowledge, is the dangerous proto-fascist populism of Trump. Socialism or barbarism, indeed. But I doubt that we'll see Ross embrace leftism any time soon.
So the question remains: if you don't like Trump's populism, and you disavow the current uneasy liberal compromise of worker exploitation/virtue signalling, and you presumably don't like socialism—then what solution are you offering?
13
Increase the number of conservatives. There's more money to be made and more to lost with people on the left of the spectrum because there are more of them.
How? Get on YouTube. Make videos for children. Teach them... morals.
Apple's Tim Cook panders to Trump and the republican party like there is no tomorrow. It's sickening. I realize that Apple's employees strike a Faustian bargain to continue working there - they're used to a comfortable lifestyle and with that comes extreme compromise. But still. In many respects Steve Jobs was no prince, but trust me, he's rolling over in his grave right now.
4
Conscience? How about business reality? Customers may care. I doubt most corporations do.
Just sayin'
4
The analysis of the past policies of the establishment is valid
The establishment has always used patriotism and religion as
a powerful tool of detracting attention from the issues of fairness.
The current split between the conservative and the liberal liberal sections of it has not diminished the use of the culture wars; The liberals have now
added gender and humanitarian expansionism issues to the cultural war inventory
2
I have stood amazed the last ten years as my allies on the left have embraced benevolent oligarchy.
5
With apologies to Veblen, Conspicous Conscience?
3
Conspicuous. Sorry about that sticking "u" key on my computer.
So, you smell a rat. So do I. However cynicism is not driving my olfactory senses.
I do not think that current group of amoral master thugs and criminals we call corporations would lift a finger for anything that was not a necessity to their future profits. Having the most effective mass produced killing machine available to what ever random maniac wants one is definitely a proven big drag on everything that impacts their bottom line, especially as far as the air transportation systems go.
Recall 11/21/13 in Los Angeles. A single crazy person walked into a terminal and started shooting with a Smith & Wesson's version of the AR-15. Over 1,500 flights and 171,000 passengers were affected by the incident. Imagine what that cost. Personally it cost me $4OO, and I was only hung up in San Francisco. So, no, it is not awoke thing that these guys are not that excited about the NRA.
Now if some of the really big thugs like the Johnson and Johnson, Roche, and Pfizer start finding some reason to want to look at humanity as something more than a huge laboratory rat that they can make billions from by inventing or renaming drugs that keep people alive as long as they take the drug $1000 a hit drug and put energy into cleaning the water, air, soil, or providing actually healthy foods and so forth that might qualify for wokeness. I smell a rat because I happen to be Woke. You on the other hand are not only not woke, you are clueless.
6
When the power grid in Puerto Rico is down, I would like to think that the U.S. government is ready to step in. Instead, I heard the president get into a back and forth with those he is sworn to defend while Elon Musk started pitching ideas. If there is a problem with services (cabs, subways, etc.), I would prefer to see a government body anticipating and working to solve a it BEFORE it becomes a crisis. Instead, Uber swoops in to take advantage of government apathy. The government should at LEAST be willing to seriously study gun violence before declaring MORE guns are the answer. Instead, I am at the mercy of the good will/public relations programs of private entities.
Once upon a time, the U.S. government did things "not because they were easy but because they are hard"; from moon landings to New Deals to the Civil Rights Act to tackling the "Dust Bowl." Now SpaceX shoots cars into Mars orbit, corporate actions seem to dictate whether transgender rights exist in any given state and fossil fuel companies literally embrace their own ostensible environmental regulators. There was even a recent article in this paper about proposals for what amounts to an entire city created by tech companies!
Does this mean I trust corporate motives? Of course not. It just shouldn't be surprising that other powers step into the vacuum created by government cowardice and/or procrastination. Perhaps those powers aren't truly "woke," but at least they're not totally asleep.
1
The fiction that a corporate entity is a human and thus capable of morality sustains a conversation which we will soon have with our AI servants and overlords. That a soul resides somewhere on a circuit board is the same delusion which supports identifying the presences of a soul in articles of incorporation. Trump and his unlimited bankrupt-able business entities has brought this form of Darwinian success to our government and it seems likely to be hugely successful.
2
"In every era and every political dispensation, businessmen ask themselves: What am I required to do to make money with the help of the government?
Fixed it for you.
4
It took you until the third paragraph to disparage liberals with yet another term to explain their "snobbish elitism" (cultural power brokers), but you did it. If I were a conservative, I guess I'd say "congratulations"!
But for a split second there (or more exactly two paragraphs), it almost sounded like you could talk about real progress without including contempt for those engaged in trying to bring it about.
Oh well.
But let's say your larger point here is actually correct: that this "cultural liberalism" is really a cover for holding wages down and dumping on working people. Well, I guess I'd rather have liberal corporations with a social conscience having a lot of power, than have powerful conservative ones protecting "traditionalism" as a cover for bigotry.
And be honest: do you really want a Democratic Party to oppose conservatives in support of "working-class economic interests"? How would that benefit "cultural conservatives" in any way? My suspicion is you want the Democratic party to CONTINUE to be corporate-backed and culturally liberal AND somehow get working class whites to vote for traditional Republicans, rather than Trump. I don't believe if the Democrats changed their tune, you'd ever seriously "put morality before party", in other words.
But hey, you might prove me wrong!
5
"What am I required to do to make money unmolested by the government? "
Molested. Yes, a favorite of conservatives. Let's look at the definition:
1 : to annoy, disturb, or persecute especially with hostile intent or injurious effect 'The zookeeper warned the visitors not to molest the animals.'
2 : to make annoying sexual advances to; especially : to force physical and usually sexual contact on 'He was sent to prison for molesting children.'
Really, Ross? Government goes after businesses to persecute them? With hostile intent? After spending years observing the adoption of laws I can't remember a single instance of malevolent intent to injure businesses.
The cowardice of conservatism is their demand that ALL government be viewed as malevolent group with the intention to molest businesses.
I call BS. If businesses are being continually molested by government, the how the hell do they end up with so much of the national wealth?
4
JOKE Capital. Because it's almost funny how 90 Percent of us got screwed in the new, improved Tax Deal, and actually believe the lies from the NRA/GOP Party. November, people. Rise UP.
5
"What am I required to do to make money unmolested by the government?"
Who asks that? No one I have ever met in my 30+ year career (including a top school MBA)
The questions asked are summarized by:
How to maximize ROI?
How to gain market share?
How to get the stock price up?
The last one is the one that is driving income inequality. Since managers are now allowed to be paid in options and stock, and since they are allowed to talk about the potential of future earnings, they can game the stock price and make tremendous gains for themselves and other short term players at the expense of other stakeholders.
The teachings of Drucker should be valued over the teachings of Friedman on the purpose of a corporation (its fundamental goal is to serve customers vs shareholders.)
5
Wouldn't the "unmolested" question simply be a subset of the first question you list (maximizing ROI)?
1
Wearing flip flops and mouthing platitudes on global warming, gay marriage, abortion, and identity politics keeps the progressives and bay. Huge stock buybacks and dividends along with inflated profit margins from offshoring and guest worker programs keeps Republicans pacified enough to tolerate cultural virtue signaling. It’s quite the racket. And it works like a charm.
The corporate media plays along. Moralizing on caustic social issues drives viewership and thus advertising revenue. But I’d be careful putting our collective faith in economic entities. Take corporate immigration advocacy for instance. Some may see this as compassion and moral leadership. But the laid off workers at Disney no doubt feel differently. Tech companies making similar calculation could do both: not lay off Americans and advocate for immigration reform. They could even invest some of their billions into inner city jobs programs for underrepresented minorities. But that’s not what we see beyond some token programs. And it’s not surprising. Investors aren’t paid in compassion. Their paid in cash.
3
Yes, yes, and it's not just corporations. In Oregon our legislature is overwhelmingly Democratic. You would think our state would be a liberal paradise. However, the dividing line is around money. Our tax structure is horrible and doesn't raise enough to fund good local schools, child welfare or low cost college education.
Consequently, In Oregon it is relatively easy to get the legislature to do something 'woke' as long as it is low cost or free. It breaks my heart sometimes. It works too.
I first read the argument Douthat presents here--the idea that capitalism will compromise on social issues to maintain economic hegemony--when I first read Noam Chomsky in my late teens. Then I later read a version of it when I read Gramsci several years later. This is an argument the far left has been making for a very long time. I don't have a problem with Douthat making the argument. It's essence is correct, even if he engages in some typical false equivalencies. I do think it's pretty funny that Douthat seems to have no idea that his argument has been a far left truism for decades.
7
The total debt today is $20 Trillion / 150 Million taxpayers = $133,000 per taxpayer.
With the Republican tax plan, someone making $75,000 can expect about a $1,000 tax reduction.
Before this latest tax plan, the 2018 deficit was project to be $600 Billion / 150 Million = $4,000 per working person.
But it just bumped up the deficit by $400 Billion from $600 Billion to $1 Trillion for 2018.
Now for 2018, $1 Trillion / 150 Million = $6,667 per working person.
And eventually, my $1,000 will go away but the $6,667 each year will stay.
With the Republican tax plan, the debt we can expect to have ten years from now is at least $30 Trillion / 150 Million taxpayers = $200,000 per taxpayer.
Over these ten years, someone earning $75,000 a year will get $7,000 in tax reductions.
At the same time their share of the increase to the national debt will be $67,000.
That is each tax payer, not each household. Two working parents, you can double those numbers.
Job growth probably won’t be better than what we have seen the last seven years.
And wages have been rising slowly the last two years and will continue to do so.
And if they add $1.5 Trillion to the deficit as they put in the law, that will be an additional $10,000 per working person each year.
This is the country we are leaving for our children.
2
Corporate America the vanguard of moral outrage and change? No Ross, the courageous students of Marjorie Stoneman Douglas and young people around the country are the vanguard, while shamed adults adjust their former politically convenient views in line with them.
2
It's going to be the French Revolution happening here.
It wasn't a bad economy which drove the French to overthrow the royalty. It was unusually good times for a few years. People got used to the better conditions. When things went back to normal, they blamed the government.
Post war America saw booming times for the average worker. European industry was in shambles. Asia was worse. America's farmers fed the world and our factories supplied everything else, especially modern technology. Lack of education did not prevent Americans from reaching income levels formerly found only for college graduates.
It's now a different world. While there have been localized wars, overall peace has reigned for decades. Europe rebuilt and Asia blossomed. American workers have gone back to the economic level of their pre-war counterparts.
They want to maintain college graduate living standards while performing the high school level jobs for which they qualify and they are no longer getting it. And they don't like it.
3
Why not corporate conscience and living wages? They are not mutually exclusive.
2
I think this is where "the Crumbs for the poor" comes into play. This is classic public relations in order to get more money. Delta has all but destoyed its union, yet, it wants to remove a discount? If you remove a discount, the customer pays MORE! If you remove the unions, they do not have to pay as much. How is this woke? It simpy adds steam to the steam roller.
3
Reagan cut taxes resulting a huge increase in deficit / debt. It is the reason they put the debt clock in Manhattan. We got 16 Million jobs.
Clinton raised taxes and balanced the budget, zero deficit. We got 23 Million jobs, almost 50% more than Reagan.
W Bush took that balanced budget, zero deficit, gave us two “tax cuts for the job creators” and gave Obama a whopping $1.4 Trillion deficit. We got 3 Million jobs.
Obama gave us the “jobs killing Obama-care” and cut the deficit by almost 2/3 to $550 Billion. We got 11.5 Million jobs, almost 400% more than W Bush.
And 20 Million people got healthcare.
5
That looks like Mr. Douthat engaged in quite a lot of analytical gymnastics to describe the outcome of the perverse incentive arising out of making shareholder value, and the enhancement thereof, the paramount consideration of corporate leadership in America. The sops that corporations throw to social and other non-financial causes have no effect on their bottom line, therefore no effect on shareholder value. Squeezing employees, suppliers and the environment, as well as driving ever more tax cuts does have an effect on the bottom line, hence an effect on shareholder value. If the senior corporate leaders want to keep their jobs, and possibly stay out of jail, they know what to do.
You want to fix that problem? Then address its roots in the perverse incentive.
1
This is why elected officials are supposed to be beholden to the people and not other interests. If they were, then we wouldn't be admiring, for example, Delta for pretending to be a moral leader (let's face it, they made the fairly easy decision of getting rid of a discount that only hurt their profitability). Instead, politicians would note the general mood of the country, that most favor some gun control, all favor finding ways to get the huge number of out of workforce work working class back to work, all want progress on solving the opioid crisis, etc. Corporations read their marketing data, know who buy their products and respond accordingly. Politicians only pay attention to their poll numbers when a risk to their ability to appease the special interests that get them elected is indicated.
3
Ross offers an insightful analysis. Summarized, it boils down to an assertion that corporations are taking a cynical gamble on the possibility that a stroked left might leave them largely alone in a dubious future wherein they might have the power to betray, so long as corporate interests also continue to fill THEIR campaign chests NOW and continue mouthing platitudes. Like Ross, I’m doubtful that this behavior will favor those interests in the long run; unlike Ross, I’m doubtful that it will pay off even tactically.
