General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: In 1981, I was a full time stock clerk at an Ohio Big Bear grocery store making 12.60 an hour [View all]PatrickforB
(14,631 posts)We have valued wealth over labor for decades, and now workers are becoming restive. Unionizing. Demanding better wages and old-style pensions. Health care.
To my mind, and I've said it many times on here, the root cause is the legal doctrine of shareholder primacy. We do indeed value profits over people, stemming from the 1919 MI Supreme Court ruling against Henry Ford. The Dodge brothers sued Ford on the basis that paying his factory workers too highly deprived them of profits to which they were 'entitled' as shareholders. And they won.
That's the root cause. Change that to make worker interests, consumer interests and the environment legally equal to shareholder profits in corporate governance, enforce that through strong regulation, and we would solve many problems.