Some CEOs Think We Need to Reinvent Capitalism

This is fascinating...even CEOs such as Aetna's chief are realizing that the current brand of capitalism is damaging.

"But Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, recently offered another, starker rationale for creating more well-paid jobs: The survival of capitalism depends on it.

“If we don’t reinvent the capitalist model,” Bertolini told the Committee for Economic Development, a business-led public policy organization, “we will lose it because it will be changed for us.” " Fast Company, "Aetna CEO: Capitalism Will Suffer "Death by a Thousand Cuts" If Income Inequality Persists", Rick Wartzman, 10.3.2017.

So CEO's are realizing that they can't continue to hold down wages when workers help contribute to the bottom line.

"Worry is mounting among top executives that the nation’s economic system may be at risk if more of corporate America can’t move beyond its single-minded focus on “maximizing shareholder value.” With income inequality at historic highs, they say, it is incumbent on business to help spread prosperity.

“Society will soon demand change through the ballot box or in the streets,” Peter Georgescu, the former CEO of advertising giant Young & Rubicam, declares in his book Capitalists Arise!, published last May." Ibid.

So will they start changing? Did it take this election to make them wake up? Why did it take them so long? And why did it have to take this election to punch them in the face, when we are so close to a crack up? They should have started realizing that capitalism needed to change back in 2009. We also need economists to change the idea that businesses' sole responsibility is to the shareholder and we need Harvard Business School to start stressing corporations' responsibility to society as a whole.