Harvey Weinstein was a corporatist of a sort, and one who famously championed liberal causes. Yet it will be liberals who will hang him from some tree and see to it that his corpse rots in prison for years, for what is now accepted as horrific behavior. What difference to the left between that, in essence, and the metals conglomerate that cynically supports LGBTQ rights yet still strip-mines and pollutes the air? The left will take their money and, soon enough, kneecap them (if they can).
However, that’s not really what I’m here to discuss.
My peeve is that all we GET from pundits are insightful analyses that stop short of actually being useful. It may not astound many readers here that Ross’s thesis is discernable by a majority capable of understanding what he writes – that the true motivations of corporate interests are hardly opaque when they genuflect to gun-control activists, tree-huggers or the alternatively sexual. Yet, that alone has limited value.
What we DON’T get from Ross is how the evolving motivations and actions fit in a strategically viable conservative framework (to the extent that they do), and what can be done to tinker with motivations to make both behavior and outcomes more salutary to Americans as a phylum and from a conservative perspective.
Rather than being accused of failing to practice what I preach, this is MY take on bringing practical value to Ross’s insight.
IF higher wages for the sake of higher wages fit within a conservative worldview (I’m in favor of them, but, then, I’m not a conservative), then look to our tax code to incentivize corporations to work toward narrowing large income inequalities, based perhaps on progress toward achieving an ideal target. Certainly, few liberals would be against such a novel idea, and if conservatives were to embrace it then it should be handily passable, with BOTH sides taking credit. Given the incentive (foregone taxes), corporations would find ways to make it work while remaining globally competitive. If they do, then they can claim legitimate shared interests with liberals that are not cynical fakery (such as tree-hugging, etc.)
Not only would this immensely support a return to general American prosperity, but we could be surer that the positions corporations take would be less cynical and more real; and thus re-introduce a modicum of basic trust in our institutions.
But, left to themselves, corporations WILL be cynical, and WILL be burned by the left.
1
Have you heard of Koch Industries? I think they've been very active in promoting right wing ideas.
"But a certain amount of cynicism is also in order."
100% cynicism. Take as today's example the chain stores of Dick's that have ended sales of assault weapons. That actually affected only 23 of their many stores, and applies only to a small fraction of sales of a section that was already under-performing and due for cuts. They have milked that for advertising impact, the sort of free advertising that is known to be most effective. Genius. Cynical.
I apply the same to all other "public service" moves by major corporations. Dig just a little, and the same pattern is to be found.
8
Bingo, Douthat!
And that is how the Democratic Party has functioned for a couple decades. It takes money from monopolists and financiers in exchange for ignoring the fact that they do more damage to the economic, social, and moral health of the country than a few old, white Christian men could ever do.
2
One again.Have you heard of Koch Industries? They have contributed 889 million dollars to Republican candidates as of 2016 and plan to contribute even more for the 2020 election cycle.They aren't taking money from monopolists,they are monopolists and they are quietly taking over the Republican party.
1
When I graduated college in 1988, the average salary was $45K. Today the starting salary is the same (for non stem). 30 years of wage stagnation.
The company I work for gave out those nifty $1,000 bonuses on Dec 28th and then they promptly announced a series of layoffs that slayed the over 45 year old crowd. Something has change in the last six months - the layoffs are accelerating and now they come with no apologies or offers to re-train, or even an excuse - revenues are up, expenses are down and the layoffs will commence as planned. They just want us out. I often make the joke that an industrial accident would accomplish the job faster. They really wouldn't mind.
19
I thought maybe this article might mention the cynical corporate support for destroying unions in order to free employees from the oppression of job security, higher wages and better benefits.
19
The last time "woke capitalism" suffered a truly dramatic and transformative shock was the Great Depression. Let's hope it doesn't take something equally cataclysmic to do so this time.
3
This kind of CSR has the potential to cause deeper divisions - primarily among its own employees. Can we imagine a flight attendant who might believe it's okay to be a little bit frosty to a passenger wearing A Make America Great Again tee-shirt? Yes, I can see this as a possibility in a world in which a growing number of people emote before they actually think. In fact, airliners are already filled with them. Now employees are given permission to join the fray.
Yeah, but think about all of the unequal American citizens who were treated "a little bit frosty" in the past when the corporate shoe was on the other foot. Were you equally bothered by them?
1
Poll after poll has shown most Americans want sensible gun regulations. Our government has not responded to public opinion on this issue but instead responded to the extreme minority represented by the
NRA.
Corporations are reflecting public opinion better than our “representatives”.
Corporations spend a lot of money on advertising and this is part of that effort.
2
If you think Delta's current position regarding the NRA is governed by genuine moral outrage, then you're extremely naive at best. Call me jaded and cynical, but Delta is merely exploiting tragedy for good PR---nothing more, nothing less.
I agree that reaction to Parkland reflects that Americans are actually yearning for change in many facets of their lives, but as I stated in a earlier post, significant change in America faces formidable obstacles. In the case of gun control, the NRA is aided not only by federal and state governments, but has a supreme court which has no intention of repealing the Second Amendment. However much people around the world wish you Americans would change your attitude toward guns, myself included, I'm hardly sanguine that this will happen in my lifetime.
1
Douthat misses a somewhat less cynical motive for good corporate behavior: profits. Avoiding a boycott is good for business, as is cultivating a market. Once gays became a widely recognized demographic group, it made very good sense for places like Disney World to become publicly gay-friendly. Whatever else their motives are, companies that are currently ending deals with the NRA are probably looking at polling data about how people feel about gun control and the NRA. Much though I usually dislike reducing everything to the corporate bottom line, it can have its benefits at times.
5
I'm about as liberal as they come ... in the New Deal sense of the term at least. Ross Douthat couldn't be more right, as I've argued with friends on the left for decades. Planting your stake in the culture wars does nothing to help the people who need it most, but it does make one all warm and fuzzy. In short, it's Prozac for the soul. It's long past time that the neo-liberal Democrats dropped their attachment to their current philosophy, spent some time reviewing their decades of defeats, and start doing something positive for a change. I'm amazed that it takes a confirmed conservative pundit to actually say it.
5
I agree with you, to an extent, but I think you need to ask yourself exactly WHY a "confirmed conservative pundit" is saying it. He's not going to join us in marching toward another New Deal, in other words...
1
View every social-conscience driven decision with cynicism
1
Only if its made by a CORPORATION, not if its made by an individual.
2
Once in a Silicon Valley college classroom, crowded with well-educated liberals less than half my age, when we were trying to figure out why many students couldn't download the documents the instructor wished us to read, I was compelled to shout out that "Apple epitomizes everything that is wrong with this country!"
The entire class erupted in spontaneous laughter, having not a clue as to what I meant.
I'm sorry, like a lot of "well-educated liberals", I'm a little slow sometimes.
Why exactly DID you mean?
2
I'm as surprised as many of the other commenters that Douthat actually has some good points. And these points are used less obnoxiously than usual as Trojan Horses for conservative apologia.
But I still must disagree on the degree of corporate co-option of the two parties. The Republicans use God, Gays and Guns to get middle and working class whites to vote against their economic self-interest. Democrats, for their part, have definitely become more corporate-friendly since the days of FDR. But even though they are often too cautious, Democrats have nevertheless instituted some meaningful checks on corporate power, such as the Obama administration's CFPB and its efforts to push back against corporate wage suppression (described in today's Times op-ed by Alan Krueger and Eric Posner).
But apparently enough Americans are dumb enough to be distracted by shiny objects (Hillary's emails! MAGA!), at least after the Democrats have gotten the economy out of the ditch. Let's hand the keys back to Republicans! Are we going into the ditch this time? It's even money whether it's into the ditch or over the cliff.
4
Ross, could you prepare an inclusive list of the "mores and values and traditions" which you believe all the rest of us have under "general besiegement," thus "encoura[ging] cultural conservatives" to overlook their economic interests and follow the G.O.P. wherever it goes?
I have some idea of what you believe I'm guilty of, but I'd really like to know for sure.
4
All I can say is that "conservatives" need to tend to their own "mores, values and traditions" before moaning about "liberal elites" trashing them. In my experience of working for decades in Manhattan and living in an overwhelmingly liberal suburb, college educated liberals are living their lives by these mores, values and traditions. Frankly, I think today's "conservatives" are far more interested in such "traditions" as Jim Crow, exclusionary immigration laws, and institutional misogeny.
11
Of course today's Conservatives are interested in maintaining those "traditions." Without them, Conservatives, who are generally less educated, would be unable to maintain their lifestyles.
This column is a thoughtful laying-out of so many things we are grappling with in this country. It got me thinking and following the various strands of the American Story we've been telling ourselves since the Greatest Generation came back from WWII and got down to the business of carrying on, moving forward, and going up. What Mr. Douthat's piece did for me was too illuminate with glaring clarity just how much of our shared institutions of the past have been supplanted by the behemoths of corporations and political parties. Corporations are designed to produce wealth while shielding individuals from responsibility and disembodying them from community. The people we elect are too concerned with re-election to make a decision or policy they might have to defend, and so instead they keep the debate stuck in play mode and throw gasoline on the fire to keep us entertained. When one of the golden spokespersons of the corporate world tosses us a virtue, we're so hungry for leadership we forget it's not policy, just a platitude that gives us a sense of belonging. Branding is just the act of appearing human and creating false intimacies. And when politics is perverted into entertainment, it sells and plays and we take sides and don't realize that it's become our identity. We've relegated our need for belonging to the ballroom of political theater, Rs on one side, Ds on the other, each with their own corners, wallflowers and cliques.
3
And yet, D's and R's are NOT all the same. If you don't believe me, look up Elizabeth Warren and listen closely.
1
NRA has strong roots in US.NRA has allegedly given 30m$ to trump campaign.in tje past decades the gun violence is staggering.i commend the efforts of students who made the gov to perceive its remedy
2
Yes, Ross, the corporations have the system rigged. Both parties are doing their bidding. It can get a little sticky when a company like Delta offends the gun-toting constituency, but mostly these are sweet times for corporate balance sheets and for shareholders.
You didn’t add that those coastal liberals are more likely to have bulked up 401K plans that have been further bulked up by the Trump tax cuts and degulation. Those blue collar Trump voters will get the short end of that stick too.
I’m not the first to observe that, aside from the guilt and embarrassment of it, we coastal liberals are big winners under the Trump tax plans, and will not lose when those social programs get axed because we don’t use them anyway. The professional sector of the economy will be alright under Trump whether we like him or not, and his voters will be largely worse off even as they cheer his rallies and mindless speeches. Tough Luck!
1
The right-wing voters are regularly decried for voting against their own self-interest because they suffer for it. Liberals vote against their own self-interest and suffer for it, too, but do so knowingly.
1
It doesn't ever occur to you that a lot of liberals are NOT coastal, does it?
The rise of corporations and abuse of capitalism has done more to curtail freedom in this country than any government legislation could dream of doing. Your work can monitor almost everything you do, tell you how to dress, restrict your speech, and fire you for protesting. Republican voters (but also a not insignificant number of Democrats) have been electing people that continually give corporations more power over our economic and social lives. Freedom from government is meaningless if people are so poor they have no hope for an autonomous life.
This is why many Republican voters continue to vote against their perceived self interest. If both parties are going to continually give more and more power to corporate America, might as well vote for the one group that will let you keep your gun.
1
No, you might as well vote for the one group who doesn't nominate crazy people to the supreme court.
(I don't own nor desire a gun)
Douthat, the self-appointed guardian of morality, sees no moral issues in this corporate strategy. Morality has to do with marriage and divorce, abortion and homosexuality. It does not extend to the economic sphere.
Democrats have abandoned the working class, except for their attempts to stop things like working men from beating their wives and hitting on working women, unfair treatment of minorities, and keeping gay workers in the closet. This interference in the culture of the conservative working class is anathema to Douthat's values. The Republican establishment cares about these matters as election issues and as public positions that are an integral part of the hypocrisy that constitutes conservative morality.
As far as the economic interests and needs of the working class are concerned, these are now outside the pale; this is a matter of fact and not a moral issue. Otherwise Douthat would be a New Deal liberal with regret for the steadfast morality that was being lost as specific immoralities within it were being addressed.
6
If you don't try so hard to sound like a pontificating writer people might actually understand your perspective and points.
"Democrats have abandoned the working class"
This is a real head-scratcher. How do you know this? Democrats have lost the battle for the working class, but that doesn't mean they don't stand up for them.
This is Berniebuster-speak (not Bernie-speak; Bernie actually knows this is wrong).
Stop blaming Democrats for losing. If you supported them, you might find out what they stand for.
2
" the hollowing out of all the old communities in American life has left the corporation, however mistrusted and even vilified upon occasion, as one of the last plausible vessels for communitarian yearnings"
No. That role is reserved for sports teams, whether openly professional ones or the professional college teams who pretend to be otherwise.
4
As a businessperson I agree with his positions — companies are hedging their positions by, essentially, siding with liberal ideas culturally and conservative ideas financially. It’s an ideal position really, since it generally costs very little to create an appearance of liberal values and corporate social responsibility (CSR).
I would say too that some CSR programs are initiated because they actually save companies money. This includes many environmental and waste reduction programs. Also, in an ultimate sense CSR is profitable as long as it leads to more revenue than less. In the market, if people look for liberal values and CSR the same way they look for other features, then CSR is just another feature, or really a part of branding.
I wish he’d stop writing words like businessman or the working man to mean human beings. Language suggesting women don’t exist is so last century.
5
Cory Robin speaks of Multicultural Neoliberals versus Traditionalist Neoliberals.
Well, well, well. Ross Douthat tells the truth. And many commenters don't even give him any credit but try to squawk about how the D's are "not like that!" even though Establishment Democrats are as guilty of the demolition of the American middle class and unions as some Republicans. Jimmy Carter actually started the ball rolling with by preaching policies of low taxes, free markets and morality. Please read "The Unwinding" by George Packer or even just this short article from Salon: https://www.salon.com/2011/02/08/lind_reaganism_carter/
3
You're right. But its still not a good enough reason to vote for those policies "on steroids" (ie. by voting for basically ANY Republican these days).
Can writers please go back to using "socially aware" or "culturally aware" instead of the silly "woke"? All who use it sound like they're straining to be super hip. Like the parent who tries to use the language of his kids and ends up sounding like a fool.
14
Most newspapers employ headline writers to spice up the offering.
This is so on point!
1
Except for not explaining his motivation for writing it. And don't tell me Ross wants to form a Neo-New Deal coalition!
Is Ross Douthat, erstwhile conservative, now woke? Inquiring minds want to know!
1
If woke means swimming along in the current of the moment, powered by emotionalism instead of rational thinking, yes. Well, maybe. He probably wanted an attention-getting headline, then he can return to rational. The content of his column, for the most part, makes sense.
One would think that corporations getting enormous tax cuts would be reducing prices, which is what would theoretically occur in what economists call "perfectly competitive markets" where profits tend to zero.
Conservative deregulation however has made corporations so powerful they can command huge tax cuts from Republicans even with record profits and a booming economy, not to mention buying elections destroying the one-person-one-vote rule.
All the while trumpeting to the masses via receptive media that the 13% of the tax cut going to wages is a great generous benefit, never mind that perhaps it should be at least 50% and price cuts should be happening along with that. Or better yet, tax hikes on the rich and corporations coupled with gratis tuition and healthcare.
Do the masses understand that government is supposed to sometimes oppose capital, making sure labor gets a fair deal, not always supporting capitalism's upward shift of wealth to the 1%? Why would voters think Republicans would help them, when the central economic issue is not our wealth generation (it's been setting records since late 2012) but the distribution of it (a.k.a. inequality)?
And lest false equivalence creep in, it was Obama that raised taxes on the top 5% to pay for healthcare for 20 million and regulated the banks, over Republican opposition.
7
The tax cut given to corporations is doing exactly what most economists expected: first buy back stocks, reinvest in the company, then consider dividends, later consider wage increases. If there is any impact on wages from the corporate tax cuts, it likely wouldn't be reflected in economic data for another year or so.
1
At the beginning of the 21st century, worker compensation had remained relatively stable for the past 50 years while the compensation of owners has increased twenty-fold. The answer is not to encourage Americans to 'Buy American', but to demand that employees benefit from technology as do employers: Fewer hours for employees with a commensurate increase in compensation so that the level of employment remains the same having more workers working fewer hours and all Americans benefiting from the fruits of technology, not just the employers.
As an example, the introduction of ATMs gave banks the opportunity to reduce the number of tellers while increasing profits. While the number of employees fell as the hours of the fewer employees remained the same, employee compensation as a percentage of income fell and profits surged.
Legislation reducing the work-week from 40 hours to 30, then 20 will dramatically increase employment while giving more leisure time to Americans and restoring the employer-employee incomes to a more traditional ratio of 10 or 20:1 rather than the current 200:1.
2
Seems like a pretty argument for Bernie 2020.
2
If it would increase their bottom line, Delta would award assault weapons with its frequent flyer program.
3
"In every era and every political dispensation, businessmen ask themselves: What am I required to do to make money unmolested by the government?" What a pathetic legacy. But I guess it is at least honest. No more of that 'capitalism will help everyone' nonsense, just pure, unadulterated greed.
2
real growth in purchasing power comes with increased productivity. increases in productivity come from capital investments in both people and machinery.
3
Capital investments will increase productivity by replacing workers with machines.
Ross makes a perfect case for something conservatives abhor: a government that protects average citizens from unbridled greed.
3
This argument is much older than the ideas Mr Douthat quotes. Many on the Left have been lamenting 'woke capitalism' -- and its parallel concepts like social capitalism, green capitalism, or corporate social responsibility -- ever since Marx first wrote about opiate of the masses. Perhaps capitalism is going through a particularly intense moment of politically opportunism right now. But the 1% have always found ways to put lipstick on their economic pig.
3
Oh...I see what you did there...pretty clever bit of punditry, I must say. You decry the corporation as the soulless profit machine that it is, mention the New Deal’s salutary effect on workers wages, then blame liberals for trading wages for social issues.
Nice bait and switch there Russ. The only problem is, it’s not liberals whose project for the last 50 years has been to destroy unions.
Tell me, what is your position on the latest SCOTUS ruling to castrate unions by supporting ‘free riding’ on union dues by non-union workers? Shouldn’t workers in union shops be forced to join the union? Or no?
How about it...tell us where you stand on this and explain why.
3
For the well off the tax legislation was direct deposit. For the rest the check is in the mail. Nuff said.
3
“As much as we fear corporations gone wild,” Poulos concludes, “we love corporations that love us.” And in a rich society people may prefer that their #brands prove this love by identifying with favored social causes rather than through the old-fashioned expedient of paying their workers a little bit more money....
Indeed. And then there is the hypocrisy of Big Pharma that literally has vulnerable Americans by the throat. Unbridled capitalism, ain't it wonderful.
1
Delta is in the business of keeping customers safe as they travel home, to vacations, on business, etc.
What wouldn't a corporation that makes safety the number one concern sever itself from the most deadly lobby group in our nation?
Bravo to Delta!
5
Asking corporations to act morally, not just within the letter of the law, to demand that they be about more than just amoral short term profits. That they should actually care about their employees, consumers, and communities in which they operate.
It sounds like something a conservative with a moral compass could get behind.
But then morality long ago left the party of Trump.
2
I believe there is a term for this type of double dealing, 'having your cake and eating it to'. Most labor union employees are used to the corporate hegemony speaking out of both sides of their mouth depending on their audience. What is obvious is that most Americans continued to be played by this type of con... listen to the 'working class' south and their opinions on labor unions. As long as the American attention span and knowledge culture continues to deteriorate, expect corporations to find ways to exploit it.
3
Corporations that want to be 'woke' have no business taking shareholders' capital.
From the NYT - APRIL 16, 2015
"Most large businesses buy their corporate charters from the state of Delaware. And the law of Delaware is clear about corporate purpose. The chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court, Leo Strine, put it simply in a recent law review article: “Directors must make stockholder welfare their sole end.” In cases where directors have acknowledged sacrificing shareholder interests for other groups, Delaware courts have found those directors violated their fiduciary duties."
1
I feel like some people are missing the point of the article and what Mr. Douthat means by ‘woke’ capital. Corporations are stuck in a win-win cycle and are ‘woke’, in this case meaning knowing how to interact with its consumers and government. The main propellant of this cycle is the general public fight with themselves.
We have the GOP standing by corporations and those who support the GOP following. Then we have the left who are fighting corporations from a cultural standpoint, with wages and the whole thing.
As a general situation, we have a corporation with support from the Trump GOP by default. Then the Left comes in demanding change in wages and equal opportunity, the corporations not wanting to be bothered says ‘alright we’ll change’. The Right, verbally, gets upset but laws associated with corporations don’t change. Corporations keep their tax cuts and now they have the support of the Left to keep consumerism up. Corporations being ‘woke’ now take advantage of this trend.
I didn’t see this from an economic standpoint at all, but rather from a kind of Public Relations standpoint. Mr. Douthat used examples from the past to show how corporations have taken advantage of this trend and have to reset themselves as social changes reaches a point where corporations are, for a lack of better phrase, out of touch with the present. Whether this is good or bad might be a case-by-case decision but knowing that this trend exists keeps us vigilant.
When those corporations cutting (largely promotional) ties to the NRA also redirect their political donations to candidates who pledge to vote for sensible gun control (i.e., a ban on and a buyback of assault weapons), then I might give them credit for having a semblance of a social conscience.
2
Public companies have a hard time being socially conscious at the expense of the bottom line. Doing so invites activism. Some companies have voting structures that can protect management on decisions that the run of the mill, short term investor/hedge fund might not like. Regardless, what DKS did today was unequivocally admirable and the letter was above-and-beyond. DKS's action and open letter is inviting retribution from both the NRA and from a subset of customers. Further, they are taking profitable products off the shelves. However, the decision also was likely grounded in long-term cost/benefit analysis because it has to be. The decision was made that being on the right side of this issue is long-term good for DKS. All of this is progress. Brick by brick the NRA's wall seems to be crumbling.
For every Dick's deciding not to sell weapons of mass destruction, there's a Hobby Lobby denying women insurance coverage for contraception. Beyond the few companies that even consider matters of conscience, the majority no longer need Americans as a workforce thanks to globalization and automation. So why pay taxes to help keep them healthy and educated?
3
Why is it “virtue signaling” when Delta Airlines discontinues giving a discount for NRA members? Delta Airlines offered the discounts to the NRA members as a business decision. Now Delta Airlines realizes that their business interests are no longer served by offering preferential pricing to NRA members. This is a legitimate business decision.
1
I speculate that Dick's Sporting Goods was reacting to a growing social media trend to boycott Big 5 Sporting Goods for selling assault weapons -- at least that boycott trend is bubbling here in the PNW. Douthat is right. Self-interest is at play. Dick's wanted to catch a positive PR wave by cutting this trend off at the pass, so now it's Dick's that is the "good" place to buy your soccer cleats.
1
Equanimity. That should be the goal of any society to achieve comfortable living. Any dogma, uncontrolled. be it Capitalism or Socialism, without moral and ethical constraints, and without regulations will fail and chaos comes in. Religiosity is another dogma and now capitalism has used it to gain power and profits! Communist China is thriving with their own modified capitalism! Now we have a cabal of world leaders, including Trump with autocratic tendencies! When greed and money are given equal or more prominent goal to social justice and good of the few trumps over good of the many, the suffering of the masses will continue!
It's as if the mainstream left has built a political platform around the Powell Memo as manifesto.
To me "woke" capitalism is just the recognition on the part of a few enlightened billionaires that the failure of government to take its rightful place in society, or should I say in the U.S. the undermining and blocking of the rightful role of government, means that someone has to step up and show moral leadership.
You don't see this phenomenon in northern Europe because A) the super-wealthy don't have quite so much money or power as in the U.S., and B) the government understands that it has a role to play in ensuring social justice.
This reads like a parent explaining to his 18 year old kid that the tooth fairy doesn't exist while making excuses for the charade to continue.
Capitalism's only aim is profit, at all costs.
There's no conservative or liberal capitalism. Or "woke" capitalism.
Just vicious, survival of the fittest capitalism.
Capitalism is a dangerous predatory animal that needs to be chained or sedated or it will devour everyone around it. The job of taming this nasty beast belongs to society and its politicians.
Unfortunately for Americans, their politicians and institutions are so corrupt that there's no one left to tame the beast and so the beast feasts on the poor and the weak while the rich and entitled are safe in their ivory towers accumulating more wealth.
If we are to continue to try and make this capital-based, employment-based society actually work for everyone (I'm against it), we desperately need to restore those punitive top income tax rates, and also add a wealth tax that applies to ALL property, including stocks, bonds, and even "off-shore holdings" of all US citizens.
All the golden decades for America had top marginal income tax rates of > 90%.
Then we can spend large amounts of that cash to reign in the capitalist beast again, restore our infrastructure, and employ people, without having to coerce only our low-income working people to pay it all back again in the taxes that only low-income people pay, while the rich continue to evade and avoid paying their fair share.
5
"Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss," (The Who). Or as Will Rogers said, "The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover didn’t know that money trickled up."
2
This column itself illustrates right-wing conspiracy and right-wing bias since there is no mention of the Kochs. Granted that Apple should not cooperate with Chinese attacks on civil rights, both here and abroad, but the Kochs have managed to pour money for many years into transforming American politics into a theater where a bunch of puppets act out the Kochs' libertarian wishes.
3
It's woke, no doubt, that corporations are taking the initiative in measures that reveal an ethical or moral stance more than a purely economic goal of enrichment but the fact that large corporations are becoming the conductors of the country also goes to show that Washington and our government are more and more useless except as a ways of enriching lobbyists.
In the long run, that can't be good. Pretty soon we'll have citizens groveling before company boards that have no obligation to them instead of forcefully demanding something from a congressional member whose very job is to serve the citizenry.
I think most people will immediately see through the facade of corporate social responsibility and conscience; after all, corporate America has been a driving force behind the relentless assault on the New Deal since 1980. While social attitudes perhaps now reflect a growing fatigue with the libertine, Neo Liberal consensus of the Reagan era, the legal and political obstacles against economic, political and social change remain formidable.
Make no mistake, so called " woke capitalism" is an attempt to perpetuate the political status-quo of Ante 2016 America, where both Democrats and Republicans were obsequious to corporate America's interests. The negative populism of Trump and positive one of Bernie Sanders wasn't and isn't cordial to this, and in consequence, corporate America's ideal candidate was and remains Hillary Clinton. If anything, corporate America will likely eclipse the NRA as a reactionary force in American society in the immediate future.
1
Free trade, globalization, and deindustrialization didn't make anything happen: THEY are what happened. They are the tools with which the plantation owners broke organized labor's back and took back the wage and benefit concessions they'd had to make during capitalism's 1930s break down, a time when it not only obviously didn't work so well itself, but was forced to compete with the seemingly workable model presented by the USSR.
And as for the Peace of Palo Alto: that IS the Democratic Party. Don't expect them to make any economic changes next time they gain power. They'll consolidate the rights of Transgenders, extend protection to a few more categories of immigrants, and make a few superficial changes in the tax code (without touching the carried interest loophole or reinstating the alternative minimum income tax), then they'll pat themselves on the back and trot off to a cocktail party with a bunch of Hollywood and Silicon Valley luminaries.
Our winner take all electoral system doesn't allow third parties to gain any traction. So if we want change we're going to have to take over one of the parties we've got. It's been done before, the Democrats started out as the party of slaveholders and they've gone through at least 3 changes of ownership since then. But unless Bernie Sanders has something more up his sleeve than he's shown so far, it doesn't look like it's going to happen any time soon.
2
Douthat, you are suggesting that corporate executives make a show of supporting progressive causes, like immigration, to keep the public from looking too hard at their business practices, such as paying workers low wages. You need to recognize that illegal immigration and chain migration (which grants green cards to foreigners based solely on kinship, regardless of their lack of skills or education) raises the numbers of unskilled and low skilled people looking for work, and so lowers the amount of money they can ask to be paid. Corporations, even hi tech ones, employ a vast number of low skilled and unskilled people. Corporate executives and their their highly paid employees also hire low and unskilled workers to work at their homes. It behooves corporations and their highly paid employees to support illegal immigrants and chain migration because these immigrants help to keep wages down.
Ross Dothat,
If tax cuts last 35years were responsible for about 70% of our debt, American healt care system needs major overhaul (obamacare was just the first step), infrastructure could be paid by small tax increase on wealthy and assault weapons should not be in public use, why are you still a 'conservative'. Abortion? No liberal is for abortion, it is just the decision should be left to a woman and her family. Want to decrease abortion? Work with young women to better control and manage their lives.
Personal responsibility? Fiscal restrain? Those are common sense values much better ascribing democrats these day.
What is the point to call yourself a conservative? There are plenty of those in the White House and Congress and we all call them simply a freak show.
1
Cynicism is indeed justified here. As much as I like the idea of "punishing" the NRA, corporate America has always hedged its bets because, unlike Congress, businesses plan beyond a two-year election cycle. That's why many large corporations donate to candidates of both parties during elections. You never know which side of the aisle will have to be purchased.
Have you heard of Koch industries,Kohler,most of the wall street investment banks and of course that beacon of social justice,Peter Thiel?The real cause of industrial omnipotence is not that" corporations.....(are) the last plausible vessels for communitarian yearnings"Are you serious!The failure to enforce anti-trust laws, which started under Ronald Reagan,is why corporations have so much power today. The corporatists the Republicans have stacked the Supreme Court with, will take us even further downhill.Remember,according to the court,corporations are now individuals...they are us.Their brief commentary on social issues is certainly not the problem.The political activism of Koch Industries.however,is something else again.
1
corporations should support public policy that is good for its share holders, good for its customers and good for its employees. What corporations need to realize is that what is good for all of those constituencies includes a large american middle class able and willing to increase production through hard work, and consumerism. If the corporate class fails to realize that a consumer class is necessary, and that to retain that class requires a significant change to the economic inequity we are experiencing, either through increased wages, or increased government support of most necessities (safety net, healthcare, pension, housing, etc...), they will soon find themselves as producers without customers.
So keep up with being good citizens, but remember that without a healthy consumer class, all of this falls apart.
4
Pension plans are shareholders, as are endowments etc., offering a path to a reasonable recovery of devastating shortfalls in fund balances. Capitalism has no obligation or mechanism to fairly distribute gains. In the past, rich people simply are swept into a revolution, sorted out because they are few and vulnerable, and divested of everything and the game restarts with the same result. Wooden shoes going up, silk slippers coming down.
1
Lost in the rhetoric of such discussions is the point of business. Yes, these companies are in it to generate hopefully excess returns to their shareholders. Yes, the employees are involved in order to create income for themselves. Got it. And yes, these actions need not be considered a zero-sum game - shareholders and employees (as well as vendors, suppliers and customers) can all benefit together - one's gain is not automatically another's loss.
But corporations (and unions) are legal constructs - they exist solely because the law permits them to. They have no right to life. They certainly shouldn't be viewed as "persons", because they're not...not even close...even if the Supreme Court says they are. They exist because We The People believe that our society (which, as Rousseau pointed out, is a different beast than just adding us all up) is better off for allowing them to exist.
"Woke?" People can have their consciences raised, and it follows that groups of people banded together can exhibit the same sort of behavior. But we need to look at all of our institutions - government, businesses, colleges, churches, the media, etc. - as interrelated constituents of our society. If we do, we should see that while there will be leaders and laggards, all of these pieces are in a giant potato-sack race, and we advance or fall together. Picking at just one of these parts may be interesting, but hardly illuminating.
13
There was an excellent point made on Chris Hayes last night: at present, our electoral systems in this country are badly skewed to give out-sized power to predominantly white, less affluent rural areas. But our economic system is skewed towards urban areas, especially towards well educated high earners. As long as they are locked out of their fair share of political power, they're going to exercise the power that they do have. That's not "wokeness" or "virtue signalling." That's just looking out for your own interests.
41
A truer test of "woke capital" would be advertisers abandoning more of the egregiously offensive radio and TV hosts. Until we see Limbaugh, Ingraham, Hannity, Pirro etc deprived of their platforms by corporations bowing to sponsors, we will have lots more problems than just the outsize influence of the NRA. Once you remove ajor sources of fake news from the voters, you have a chance for real progress. Propaganda works, but knowledge is power...
20
"egregiously offensive radio and TV hosts" Offensive to whom? I thought we had free speech in this country.
I am certain the 'Capital' in the Bakken, is far more progressive and benefitting of society, yes?
Stop it with your 'molotov cocktails', it's just like a typical conservative.
We as lazy humans sacrifice indenture for comfort. That is the corporate hook. Stupid humans such as Americans, sacrifice too much, because they are so ignorant. Look at Europe. Who there cares that their companies are struggling? Let them sell junk to Americans. Folks are happier there because their democracies are far better. I have multiple family members there and we talk. And it's true, American Democracy has been co-opted by corporate and monied interests long ago and Americans are lemmings by now who cannot comprehend it.
9
Douthat wrote:
"In the other story, corporate America just performed another bait and switch at the common good’s expense — making a show of paying bonuses and raising wages after the passage of the corporate-friendly Republican tax bill, but actually reserving most of the tax savings for big stock buybacks, enriching shareholders rather than employees."
And yet, die-hard conservatives like Douthat keep screaming: "Trickle-down economics works! Capitalism is better than Socialism."
Even though Douthat appears in this column to be trying to unlink consevartive economics from conservative social stances, he asserts:
"In every era and every political dispensation, businessmen ask themselves: What am I required to do to make money unmolested by the government?"
No; the govt doesn't "molest" business! The govt provides business with the infrastructure and services they need to do business: roads, water, natural gas lines, fire protection, etc. The govt often gives business tax breaks too!
And the goal of govt regulations are to protect the public's health (and the environment); it's only in the twisted perspective of greedy capitalism is consumer and environmental protection considered "unfair."
So while it's admirable that Douthat seems to abandon his standard knee-jerk conservative stance in this column, his choice of using the sneering pejorative word "molest" belies his true attitude; and indeed, his cynicism comes back fukll flower by the end of the column.
16
An extremely cynical analysis which has the ring of truth.
7
Corporate America is the speeding motorist who dares to pass us when going our way, to whom curses are cursed and pious prayers teem for clandestine save-the-day cops to magically come outta nowhere to stop. Yet it's ALSO the oncoming speedster who, suddenly, becomes our best friend to whom flashing and flicking beams now gladly warns him about damnable hidden cops now elevating our save-the-day deeds -- now far more important than what mere prayers probably couldn't answer earlier anyway -- so that he can continue unimpeded indefinitely.
1
Poor "cultural conservatives" -- the ones who promoted Ronald Reagan's "family values" and "personal responsibility" line, GWB's "compassionate conservativism" and Donald J. Trump's "draining the swamp", now complain that their "mores and values and traditions" are slighted in favor of class warfare against the poor and middle class, and token social liberalism in America's board rooms.
One can only admire the forgetfulness of "conservatives" who wail at the world they created.
11
Ross, I had to check the byline to be sure that you wrote this piece, and it wasn't a guest op-ed from Bernie Sanders.
1
Yeah, because unlike most of Douthat's pieces it almost made sense.
The squirrels of capitalism in corporate America, whether they wear a power suit or a t-shirt and hoodie, engage exclusively in the practice of gathering and hoarding as many nuts as possible. Not as many as they need, but as many as possible. Nowhere in their calculus does sharing their nuts equal an increase in their nuts. There is no built-in moral trigger point that says "Some nuts for others means more nuts for me." Being "woke" means nothing more than having figured out how to gather a few more nuts than they already have by implementing a different strategy. If 70% of the country supported uncontrolled access to guns, arming teachers, and concealed carry as a constitutional right, Delta would have "We [heart] NRA" stenciled on every plane.
Why then, would anyone expect the squirrels, handed an enormous pile of nuts that used to belong to the rest of us (tax cuts), to give any of them back (increased wages)? Okay, so they gave back a couple nuts, once (bonuses).
Cynical? You bet your nut stash I'm cynical. I've sat in those management meetings where "Money doesn't motivate" was the mantra that justified paying line workers subsistence wages, right before we moved on to figuring out how to increase shareholder wealth and building a bigger place to stash all the nuts.
10
For several generations, the baronies of American business - the mega corporations that are the economic backbone of the West - have been liberal in morst things. Managerial capitalism considers shareholder return as only one of their corporate dudies. I wish I could get my fellow progresives to understand this.
The bait and switch was NOT done by the corporations. It was done by the Republic Party in Congress and the pOTUS. They gave away $ 1.5 trillion to companies and the rich that don't need it, money we don't have that must be borrowed and paid back (ostensibly) some day and called it a middle class miracle. Throw the suckers some crumbs (the secretary who is taking home an additional $ 1.50 per week) and tell them what a good deal they got. Remember Trump & Ryan holding up the postcard which we will be able to file our taxes on. If the Dem's don't win in 2018, it won't be long until SS & Medicare are cut, as we will again have deficit and debt problems. If you crowning legislative achievement is giving away $ to those that don't need it, maybe you should find another line of work, which many will be doing come November.
7
For all of recorded world history, power and wealth has been concentrated in a relatively small group of people who ruled the general population. After World War 2, white Americans thought that America was an exception to this general rule.
The American dream came true for many of my baby boomer generation. I personally know many people who moved up the ladder from relative poverty to relative wealth and power.
In recent years, progressives routinely mocked the founding fathers for being slaveholders and worse. They killed the idea of American exceptionalism, but they replaced it with – nothing.
If you put a few crabs in a bucket none of them will escape because if any crab climbs to the top of the bucket the other crabs will pull it back into the bucket.
Now, America is just another country ruled by the top .1 %.
We will never have the optimism that prevailed after World War 2.
1
two points:
The USA was never exceptional -- always a work in progress -- now an exemplar of deconstruction.
Was the USA ever a country not ruled by the top 1%
And one of the main reasons the American dream came true for the baby boomer generation was a socialist program implemented after the war called the GI Bill. American taxpayers gave veterans a free college education.
Imagine that.
I was born in 1947 which makes me a boomer. There wasn't much socialism in the US until LBJ.
The Great Society coupled with Viet Nam was a disaster that tore the country apart. We still haven't recovered.
As far as I know, there wasn't much socialism before that.
The GI Bill was a tax free benefit available to all veterans who had been on active duty during World War 2 for at least 90 days and had not been dishonorably discharged - exposure to combat was not required.
That doesn't sound like socialism to me. It was a reward to veterans for services rendered.
This is pretty shalllow stuff. Shouldn't we expect more from the NYT?
So, it's greed. Shocking.
