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Earlier this year, a group of top chief executives from around the country, led by JPMorgan Chase JPM, +0.94% boss Jamie Dimon, committed to breaking away from the long-held conviction that the primary purpose of the corporation is to maximize shareholder value.
Now, their newfound purpose is supposedly to include all of its stakeholders, from employees and suppliers to the broader society.
Democratic presidential hopeful Elizabeth Warren isn’t buying it:
‘If Jamie Dimon thinks it’s a good idea for giant corporations like JPMorgan Chase to have multiple obligations, he and I agree. Then let’s make that the law.’
Otherwise, as Warren explained to CNBC in a ranging interview over the weekend, the whole thing starts to unravel.
“They’ll say they’re going to do it on their own, they may make some adjustments. But understand this: There’s a reason you put laws in place,” she said. “Because the one who doesn’t follow voluntarily is the one who then gets a little short-term comparative advantage, gets to boost the share price just a little bit.”
Read: Mark Cuban shreds Warren’s proposals
Warren, who claims to be a capitalist to her bones, says a major headwind to leveling the playing field for the working class is that the “government listens disproportionately to rich guys who don’t want to pay taxes.”
For example, it took Republicans all of about five weeks to call everybody in and pass huge tax breaks for the rich, she said.
“The folks at the top, they get heard all the time in Washington,” she said. “I want middle-class families to get heard in Washington.”
She pointed out that the bottom 99% will pay about 7.2% of their total wealth in taxes while the top one-tenth of the 1%, will pay less than half that.
“It’s not just about asking to pay taxes, it’s about what we do with those taxes,” she said, as she launched into her plan to levy a tax on the very tip of the wealth pyramid. “Two cents with the millionaires and billionaires, or invest that money in every one of our children and in growing our economy.”
Watch the full interview:
