Think the “Buffett” tax won’t affect your savings? Think again. In a recent U.S. News.com piece Senior White House Writers Director Josh Gilder examines the economic and social implications of President Obama’s fiscal policies. The real losers continue to be those the President is purportedly protecting – the middle class and the American economy.
To read the full text of Mr. Gilder’s article, please click here.
“If the American people are largely uninformed on scientific issues, as the media so often complains, is it possible that one reason is the appallingly low level of science and health reporting in the media itself?” asks White House Writer Joshua Gilder in U.S. News and World Report, “Scientific Reporting on Organic Food is Out to Lunch.” Reporting on organic farming is a case in point. Ever wonder how organic farmers protect their crops without pesticides? They don’t. Despite the constant misinformation about “pesticide free” organic produce, organic farmers DO use pesticides – a lot of them — and many are highly toxic.
To read the rest of Mr. Gilder’s article, click here.
A recent article in the McKinsey Quarterly gets it right: authors Tracey Keys et al talk about CSR as a “creative opportunity to fundamentally strengthen [one’s] businesses while contributing to society at the same time.” The usual approaches – i.e. “pet projects” that reflect “the personal interests of individual senior executives or “propaganda” designed to build a company’s reputation – both fail the test of sound CSR, which they define as “the opportunity for significant shared value creation.” Definitely worth a read.
Try googling the phrase, “businesses should put something back into society.” Philip Booth, writing in the latest issue of the Journal of the Institute of Economic Affairs got 21.7 million hits. I tried it, and got over 30 million. So the idea must be growing in popularity by the minute.
As Booth points out, “giving back to society” is the fundamental idea behind most discussions of corporate responsibility. But it’s fair to ask, don’t businesses by their very nature give to society? Certainly, every profitable business, by definition is giving something to society that people want – indeed, something they want so much they’re willing to pay for it. They might even be willing to work for the money to pay for it, thereby doubly benefiting society.
The primary flaw in most thinking about corporate responsibility is that it assumes that all profit-making corporations are rapacious predators (on the environment, natural resources, the disadvantaged – you fill in the blank). CR thus becomes, effectively, a way of paying reparations for their otherwise nasty behavior.
It’s pretty certain, however, that the people who invented and are continually refining the computer chip (to give one example) have done more for human well-being and happiness, as well as the environment, the husbanding of natural resources and the disadvantaged (you fill in the blank) than all the CR campaigns since the beginning of the world put together — and they all did it to make a profit.