1
So often Mr. Douthat write a column that isn’t really about its purported topic.
Here, the purported topic is corporate cynicism. But what the column is really about is the anger Mr. Douthat, a died-in-the-wool right-winger, feels toward companies that have withdrawn their support from the National Rifle Association. He can’t come out and say that, because then he’d be overtly supporting AR-15s and all the rest of the NRA agenda. So he drapes a veil of intellectualism over the argument - but the veil is very thin.
Yes, Mr. Douthat, whereas Republicans could once count on the unwavering support of corporate American for even the most regressive of policies, the times they are a changing. The progressive tide of history rolls on, and your ideas are washed away, one by one.
2
Mark Roderick, at least you're honest about using a Comment to reinforce your own political bias, rather than to explore the outer edges of political boundaries.
Wow, so powerful, honest, insightful and right-on-target! I totally agree with you. In fact, I feel the same way about the fake liberalism. Actually, elite schools are another good example. In order to keep their structure and system intact, they fake and fool public by their "affirmative action". I call "affirmative action" the "zoo experience" to serve the interests of ruling elites. In fact, the biggest factor of income inequality is the legacy program offered by the elite schools. Rich stays rich because their next generations are guaranteed to go to the same elite schools. If they truly want diversity, they should stop the legacy program. Of course they will not. Therefore, their diversity really means less Asians!
The fake German green image was just debunked. The fake liberalism should be the next but I am not hopeful. In any way, fake liberalism complex should be added to the special interest groups including military-industrial complex. We small people are merely suckers in the eyes of elites and special interest groups. We are definitely on our own!
1
Excellent summation!
1
In the middle of this article I was forced to stop reading and look up the word "woke". My dictionary wasn't helpful but google had a definition which I can only guess is the intended meaning as it applies to this article. Now I think I know what it means although it can be interpreted to mean anything you or I want it to mean. A very imprecise word but the writers or the speakers of the word seems to be given some sort of credit for using the word. They are more tuned in than the rest of us. Sorry, I'm not buying it. Write in plain English please. I am not awoken. No disrespect intended.
5
Mr. Douthat,
One often wonders what niche of right-wing intellectual "thought" you occupy. Other than a stringent anti-liberal (progressive) proclivity do you have any positive guiding principles.? You stand as if it is still posible in this day and age to be an impassioned privileged observer, about the frey.
Perhaps it is time for a radical examination of first principles.
4
Congratulations Mr. Douthat, this is the best and most truthful editorial I have read on what is really happening. Corporations are still as cynical and amoral as any episode of Mad Men made them out to be. Woke indeed.
3
Ross, great cynicism. You should be a liberal. We welcome you.
1
The win-win scenario for woke capitalism will last as long as the Democrats are out of power. Once they win back Congress & POTUS it will be war. Having your company take sides in a political battle is extremely perilous. Trying to appease hard-core activists can easily backfire, &(no matter which side you take) you are guaranteed to alienate a huge chunk of your customer base. Target learned the dangers of playing politics when it decided to eagerly embrace the transgender bathroom movement. After Target said it would let customers use whatever bathroom matched their "gender identity," 1.4 million signed a pledge to stop shopping at Target. Store traffic & earnings dropped. The company is now dumping $20 million to install single-occupancy bathrooms in its stores. Corporate insiders said the boycott cost Target more than anyone expected. This isn't to say that business leaders should be silent, or not get involved — on their own dime. But when their companies take an official stand on a highly charged & divisive issue, it's their shareholders who are likely to pay a price. After all, for every Trump hater there are supporters just as eager to boycott companies they feel are on the wrong side of the political divide. Dancing with the left will backfire one day. The time will come when progressives will ask why Apple, Google, Facebook, etc., don't have any problems dealing with Middle Eastern regimes where being gay is a crime punishable by death. I'd love to hear that answer.
1
"Having your company take sides in a political battle is extremely perilous." Yes, indeed. Regardless of what the Supreme Court says, corporations are not persons and should shut up.
2
Possibly for the first time, I agree with Douthat completely.
2
"We the corporations" vs "We the people", quite a racket indeed! Since the 60's Republicans and cooperations have won (or bought) the argument, that by whatever hook or crook money is made, it is immoral to tax it for the public good. Into every vacuum some reign shall fill.
3
Where to start with this gobble goop. Molested by the government. Who’s being molested and why that word. Are you a misogynist?
What is cultural liberalism? This is one long nasty finger to society. American capitalism is a corrosive acid for a society. Does one person deserve billions of dollars for financial chicanery? This is heroic in America, ripping people off. Big joke.
Ross your attitude is not helpful or generous. It is pinched and small like your present leader Bone Spurs.
1
"woke"? What is that supposed to mean? "woke" is an past tense of "to wake": "I woke at 9 a.m." or "I woke him up." It's not an adjective; that would be "awake", as in "I was awake".
1
How else are people supposed to know I lean left without my Macbook decorated with a rainbow flag decal and my $100 vintage tee?
I'd rather not know and would probably like you better.
Does it disturb us that the RUSSIANS were on to this grumbling Zeitgeist as part of their social disturbances before we got woke to it? Just like how we missed out on the Blues until the Brits revisited us on US.
Dumping Exxon. MORE communications? Really? These two lips can carry all that weight?
A serious critique of the democratic party.We are the party of comfortable "professional" or more to the point a party of College educated women and beta males.
2
Otherwise known as elitist hypocrites, unfortunately.
Shorter Douthat: Don't get your knickers in a twist, capitalists; this is all just hashwashing?
RD is conservative, a faithful traditionalist, yet not a gungho corporatist, and I can't argue the issue that the Philistine legalistic person de-humanizes our reality, because ... isn't that what a Professor Marcuse seemingly says?
The mass murder has brought out more issues than one tackles in a column, but I think I agree if RD and the professor of Marxism seem to me to be in agreement.
If I mis-interpret, then never mind, but I like to consider myself to be a synthesizer of idiot-ologies of which are too bleak to swallow whole.
OK great job stepping up on the gun issue. Oh, you won't take my NRA card? How about my AAA card or my AARP card. This measure won't hurt the NRA or cost these companies a dime. In addition, NRA haters won't flock to these companies to do business. Net result, no change for anyone, just a lot of noise.
1
Would you rather market to the 40 million potential customers in CA and the 17 million in NY, or the 600,000 in Alaska and the 700,000 in Wyoming? I happen to think corporations are doing the right thing by abandoning the NRA. As a share holder, I also think it's smart. The blue states have way more disposable income, and angry old white men in red states are the target market for only a few products. I won't list those :)
3
Well son I’ll forgive you for being young and misinformed.
Companies did EXACTLY what was predicted back in the Bush administration the money held outside the US stayed there until they could bring it home and do what they are now doing.
Hey Charley Brown Lucy just pulled the ball AGAIN!
2
"...a corporate-backed liberal politics that seems indifferent to the working man..."
One day, Ross, I hope you will deign to examine and deconstruct such tropes, perpetrated by the Right and fodder for the juiciest bits of Fox Newsism.
Consider the coal miner: we are to pity the miserable work lives they lead, the sacrifices they make for the rest of us, the hardy patriotism and pioneer spirit of their workdays and communities.
Suffering, as they always have, the physical indignities of their woeful work, they manage to band together only to resist efforts of the left to improve their miserable lives.
Mine safety?: Damn that Obama.
Opportunities to move on to better pay and safer work? Lock her up.
Bosses ruin your life? Send them to the Senate.
Resurgent black lung? Give me my government benefits...damn government.
The left, which even you must admit no longer exits in today's America, tried. Fox News won.
How can you speak of the corporatized Democrats when your pudgy little man in the White House has sold our government lock, stock, and barrel to Wall Street, to education mongers like DeVos, to teensy tiny minds at the FCC, to rapacious-destruction-never-to-be-undone at the EPA.
Oh yeah, save us from Democrats, please God.
Speaking of God, you heartily endorse the ongoing Christian jihad and nascent inquisition with flowery talk of morality and civic virtue. It's time for you to go out for a walk, this time with your eyes open.
5
Corporations are people. They are important. You are not.
Mr. Douthat mistakes decency for politics. Of course, there is no fine line between the two. Many will say issues such as abortion or Obamacare funding are about decency, but we are divided enough on these issues that they are largely considered political.
What we may be seeing now is the shift of 2nd amendment absolutism from the political column to the decency one. Companies likes Dick's Sporting Goods see that selling AR15s to 18 year olds is not just a choice about politics, but one about decency. Roku made the opposite choice by keeping the NRA channel, claiming political neutrality. But if they were truly politically neutral, they'd run jihadi channels too. They made the opposite distinction as Dick's, treating the NRA's socially destructive advocacy as something different than a jihadi's call to arms. Many Americans, who see that the NRA's death toll is far higher than foreign born terrorists, would disagree.
The truth is, there is no separation between politics and decency in the age of Trump. Trump is indecent, and those who support him politically are too. The same can be said for the NRA.
Mainstream companies typically don't have any trouble avoiding indecency in many forms. They choose, without political concern, to refuse connections with pornographers, jihadis, criminals, con artists, pyramid schemes, tobacco companies, and more. It's time for them to start treating gun extremists the same way.
91
I think Douthat is generally right here, but his cynicism may be unjustified in today's case of Dick's Sporting Goods announcing that they will no longer sell semiautomatic guns nor sell any guns to those under 21. In doing this they are directly torpedoing one of their most lucrative clienteles. Gun control advocates ought to show some appreciation.
83
"I think Douthat is generally right here, but his cynicism may be unjustified in today's case of Dick's Sporting Goods announcing that they will no longer sell semiautomatic guns nor sell any guns to those under 21. In doing this they are directly torpedoing one of their most lucrative clienteles."
I'd need proof of this claim. There is a gun glut in this country. Gun manufacturers have to resort to propaganda about "liberals coming to take your guns" to goose gun sales after every mass-shooting atrocity. I don't think semiautomatic weapons are particularly profitable for the likes of Dick's Sporting goods.
How much does Dick's pay its workers, are its workers unionized, what is its stance toward unions, where does it source its products, how much responsibility does it take as a retailer for the labor conditions of the people making products it sells, how much equity does it give workers below management levels in terms of compensation, how does it arrange its workers' schedules and does it punish workers who have to fit work around family concerns, and in how many cases has it pushed out mom-and-pop shops when setting up its mall stores?
The opinion hints at it here but doesn't quite say it, the choices of what to support by the boardrooms is always calculated to feed the bottom line. They may know what is morally right but that is not how they act except by happenstance. This lets us know that no matter what evil is heaped on this country the corporations will first determine what is best for their bottom line. If it is an authoritarian dictatorship, they first have to determine if that might not be good for business.
Wages are held down because the only employee that is more reliable than an illegal alien is one who lives paycheck to paycheck. People who are one paycheck away from living in the street are essentially the same as illegal aliens. They can't leave and they can't complain. That's good for business too.
Hollywood is not liberal, it's corporate, and if by academia you mean east coast liberal academia your missing most of the country.
The working man can keep voting for the Reagans and the Trumps if they want. They were lead there by their bigotry, or they can show up in the primaries of the DFL and push them in the right, er ah, correct direction. The DFL is nothing if not malleable, just look back on how they "evolved" on many issues after there was clear consensus among the people. However, if the working man is unable to extent the supposed unalienable rights of our constitution to every one regardless of whatever stupid category they are put in, then just stay on the other side.
29
What the conservative working class folks you write of don't get, because they have been lied to for so long, is that the Republican party cynically used cultural issues as a distraction while pulling the rug out from under them. There is a wing of the Democratic Party which thoroughly gets this problem. That wing, led by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, has been branded as a bunch of extremist zealots by Republicans, who fear them far more than they ever feared Hillary. The social conservatives bought into that branding, hook, line and sinker, and remain resolutely opposed to voting for the very people who could save them. One thing this has proven is that when Bill Clinton said "it's the economy, stupid" he was wrong. Cultural issues do matter, and even more so when other sources of hope have dried up.
66
For the most part, both parties (including and especially the neo-liberalism of Obama and Clinton) have allowed corporations to gain power unfettered in this country over the last forty years. If you are a Republican voter who will lose a job, or see their wage decline under both parties, why not vote for Republicans who will at least let you keep your gun or make a stink about saying 'Merry Christmas'? No matter how ridiculous Republican voters come across, is voting for a Democrat going to radically change your life? Most likely, no.
1
Appealing to the "conscience" of companies whose sole concerns include overpaying management and satisfying stockholders, is a fool's errand.
Delta's big "reform" of denying discounts to the NRA is one absurd example of "conscience?" Better than nothing, but it's still almost nothing. Have our humane expectations sunk so low?
The right wing, Ross included, keeps barking about its obsessive hatreds: The New Deal, Medicare, and Social Security.
In the pathological shadow of tax cuts for billionaires and our unending blank checks for the Pentagon, the lectures are just another big middle finger to the middle class, which is fast becoming an endangered species.
52
No white Roman Catholic conservative male like Ross Douthat has a clue as to what it means to be "woke" while black in America hoping that your life and the lives of your family and black friends will matter today and tomorrow.
