I believe that the elections are absolutely sending a message. I believe they are. The election results show that enough people are fed up with the way things are going and are willing to change the type of leadership they have in some cases rather dramatically.
People want some very dramatic change that will help the common folk as quickly as help was given to the financial sector.
I am not at all advocating a Socialist government. I am however, strongly advocating for a change in the type of Capitalism we practice.
What we need is a retreat back to Stakeholder Capitalism where company decisions took into account everyone involved. Vendors, neighbors, customers, employees and shareholders were all considered in the decision making process and in so doing very powerful and strong decisions were made that would keep a company growing and increasing in abilities and stature for years and years to come. This is the advantage of stakeholder capitalism.
Shareholder capitalism on the other makes decisions based almost solely on the wants of the the shareholders. The shareholders, who are risking their money and absolutely deserve to have good decisions made, are nowadays only interested in how much a return can be made in the shortest time. The problem with that is that it really allows no long term planning to occur since the vast majority of the profits go right to the stockholders. This is also the reason for astronomical CEO pay that is seen because the stockholders vote in the board of directors and the goal of the board of directors is of course to stay in that position so their duty in today’s world lies almost completely to the stockholder.
I am not sure that many people have even heard of these two types of capitalism but it would truly make for a far more equitable world while still allowing the wealthy to increase their wealth to a great extent.
It would also allow the less wealthy to move into an area of somewhat more wealth that may give those who have been working hard all their lives to actually retire. As things are going now I will likely die on the job at some point, hopefully far in the future, but unless things change I will never be able to retire. I will work until the day I die.
I am also not advocating that we give high salaries to those that are not doing a job that is good enough to warrant it but we have people that have been doing their jobs for years and have become better and better at it but are making less in real terms than they were 15 or 20 years ago and I find that to be incredibly sad.
