Monday, April 13, 2015

Profits As A Reward For Risk Carrying?


Economists often argue that this is the ultimate function of corporate profits:  They reward those who bear the risks, and the losses punish those who made the wrong guesses in the corporate games.  So it's all ethical, right?

Given this, I find the new focus on transferring risks to employees an interesting one.  Logically every step towards workers-as-the-real-entrepreneurs should make it harder to justify high profits, correct?  But I'm not seeing that trend to follow the other new trend, this one, say:

Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is probing chain clothing retailers for their practice of on-call scheduling, which forces workers into a purgatory of not knowing from day to day whether they'll have to report for duty, making something as simple as planning childcare or attending college extremely difficult—if the boss doesn't force you to quit school altogether.

This is not the only example of the new trend.  Corporations are now demanding no risks from what governments might do in the future, for example, as is visible in the trade agreements.