By every meaningful socioeconomic political and educational historical measure black Americans are better off than they have ever been. But by those same measures they still lag far behind their white peers at every level.
Whether or not white people are awake or asleep their white privilege and power is always their working capital advantage. That is why Trump is hiding his tax returns and business records from the American people.
The recent Republican Party Trump "Tax Steal" delivered $ 5.2 billion to workers but $ 173 billion to share holders whose money works for them. The white- collar corporate plutocrat suites make 36x the blue-collar main street worker. Which is better than enslavement.
On the eve of the Civil War the 4 million enslaved Africans in a nation of 30 million were worth more than all of the other capital assets in America combined except for the land. See The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism" Edward Baptist
56
To Blackmamba: you seem too have missed the fact that Mr Douthat is using the word "woke" in an ironic fashion. In a way, you are helping him make his point!
I know this is part of the discourse problem we have in the US, but I have a hard time listening to "all lives matter" types like Douthat.
@edl
You seemed to have missed the point that I do not care about irony, satire, metaphor, parody nor comedy when it comes to the matter of black lives in America.
2
Every conservative with a conscience seems to be begging liberals to do something about the Frankenstein they helped create. For 80 years Social Security has offended their sensibilities. Unions, they said, would be the death of capitalism and all the while they grew fatter and richer.
Unfettered and unregulated corporations being led by a moron and his lesser morons we find ourselves overwhelmed with corruption and fecklessness.
If you don't vote them out in 2018 it's going to get worse.
127
Was Mr. Douthat this concerned about corporate "conscience" when Hobby Lobby used it to justify breaking the law so they could take health care benefits away from their employees? The irony here is that "woke" liberals always understood the corporate primary motive (profits always come first) especially when lobbying corporations to change their policies to affect social change. The question is do conservatives (who voted for a huge tax cut for corporations in the hopes that it trickles down to working Americans) understand the corporate primary motive?
8
Insightful inasmuch as Mr. Douthat recognizes that NEITHER party is currently "organized around working-class economic interests". As long as the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party remains in control, voters who value working-class economic interests over shareholders' interests will have nowhere to turn to and more of them may stay home rather than vote for a GOP-lite candidate... and if that occurs the GOP's anti-intellectualism will prevail over the Democratic Party's "corporate-backed liberal politics that seems indifferent to the working man"...
8
Democratic party was forced to the center by the liberal voter. The same who did not show up in 2010 midterms. Had Ted Kennedy lived one more year and had Obama have Congress after 2010 we would see much more of his pro middle class and pro worker agenda implemented.
Heteronormativity? Well, I found out it is in fact a real word. It comes into use around 1990 and its usage skyrockets thereafter - that is, around the time its real-world meaning is going out of style. This has been your vocabulary lesson for the day.
1
If there were any signs of self-restrain in corporate greed, it was all gone with Reagan. He proclaimed corporate leaders can't do wrong and are good guys, and let the dogs out. The result was the insane increase in CEO compensation packages. If you double your earnings every 4-5 years and are still called good guys, who cares about any self-restrain? If you squeeze another 25% yearly raise, and American voter calls you a hero, what else would you do?
The insanity of all that is that it is American voter who has allowed this rocket. The new Reagan-inspired generation of CEOs consider themselves a new aristocracy and demand all privileges they may think of.
4
Astonishing that I can actually agree with most of Douthat's column. But the only "woke capitalism" is firmly regulated capitalism. Unfettered capitalism is what got us into the Crash of 29 AND the Recession of 2008 and Trump's rolling back of regulations (as well as the financial sector never really being held accountable for the last debacle) is leading us into the next big disaster.
6
At what point did corporate America say they would take the tax cut and divvy it out to their employees or create jobs? That was a delusion of the party so much so that when they were trying to get the tax laws passed, they asked for a show of hands from CEOs to say they were going to do that. Nobody raised their hands until prodded.
Corporate America wanted a tax cut, period. And they got it without any strings attached. So much for the greatest negotiator on the planet. It isn't corporate America's fault for asking for something and be given it with no strings attached.
Maybe they are stopping with guns because almost everyone on the planet thinks we're absurd with 2nd Amendment. We actually have a "well regulated militia". It's called the armed forces, national guard, coast guard as well as police.
So in my opinion one has nothing to do with the other. Maybe companies are sick of mass carnage too. I really don't care why but if they are willing to take a stand that none of our elected officials will that could protect us, so be it.
5
Thank you for articulating what I was mulling.
Ross, you can take a long time to say two things. Conservatives packed the Supreme Court with Justices willing to rule that corporations were people and they could give unlimited amounts of money to politicians. Politicians, primarily Republicans, repaid these donations by reducing taxes on corporations and wealthy conservatives.
Secondly, the Republicans were able to convince angry blue collar workers that the source of their problems were the elitist Democrats. Which is quite a trick since the programs most effected by the reduction in government tax receipts (Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security) mainly support blue collar workers. Just shows you what you can do when you have your own propaganda apparatus; i.e. Fox News.
7
Thoughtful and on target. Look at the hunger games that Jeff Bezos at Amazon is running. The richest man in the world is pitting cities against each other; clamoring to offer richer and richer incentives to get an Amazon headquarters. Newark has a crumbling infrastructure and schools that are among the worst in the nation, yet the city and state are offering Amazon 7 billion in incentives to move there.
4
They’re not diverting $7 billion that could have been spent on schools to Amazon. They’re agreeing to divert that much from potential future revenues attributable to the deal. And the significant amount that will remain can go to those currently underfunded schools.
Excellent column, Ross, with a good historical analysis.
In the end, though, as others have pointed out, the modern corporation is at the very best amoral, and at worst immoral, because all woke-ness aside, anything that gets in the way of making money for shareholders cannot long survive.
That is why--as most other first world economies have concluded--the only counterbalance to corporate activity, be it clueless or rapacious, must come from outside, not from an activist inside: from a watchful non-compromised (i.e., no corporate lobbying/funding of elections) government and/or a fully realized labor movement. The United States currently has neither, so any "responsible" corporate behavior will stop VERY suddenly if profits are threatened, though certainly corporate PR departments will endeavor to convince everyone otherwise (and a large portion of people will believe them).
6
Big corporations are in different battlefield than our life - average life expectancy of corporations has come down from 90 years to 15 years when human life expectancy increased to more than 80 years in most of the OECD countries. There is no margin of error in corporations and every decision has to be made for self preservation. Politicians and social elites consider corporations as institutions of twentieth century but in reality they are not. Corporations continuously morphing to new shape like virus to survive. This is not the ideal place to find social direction - it is social forces that will change the corporations and reduce the life expectancy lower. At one point we may go back to the old structure of guild and family craft and traders. Let us try to understand the social changes - we can not justify existence of office buildings any more - it is waste of money and energy, justify existence of many financial products, most of them are same, resource allocation can be done by the crowed funding, education can be independent of certification, employment can be based on skills and personalities tested by AI machines,...... Direction of technology and social forces will make technology as the platform for all companies and value of scale will disappear. Globalization of skills and finance will be integrated by the guild.
1
For proof of Ross Douthat's point, look at the billions that American corporations spend on lobbying in Washington for their own interests and on bankrolling political candidates who will do their bidding. Then compare that with what they spend to support cultural and charitable causes and institutions. The latter is a mere pittance.
5
The growing but widely missed corporate pro-social and environmental activity must have reached a threshold if now Ross is noticing it. (I don’t discount the usual response I get that awful corporate behavior still exists.) His take is fascinating and unique as I hadn’t realized it could be due to a sophisticated strategy of “Give them gay rights and they’ll leave us alone on tax dodging.” So while he may be right, another interpretation is that as something new, it’s too soon to judge motivations and outcomes. Even Ross uses the word “conscience” and allows—contrary to the ideologies of right, center, and left, it might be legitimate. Where he might be wrong is that the scope of such activities, if you stop to look at it, are getting broader, extending into working class areas such as more pay, and environmental areas such as conserving species. In some of these there are even hard-to-see connections to a bottom line. (I would add the URLs with the evidence, but last few times I tried the “Submit” key wouldn’t take it. So Google me.) So maybe there really is “something new under the sun.” If so, as there really don’t seem to be a lot of surprise untapped heroes around during these very troubled times, shouldn’t we try to recognize and nurture this one (while simultaneously continuing to pressure the bad ones)? We could still see an extension to their tackling issues such as equity, data privacy, democracy; but it would help if more took this possible opportunity seriously.
I hope the theory of the trickling money is right. Meanwhile our company keeps on firing everyone they can and even cutting on bonuses. I thought I will have to take cover from the rain of money. Looks like I will not need the umbrella any time soon. More likely I will need to pack up my things and give place to another offshore guy that makes third of what I make, have universal healthcare, pay $500 for year in university and now also have my job. Does unemployment money is part of the trickling money theory? But, hey, I got $257 more on my paycheck because of the tax cut. I am going to save it for the $50,000 health bill and my kid $100,000 university tuition.
3
Detroit created the postwar middle class in America when Ford famously decided to pay his workers enough that they could afford to buy his cars. That became a model for other large manufacturers, and the result was sustained economic growth and rising living standards. Yeah, Japanese imports had plenty to do with the death of that model. More important, in my opinion, was what happened under Reagan: union-busting, the financialization of the economy, and explicit redistribution of wealth to the rich. That's when the American middle class began to die. It's in its death throes now.
5
The Ford wage policy to which you refer occurred in the early 20th century, not "post war."
And, of course, the more a job pays, the more likely it is to be destroyed.
Very difficult to stifle the cynicism when confronted with the disconnects of Apple and Google pointed out by Douthat. A whole picture look at the "wokeness" uncovers the depth of the cynical approach many corporations take with truth-telling. When the poor people revolt, should they start in Silicon Valley, or will the White House and the Capitol do for now?
Wokeness is not a characteristic of either liberals or conservatives. Wokeness is a recognition of the commons. Wokeness is a recognition of the reality of the economic, social and political states in our society. Corporations have stakeholders. These include customers, employees, communities where they do business, suppliers, partners, etc.. These stakeholders have a mix of personal priorities and values. The current calculation that corporations are making is that gun violence should be addressed. It is in their self interest to pay attention to the consensus of their stakeholders. It is really very straight forward. This is not about ideology. It is about common sense solutions to a recognized problem.
I think it is good that companies are starting to take actions on behalf marginalized groups. The idea that corporate social responsibility is coming at the expense of their workers is also simply not true. The “wokest” companies (tech companies) are also paying their workers quite well—one could even argue they are paying their workers too well, causing people who don’t work for them to get priced out of cities. The companies that underpay their employees the most generally are less culturally liberal and don’t care as much about corporate social responsibility either.
Corporations only behave themselves when their power is offset by other power structures, like government.
A give-and-take between the power of corporations, the power of government, and the power of the labor movement gave our country prosperity and stability for decades.
One leg of that tripod, labor, has been neutered by globalization and the "limited government" politics of Ronald Reagan. For the past generation corporations and government have been fighting it out, with corporate oligarchy about to triumph: witness the power of the NRA over Congress in regards to gun safety.
We need a new movement of equal weight to return stability. What will it be?
23
Again, another article from a NYT columnist without mention of the advent of the technology that must precede the change. All social, political and economic change is preceded by a technological advancement. For example, the Women's Liberation Movement of the 1960's and 1970's was not possible without the invention and widespread use of the birth control pill in the by the early 1960s. Likewise, the death of the Unions that manufactured goods was killed by technology. That technology that has changed the World, devastated our Middle Class is "Containerization". Almost 95% of all shipped goods are shipped in those containers that can be loaded on a ship, then reloaded on a semi truck, train, or even an airplane. There are five (5) uniform sizes of these metal boxes that are used worldwide by everybody. In fact, this may be the only standard that every country in the world has ever agreed on in human history. Containerization was developed in the late 1950s, but became the ubiquitous standard it is today by the mid-1970s. Prior to containerization shipping goods around the world or even across the country was prohibitively expensive. Now, anything can be made anywhere and shipped very efficiently. It is not capitalism, or politicians or even world leaders that determine cultures, societies or even winners or losers. No, these are all the downline effects of technological change.
14
Your analysis is absolutely wrong.
A short list of social change not precipitated by technology would include women's suffrage, prohibition and its repeal, ending the draft, and gay marriage. Women took many "men's jobs" during WW II, and having children does not preclude having a job, just ask RBG.
Containerization started in the 1950s. It preceded the great wage stagnation by 30 years. Deindustrialization is the product of tax and economic policy, not technology. Laws about what can be imported at what tariff, and who can unionize how, have more effect on where factories are sited than efficient shipping does. That's why we make cars today in Alabama and Mexico, instead of Detroit. We trade with China not because of containerization, but because China adopted capitalism and the WTO adopted China.
I think what you may be noticing is Galbraith's observation that the Conventional Wisdom -- the generally accepted views in polite society -- lags economic change by several decades. Slavery and colonialism overhung the industrial revolution by half a century, more or less. Our present society treats goods as scarce, despite the fact that simple survival hasn't been under threat for decades. Income inequality has been rising since 1979 and has reached Gilded Age proportions, yet the great change needed to address it was never the subject of even one question during the debates in 2016.
