Dan read a book awhile back, when he was working on rewriting the bylaws for his company, that stated that the board of directors of a company needed to take 3 groups into consideration:
1) Employees 2) Shareholders 3) Community in which the company operated
What I've seen lately has me believing that many companies now are worried mostly about their responsibility to the shareholders, and not to the other two groups.
Alas, Julia, it is much worse than that. Many of the largest corporations are led by people who care nothing about ANY of these three groups.
There are several thousand conspiratorial aristocrats out there who appoint each other onto boards of directors. These boards then hire each others' members as Presidents and CEOs. They then create "independent compensation boards" that decide how to pay these officers... and appoint each other onto these boards.
Any surprise, then, that these boards declare that they must pay the CEO $140 million - even during a year when the stock has plummeted and the stockholders got hosed... because "his talents and skills are unmatched and worth every penny"?
I had thought that this particular abuse was already made illegal in Teddy Roosevelt's time, when the Anti Trust Act banned "interlocking directorates". I keep expecting that clause to be brought out, dusted off and used to send these bastards to jail. But so far, nothing.
Stepping back and taking perspective, it is a fairly typical aristo raid... happens every generation and we eventually stop them. This time, with the White House in their pocket, they have expanded the raid to include 'borrowing" half a trillion $ from our grand children in order to hand it over to 20,000 golf buddies.
These are some long-term palliatives that are long overdue. Tax laws should favor, rather than inhibit, employee stock plans that gradually ramp up worker ownership of their own companies. This win-win scenario is long overdue for a big push. The aristos call this pinko but it is true capitalism in every essence... only a version that has compelling logic and justice to it. When employees overlap with investor stockholders, you'll get real supervision and management will serve them both... as the law already says that it should.
db
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