Early one Monday morning this August, the Business Roundtable — an organization comprised of CEOs from almost 200 major US companies — released an official press release that announced a startling pivot: Focusing on shareholder payouts should not be all there is to running a company.
What the Business Roundtable finally echoed was the growing sentiment bubbling up from observant HR professionals, workers, unions, and policy advocates for nearly four decades: Milton Friedman was wrong, supply-side economic models are flawed and incomplete, and maximizing profits should not come at the expense of consumers.