Companies Shouldn’t Be Accountable Only to Shareholders
In this case the author matters a bit.  It&#x27;s Elizabeth Warren, the congress woman who is putting forth a bill to &quot;reign in&quot; wall street.<p>I&#x27;m a fan of her and I like the parts of the bill that I&#x27;ve seen.  I think we do need more regulation on wall street.<p>&gt; That shift has had a tremendous effect on the economy. In the early 1980s, large American companies sent less than half their earnings to shareholders, spending the rest on their employees and other priorities. But between 2007 and 2016, large American companies dedicated 93% of their earnings to shareholders. Because the wealthiest 10% of U.S. households own 84% of American-held shares, the obsession with maximizing shareholder returns effectively means America’s biggest companies have dedicated themselves to making the rich even richer.<p>One of the best things I learned from becoming an engineer was the concept of feedback loops and how you need to constantly monitor and dampen them when they start to get out of control.  The above certainly illustrates how the wealth gap started to increase over the past 30 years.<p>I&#x27;m not sure what the correct ratio of how to payout mopey to employees vs owners but you could start by looking at what ratio public hedge funds or investment banks payout(like Virtu or GS).<p>&gt; In the four decades after World War II, shareholders on net contributed more than $250 billion to U.S. companies. But since 1985 they have extracted almost $7 trillion<p>This is just intentionally obfuscating.  What percentage of the dividends paid out where reinvested automatically.  What percentage of the cash paid out in stock buy backs went right back into the market,  you cant&#x27; tell because in the first line she used net contributions, but int he second she only mentions the money flowing out but not the net.   It actually could be net positive but that wouldn&#x27;t fit her narrative.<p>&gt; My bill also would give workers a stronger voice in corporate decision-making at large companies. Employees would elect at least 40% of directors.<p>I really like this idea.  I assume the directors would be qualified people and not just a random employee.<p>To be honest the largest issue I see int he markets now is the dictator model where a single founder controls the voting.  We&#x27;ve only seen this model in tech work during the bull tech market of 2004-present.  2008 was down but tech still did much better than most other asset classes.<p>What happens when  tech has another 2001 and people want Mark Zuckerberg fired or they want Google to focus on their bread and butter instead of the moon shots that cost them money, or Snap to, well do anything to earn the valuation that they and promises that they fooled everyone with.