13
Women's suffrage, prohibition and repeal, and gay marriage were all aided significantly if not driven by technological change. Take gay marriage, because it is the most recent. It is not a coincidence that a such a profound turnaround in attitudes about gay marriage from 1995 to 2005 directly overlaps with the advent of the internet and the widespread and participation in social media. I do not believe for one second that we would be anywhere near where we are today on gay marriage, transgender, etc. without the internet and the social media explosion it caused.
Technology drives social change not the other way around. The Gutenberg Press drove The Enlightenment, The Enlightenment did not invent the Gutenberg Press. Anymore than the Women's Movement created the birth control pill.
1
While the pill did indeed enable the Women's movement to gain steam, to apply a tech maxim to all social change is simply: stupid.
What party will be in power when it will be necessary to raise taxes, as it will be in the near future? This will decide in what form it takes. The huge deficit that Trump and the Republicans have created won't be able to be controlled by cuts to social programs as envisioned by Ryan and McConnell. Time will tell.
The next industry to be unionized will be the fast food section. The only thing that can change that would be a sizeable increase in the minimum wage. So that also will depend on which party is in power.
Without tax increases the infrastructure cannot be improved. So does it continue to be incapacitated? It all depends on the next election. And in what form will the tax be. A user fee, a sales tax, an income tax,?
27
The problem with "infrastructure" is that it mostly serves private motor vehicles. Some of are hostile toward such vehicles, and their demands.
The misguided notion that vulture capitalists and corporate hegemony will solve society's problems is uniquely American poppycock.
Amazon, Google, PayPal, Apple, Microsoft, other corporate behemoths and their 'charitable' foundations may dabble around the edges of improving society and will freshly pave a few access roads to their enchanted corporate castles, but it is always good government that improves society.
Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada and other liberal countries figured this out many decades ago by recognizing that members of society deserve an actual social fabric, not some cheap polyester blanket of corporate logos with an annual Christmas gift card and the greatest healthcare rip-off in the world to keep them warm at night in the freezing cold.
These quasi-monopolist corporations with entertaining technologies are also master tax evaders who invest heavily in Congressional infrastructure, but they are useless for roads, bridges, real education, real healthcare, real representative democracy and humane regulation.
There are some humane CEOs and some corporations with social responsibility, but it's government by real people that strikes the balance between sociopathic Greed Over People and People Over Greed.
The Republican Party and their Dollar-Bill-In-Chief have made themselves perfectly clear: "You can never be too greedy"
The Democratic Party, for all its dysfunctionality and faults, still has shreds of humanity to it.
D to go forward; R for reverse.
284
Yes....which is why Hillary Clinton's refusal to reveal her speaking fee from Goldman was so damning.
Why is why the refusal of the DOJ under Obama to prosecute the bankers led to the formation of the Tea Party.
I voted for both but they turned their backs on the people who have historically relied on them the most .
2
Socrates--Correct as usual.
8
Socrates, have You authored any books? If not, may I suggest You do. Your insightful comments warrant it.
6
Corporations aren’t “molested” by a government that gropes their profits and makes them pay tribute. They’re part of the government. They use public infrastructure to make and distribute their goods and services. They lobby for rules that benefit their bottom lines at our expense. They’ve even been declared to be “people” by the Supreme Court.
To enhance their profits, they will occasionally get on the right side of social issues. This may be a cynical ploy, or it may be that some corporate executives have not completely lost their touch with humanity.
But the fact is that America does not consist entirely of misogynistic bible-thumping conservative homophobic racists. Corporations that make friendly gestures to women, people of color and the LGBT community are recognizing that these people exist in America, unlike certain conservative pundits who think their presence is an aberration, and an offense to the Lord God Almighty.
These pundits emphasize the cynical and transient nature of corporate gestures that reach out to these people. To them it smacks of liberalism, which is an unpardonable sin that normalizes diversity and inclusiveness. They think it’s just a racket.
I think it’s the death knell for a corrosively out-of-touch conservatism that elected a drooling idiot as its leader. It’s causing people to awake to the reality of what social conservatism is really about. It’s always been ugly and mean. Now it’s unprofitable.
188
You are being too harsh towards Ross gemli. He is warning "liberals" - after all - not to be bought of by "corporate gestures" rather than them paying higher wages to their workers and more tax to pay for common social benefits. I also think you'll find that Ross is for a different kind of "diversity and inclusiveness": for those of conscientious faith, not of the non-religious majority. And he's no Trumpist.
1
Corporations use public infrastructure, yes. But they also pay taxes as determined by the law. That is where their social obligation ends.
Yes, corporate responsibility has mostly been a PR ploy - give a dollar back to those you just took ten dollars from (and leverage that dollar by publicizing it, while shuffling the stolen ten into an offshore account).
The conservatives are now finding it hard to hold their line against a strong progressive movement and accelerating global change, which is to say that the corporations' prior social responsibility ROI has shifted. They now can't afford to be tangentially or accidentally associated with the alt-right so they're cutting ties. They're also dumping politically incorrect investments.
European companies have been doing this for decades. Let's hope that the trend in the US continues and social responsibility becomes a major driver of profit and a necessary component of strategy.
The paradox of capitalism offers a dilemma for corporations that won't be solved until we recognize the need to temper capitalism with humanitarianism. One easy example is health care. Once people's health becomes a money-making opportunity that features sick people as a cost, the capitalist principle demands reducing the number of sick people. The easy way do reduce the number of sick people is to deny them health care. There are many other ways the profit principle puts money above people (think Trump University). Until we address this fundamental paradox, corporations, with a few exceptions, will be driven by the profit principle. We need to change the equation so that it factors in people and the commonweal.
28
Karl Marx addressed the problems you raise.
Heckler: no he didn't. Marx didn't understand human beings and their potential for ill. Consider Russia. Marx just provided Lenin with a means to win power. Once he won it Russia just became a one-party dictatorship run by him and his fellow travellers not "the proletariat". Marx gave no thought whatsoever towards the likes of Stalin rising to power in such a state. Sure the Soviet Union was not without achievement, but it was extremely repressive, did not sufficiently and consistently provide for all and its demise was inevitable.
"Corporate" self interest. No. Why? Because a corporation is a legal fiction. Billionaire selfishness is an accurate statement.
People don't get to be billionaires by sharing the money they hoard, they seek to destroy the middle class so that they can control it all....
23
I take your point, but the fact that a corporation is a legal fiction does not mean that it does not have self-interest, including over and apart from "billionaires."
For one, a substantial number of publicly traded corporations are held by many thousands or millions of shareholders. Yes, quite often there are individual shareholders who control a significant proportion of shares, but even where that is true, it does not change the fact that the shareholders are all collectively invested in and desirous of the ultimate profitability of the enterprise. A given shareholder may object to certain policies or may desire other ones, but such objections/desires are ultimately subordinate to profitability ... or that shareholder would drop her stock and invest elsewhere.
But even setting ownership aside, there is an enormous literature on the development of the managerial class in corporate enterprises, most of whom are fairly well educated and belong to the middle- to upper-middle class. And that class not only absolutely has a self-interest entirely separate and distinct from "billionaire" shareholders, but also has ways to manage corporate entities so as to actualize that interest.
Respectfully, it is therefore far too reductionist to assert that there is no "corporate self-interest" or that the complexities of contemporary corporate structures, policies and decisionmaking are merely the result of "billionaire selfishness."
2
SW--Billionaires get rich by hurting people, and breaking the law. It's almost the only way, with few exceptions.
2
Has the world become this cynical? Does not the specter of 17 dead high school students and teachers not play a role in the corporate decisions to distance themselves from the NRA? It cannot be just political calculus that drives these decisions. Somewhere in corporate boardrooms there must be a sense of right and wrong. And doing anything to counter gun violence in this country is morally right.
30
Chuck--Somewhere, in corporate boardrooms, the sensibilities of their customers is being considered. Will they become boycott victims? It's all about sensible PR, having an effect on their bottom lines.
Well, no sooner than I was finished with your plausible if not compelling thesis, Breaking News from Dick's Sporting Goods blew it out of the water. They're not doing that to preserve public opinion about tax cuts. Separately, the news about how the tax cuts have been used ensures that when Democrats (or any reasonable people) take power again, we will see a more just distribution.
11
Your lips to God's ear.
Income inequality has been on the rise since 1979. Had wages kept up with productivity, the median wage would be twice what it is today. That happened under congresses and presidents Republican and Democratic. Nothing Trump or Clinton proposed would reverse or ameliorate it.
The real question is whether and when the Democratic Party will ditch the neoliberalism that got us here, and the feel-good identity politics that ignores economic issues, and instead adopt real progressive policy proposals that address the economic dislocation millions of Americans are experiencing in the 21st century economy. There are signs that might happen. The question is whether the energy is latent, or nascent.
Wage stagnation could in part be addressed by universal unionization. Insecurities over healthcare and college expenses could be addressed with Medicare for All and tuition-free public universities. Employment insecurity could be addressed with universal basic income. Income inequality could be addressed with a much more progressive income tax: 50% on income over $1,000,000; 75% over $10,000,000. And by taxing unearned income at the same rate as wages.
I am still waiting for the first national political candidate to support those ideas, all of them, and spell out the tax regime that would fund them. Until then, I fear the most we can hope for is maybe raising the arming age for assault weapons.
1
They have used their undeserved windfall, not for the much ballyhooed jobs (some people actually believed Trump,) but to buy back stock thereby feathering their own nest. The liberal posturing is meant to divert attention from the tax shelters their lawyers have devised to disappear their profits. It's hard to get this information through the thickening cloud of bought and paid for media to the voters in their diverse communities.
One can only hope the truth will shine through somehow and motivate the voters in the next elections.
8
I still do not understand why America's corporations don't get it.
Increased wages for employees stimulate the economy, create more customers, and more profit. It might take a little longer than keeping it all to yourself right now, but in the long run, a consumer society filled with people who don't have enough money to consume, is no good for anyone.
A wise small business owner I know said "I don't create jobs - my customers do."
Customers equal profit, but if there are no customers who can afford your product or service, you are going to fail.
A million dollars given to an already rich person is not going to be spent - it will be "invested".
A million dollars given say, at $10,000 per family will result in a spate of new purchases - new cars and washing machines and that roof that they've needed. And visits to restaurants and movie theaters they have put off. And all the employees of those businesses will make money - and spend it in their communities. It's not rocket science.
You can hold onto every dollar of profit, and destroy our economy, or you can spread the wealth, and make us all successful.
Just how much money do you need to feel good? Millions? Billions? How many billions? There is no end to it. Two houses? Three? Four?
And rich people tend to not buy their houses here - but in Switzerland and France and Italy. No benefit to us. They travel abroad - Europe or Asia or Africa or the South Pacific - not money spent here.
98
It does seem obvious (and I would agree with you that it is obvious) that more money in the hands of the middle and working class turns into faster economic growth, because consumer spending drives 70% of the American economy.
I too wondered about it for a long time, and my thoughts took me through a rumination on wealth. What is wealth? Is it merely accumulated assets (cash, stock, homes, cars, yachts, etc.)? Is so, how much makes a person wealthy? I would argue it's not an ultimate dollar figure, because that figure would change constantly. Rather, it's determined by a comparison to the wealth of the rest of society. And that is the crux of the matter.
A less skewed distribution of income would lead to faster economic growth and therefore faster income growth for all, but then the income growth of the wealthiest relative to the rest of society would be lower. This could be the case even if their overall income growth would be greater under a more equitable income distribution than it is under the current scenario. It just wouldn't feel that way, because everyone else would be "catching up." There would be wage compression (a la the Great Compression). That's the issue. It's all about keeping up with (really, dramatically outpacing) the Joneses. At least that's my opinion.
3
There are just so many beachside cottages.
Corporate America does not wish to enable more competition.
Oh my God, Ross...
If one takes seriously the words of capitalists and that most moral segment of our society, rich executives, one knows without a thought that one would profit by ignoring everything to do with the "social mission" of business.
Business has no social mission, we're constantly reminded, only exists to make money for executives and shareholders. Anything else is a wimpy liberal fantasy no real man could stomach.
So good, we agree all that is posturing to keep the crowds contentedly grazing, and show-boating politicians in their caves.
On the other hand, there's "Free Market" and trickle down and other patent falsehoods, also peddled by business-philiacs.
As your NYT makes plain today, there's no way in which corporations or companies have concern for the welfare of their workers. There's no way monetary policy improves the lot of workers. There's no way in which the Free Market is free to the benefit of workers.
Corporations conspire to force wages down and keep employees desperate. Despite laughably transparent shows of "passing along Trump tax benefits", nobody is.
Our business geniuses are honest when they describe the market: it has no conscience, it knows no concern about any human being who isn't an owner, it owes allegiance to no country, its myopia is so complete it will literally destroy the planet upon which it depends for life if doing so means more or easier dollars.
For once, Ross, write a column that begins and ends with the truth.
