From the diaries by Leon…
Defending his administration’s push to enhance regulation of private enterprise, President Barack Obama told a Chamber of Commerce audience on Monday that companies have a responsibility to ensure that everyone profits from their expansion.
If we’re fighting to reform the tax code and increase exports, the benefits cannot just translate into greater profits and bonuses for those at the top. They have to be shared by American workers, who need to know that opening markets will lift their standard of living as well as your bottom line.
Opening markets to international trade and investment benefits every economy. The president has made this argument when he enacted a trade agreement with South Korea in December and during Chinese President Hu Jintao’s state visit last month, he continually pointed out that businesses and their workers profit from economic growth halfway across the world. (Even if major impediments remain to a truly free Sino-American trade relationship, on both sides.)
The fact that economic freedom benefits the whole of society, from business executives to ordinary workers, is both evident and of secondary importance when contemplating the morality of the marketplace.
Businesses do not have a social responsibility and government has no business trying to enforce it.
A business is the extension of individual ability and productivity. Just as every man is entitled to the sweat of his own brow, every business is entitled to reap the rewards of its own ingenuity and labor.
The movers of a private company are the people who create. It is just that the people who invent new products or design new strategies earn more than those who make their products or execute their strategies. It is just that chief executives, who lead multibillion dollar enterprises across the globe, earn more than their workers who posses far lesser skills.
Every man is rewarded according to his ability on a free market. No man is forced to “share” against his will—certainly not with the people who depend on him for an income in the first place!
Moe Lane
Dan Spencer
Dan McLaughlin
Jeff Emanuel
Nick, I read this as well
lineholder (Diary) Monday, February 7th at 6:35PM EDT (link)Put it in another diary today, but that’s of no matter to me.
I agree that this notion that businesses should be “sharing the wealth” simply as a dictate of government’s will is ridiculous. The Chamber of Commerce doesn’t have control over the laws of supply and demand, meaning that until demand increases, businesses will continue to sit on the funds they have saved.
I don’t what it is going to take for Obama et al. to understand that simply because government wants to dictate a policy doesn’t mean that the people who provide the impetus for supply and demand mechanisms in a free market will respond to it.
I know a lot of people 40+ right now, genuinely concerned about SocSec and looking at their future in years ahead, and they aren’t willing to go overboard on what they spend.
Daley has his work cut out for him if wants obama
carolina Monday, February 7th at 7:07PM EDT (link)to stop sounding like a complete idiot when it comes to the business world. obama is a redistributionist to the core. He doesn’t have a clue it seems – because he told O’Reilly that he was NOT a redistributionist – since “he hadn’t raised taxes on anyone”. obama’s ignorence is breath-taking.
Percentage Rent
jackhammer Tuesday, February 8th at 5:33AM EDT (link)As someone who grew up in a retailers household, I can tell you, if someone wants to share the success, and share the risk, it can be a great business deal both ways.
an example is % rent. Sadly usually only the worst performing malls are going o give you this. But in general if I know that whether my sales are $100 a sqft or $1000 a squft, my rental cost is going to be 7% of that, I can make money no matter how much or little sales I do in the store (of course with capital costs and basic inventory and labor costs covered).
If labor wants to play this game, then I’m sure most manufacturers and employers would be up for it….let’s say 8% of total sales….which means in a year like 2008 when sales dropped by maybe 30%, well your income drops by 30%…..is that on obama’s table too?
Obama is 1/2 right
jakob29 (Diary) Tuesday, February 8th at 10:21AM EDT (link)IMO, companies should take into account their workers when making business decisions. The government has no right to force them to do so however.
Maybe it is the 10 years of my Jesuit Education, but I don’t see any problem with a multi-staker holder approach to business ethics; I do think businesses would be better served if more of them adopted that approach.