16
Clearly, Ross has his own definition of truth. It's as if he were a corporation, not a person.
1
It is difficult to believe this was written by Ross Douthat, at least until the latter paragraphs. I found myself agreeing with most of this column.
As for the end, if Ross would have read Hillary's platform and detailed fact sheets, he would have discovered she had policies that would have reined in corporations and helped the great majority of the country.
Furthermore if he would look at the proposals of progressives such as Warren, Sanders, Brown, etc,. he would find similar ideas.
One thing is for sure. He ain't gonna find 'em in the Republican party.
92
Amen. Douthat remains Douthat.
"Between them these trends and sentiments will help sustain the Republican Party even as it lurches deeper into demagogy and paranoia — by making a vote for the G.O.P. the only way to protest a corporate-backed liberal politics that seems indifferent to the working man and an ascendant cultural liberalism that has boardrooms as well as Hollywood and academia in its corner."
Not much concern here for sustaining the Republican Party.
2
Another well-written column, offering some insight into the way Corporations are 'Woke' to ways to increase the compensation of executives and board members, and profits to the ordinary owners.
And yet, almost every comment about almost every one of Mr Douthat's well-written columns is negative, for reasons that escape me. I find it hard to believe that most of the comments were by people who actually read his columns.
4
It's called responding to the marketplace Ross. This is how fairly open markets in pluralistic political systems work. It's neither cynicism or idealism but realism.
6
The right won the economic war and lost the cultural war. It's the great shame of the left that they couldn't synthesize labor and cultural causes.
The working class has been hammered and the Supreme Court is about to pound another nail in labor's coffin.
What you refer to as people choosing the corporation as the last bastion to satisfy communitarian yearnings, is akin to people choosing prison because they want to belong to a club. The corporation is one of the most globally abusive institutions we have, and there is a dodge in the structure of your argument.
Until it is made clear that corporate freedom is in tension with representative government, not just labor causes but democracy itself,
and that capital expansion eviscerates conservative foci such as the family, tradition, and religious values, in favor of profits,
we will still be trapped in our infantile political discourse.
Capital is only too happy to see people spitting at each other over homosexuality, abortion, and sex. These are the least threatening sideshows to the advance of profit maximization at the expense of the well-being of American families- Trumpsters, Clintonites, and Sandernistas alike.
20
This is a perceptive article for a change, even though it’s strength is sapped by Ross ‘s right wing lenses. Corporations will pursue what they perceive to be their best interests in the pursuit of profit. No surprise there. They will also tinker at the margins according to the bosses’ varying tastes. Given Ross’s Roman hierarchical preferences, he should be able to discern a convergence of tactics at least in the so called palo alto approach and that of the current Vatican. On a different point though Ross is lost again. The prominence of the gop rests largely in its anti black racism. The other stuff is largely besides the point. Since the gop enjoys its prominence I expect no change in its anti black racism until and unless enough voters make that unpalatable. Our real problem lies in the failure of our attempt at de-nazification through Reconstruction. The civil rights movement was a second go at it. Much has been accomplished, much remains to be done.
5
Corporations as the salvation of America?
At their best I certainly see them as the salvation of America, and certainly better than government. The reason why is simple: At their best they stand for reason and are suspicious of cultural conservatism, such as religion, and are not compatible with the excessively socialistic, nurture over nature mindset of the leftwing party. Corporations, in short, at best have something of a scientific libertarianism.
Corporations at best seem connected to the right wing primarily by something of the military mindset (innovative organizational and technological and scientific/engineering advance) and connected to the left wing in sense of formation of a higher community, which leaves them antagonistic to right wing religion, nationalism, cultural insularity, and antagonistic to the left wing in its absurdity of nurture over nature arguments founded not on any secure science (really the left wing knows how much of a person is nature and how much can be modified by nurture in this or that direction not to mention the correct direction?) but on pure political resentment which cuts into true measurement and elevation of talent.
Thus corporations at best straddle argument between elevation of the individual over the collective and vice-versa, they seem for a community, but an increasingly purified one of genuine talent, everyone contributing to the whole. They seem collective growths rising out of failure of nations, culture, civilization.
A corporations is a creature formed to shield its individual owners from personal liability arising from its actions.That's it in a nutshell.
27
Dear Mr Douthat,
In his column yesterday, your colleague Paul Krugman congratulated these prostest movements (of both private citizens and corporations) and suggested that they could be evidence of a chain reaction toward lasting change.
I replied: "Not so fast" -- while these oppositions are great, they in no way address the great challenge of our time. Democracy cannot be restored until the Oligarchy is dismantled.
Your column today is much closer to mark. We must not trust rapacious corporations just because they have decent PR campaign or a "human face."
6
Off the rails, again.
Corporations are not persons, except in the eyes of the law and Mitt Romney.
Not sure how Mr. Douthat defines liberalism but the party that represents the Center-left is pushing for increases to minimum wage, affordable, quality health care for all, affordable, quality education for all, retraining for those whose industries are dying due to automation and increased competition, sensible trade policies that require other countries to meet our standards rather than sinking to theirs, a secure social safety net, sensible protections for the environment, using best practices and knowledge to address the problems of the future, etc.
19
And, don’t forget, a hand in your pocket! LOL
The obvious lesson from this column is that we need a strong and active government to control corporations through regulations. Unregulated markets are merely invitations to fraud, well regulated markets are required to achieve the very real benefits touted for "free markets".
To get that, we need to vote the GOP out of power.
156
Vote shmote,
The GOP owns this place, and will not let go.
1
There seems little reason why this situation can last a very long time, if not forever. The trends are self-reinforcing.
4
Or, the song remains the same.
Stock buybacks--produce nothing. They don't hire workers, they don't invest in machines. They make their board members and CEO's rich.
The 500,000 jobs that got increased salaries in WalMArt, That was 2015. Thank Obama!
Think of Fed Ex at Christmas, that hired 330,000 workers, for the temp job of Christmas.
Yes, the gig economy, where there are NO worker protections, is in full swing.
61
The history of stock buybacks is a history of conspiracy by the insanely rich to pay the extremely rich to make them both richer at the expense of the comfortable and the poor.
1
I guess those other shareholders/401ks don’t “count”. LOL
1
The other side of the cynical wokeness of corporations is the catatonia of workers who bring lawsuits opposing having to pay agency fees to their unions and who either support or remain mute in the face of right to work legislation.
Corporations and the wealthy who own and run them will always take care of their interests.
History demonstrates that workers do so only sporadically.
22
The two stories perfectly fit the corporate model. Disassociating from organizations that have become pariahs for the majority is simply protecting corporate revenue streams. While increasing wages well below increases in labor productivity for a whole generation was a cost cutting effort.
Neither story has much to do with corporate virtue, and everything to do with increasing profits.
11
James Lee gets it right about the inherent social and cultural amorality of the legal creature called the Corporation. But add here too, what I think was said by C. Wright Mills, that the American corporation is unsurpassed in it's ability to economically exploit criticism of itself, whether from the right or the left. It's control of the levers for engineering public consent have only grown more subtle and pervasive in the brave new world of social media and the mirage of knowledge created by the internet.
9
One of Mr. Douthat's more astute columns, but one that nevertheless strikes a strange note by treating corporations as people, influenced by the same complex motives that shape individual behavior. SCOTUS, it is true, in the late 19th century endowed these artificial entities with personhood and armored them with all the rights the founders intended for flesh-and-blood human beings. Outside the abstract reality created by this legal doctrine, however, corporations continue to function as profit-driven creatures of capitalism.
Public corporations, whose owners could often populate a large city, operate under the economic imperative imposed by capitalism. They exist solely to make a profit for their shareholders, and any ceo or board of directors who ignores this fact will pay a high price. Many of the owners might prefer their company to behave in a socially responsible way, but the only goal that unites such a diverse group centers on the health of the bottom line.
A small group like the board might seek public acceptance of the corporation's business activities through bold gestures such as support of lgbt rights or rejection of the policies of the NRA. If the market fails to reward such initiatives through increased sales or higher stock prices, however, the board will reverse direction or witness a sell-off of shares.
Douthat's notion of a "peace of Palo Alto" portrays corporate decision-making as a more complex process than I think the facts would warrant.
17
We have to remember that "the corporation" is a creation of capital. It's function is to consolidate and increase surplus capital. It always magnifies the the difference between the rent producers and the rent collectors.
The period that refers to as "the Treaty of Detroit" was a time where organized labor still had some power. More importantly, it was a time when overseas markets had not recovered from WWII and couldn't afford the consumer good that we were churning out.
Globalism isn't about "free trade" and it didn't just happen. It was engineered when capital expansion was tapping out the American worker and economic growth abroad had reached level where its exploitation could be profitable.
Treaties were negotiated, laws were changed, tax policies changed, all toward that end. The final piece of the puzzle was globalizing the financial system. The enormous capital surplus established in the US now reached the entire globe. When countries pushed back, we made them an offer they couldn't refuse.
If the question raised by this article is does capitalism have a conscious? The answer is a resounding NO. It has a single, prime directive-profit and more profit. Profit that leaves social destruction in its wake, profit that is rapidly destroying the planet itself, and profit that has seized control of the levers of government and turned it, like the corporation into another of capital's tools.
120
If you look at http://piketty.pse.ens.fr/files/capital21c/en/pdf/F1.1.pdf you will see that the recovery of Europe was astonishingly rapid after WWII. You can read about the "German Miracle." Remember the Great Prosperity lasted from 1946 to 1973. During this period the output of Europe started a little below ours, but quickly matched ours. By the end of the period it was higher.
Our success was due to policies that minimized corporate power and got money to the people who needed it and would spend it, not to the people who did not need it and would use it to speculate.
Piketty says that we were able to do this because WWI and WWII destroyed enormous amount of capital and thus reduced the power of capitalists. Since 1973, we have seen the return of the centuries old feedback in which the Rich use their wealth to get more power. They then use their power to get more wealth and so on. In the olden days they hired gangs of thugs called knights to extort money from the peasants and merchants. Today they hire politicians to pass laws that benefit them financially.
In a Democracy (if we had one), we should be able to go back to the polices of post WWII and revive our economy, e.g.
Much higher tax rates on the Rich and higher real tax rates on corporations.
More federal spending on worthwhile projects.
Strong regulations on financial speculation like regulation of derivatives.
Strengthen unions like requiring workers to pay for the union benefits they receive.
15
No economic system has a conscience. How could it?
That is why we have an economic system, a political system, and many, many social systems.
A good economic system allows efficient and effective allocation of capital and provides a system of incentives for people to create value, and a mechanism for distribution of wealth.
A good political system allows a society to sustain its economic system while also creating an environment where political and social goals can be achieved.
Don't blame capitalism for a failure of politics. Blame politics.
2
"Capitalism" does not exist - though private enterprises for profit in some degree of competition do. "Capital" is not an actor - it does nothing. Individual human persons work and invest etcetera. Their actions need not be destructive. If such are such is a consequence of their individual human nature or personal past experience. Such can be prevented or inhibited by a government inclined to do so ie a social democracy. The supposed alternative - non-democratic socialism or communism - is generally repressive of human liberty and has been proven to not be able to provide sufficient general well-being and to not be sustainable.
What corporations are doing is called PR. And it's as old as corporations themselves. From a public relations point of view, it made sense to align yourself with the NRA. Now maybe, not so much. Also, corporations do have to think about the values of their workforce since there are real practical ramifications in terms of attracting and keeping talent. (That's all talent. Prior to marriage equality, there were gay blue collar workers who would have not been able to participate in company benefits. now they can.)
There is plenty that can be done to help workers on the economic front if the government would simply adapt policy to the new economy.
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Ross, did you seriously believe that these tax cuts would lead to significantly higher wages?
Please, voodoo economics is, was, and forever shall be a scam. By the year 2017, everyone with a brain should known it was a scam - and that the deficits this scam would incur will not be productive deficits. We are just redistributing money back to oligarchs who will only hide it in the Cayman Islands or use it buy more politicians.
The question that conscience-based conservatives like yourself should be addressing is what went horribly wrong in Christianity after Luther's Reformation - like how Jesus' compassion for the poor and de facto socialist attitudes were transformed into the idiocy of predestination, and the sadism of Calvinist economics; or how Jesus' authentic ethos of compassion, brotherhood, and non-violence was exchanged for one of "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition".
Ross, the fact is that ever since the Reagan devolution, wealth-obsessed conservatives have again and again made fools of conscience-based conservatives; and as openly acknowledged by David Brody in his now infamous Sunday apologia for evangelicals supporting Trump - in which he writes that "the goal of evangelicals has always been winning the larger battle over control of the culture" - these same conservatives long ago sold their souls in an attempt to impose their constipated, corrupted style of Christianity on a nation originally conceived out of an ethos of perfect spiritual freedom.
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"Ross, did you seriously believe that these tax cuts would lead to significantly higher wages?"
His paycheck depends on his believing it.
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And once one sells one’s soul, there is no redemption to be had. Hell awaits the soulless.
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I have faith the invisible hand will back slap him.
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