26 THE PROMISE . . .
seeking a job with a living wage found one. Growth would multiply from the bottom up! Making the global economy more sustainable and inclusive through enlightened employment opportunities and mindful consumption patterns could have multiple aggregating benefits. Every socioeconomic stratum would benefit, most especially the least fortunate. Are business and finance responsible for solving this challenge? No, not on their own, of course. But could they help? Sure, especially in their hiring practices. Stakeholder capitalism appears uniquely well suited to frame and help execute this ambitious plan, too. Stakeholder capitalism strives to account for interdependencies within entire corporate and social ecosystems systematically. It also advocates a heightened focus on intergenerational justice. In other words, stakeholder capitalism explicitly recognizes that decisions we take now will impact generations unborn. With its longer-term orientation, stakeholder capitalism explicitly embraces our obligations to our kids and our kids’ kids. Businesses can help by mindfully promoting more economic mobility. If they can, they should. Today, in most developed economies, the most predictive variable of one’s ultimate income level is one’s income starting point, a factor readily traced to zip codes. This was not the case in most Western countries just a few decades ago, including the United States. In the 1950s, fifth-quintile American wage earners had a nearly 50 percent chance of getting to the top quintile; today, only 8 percent do. American economic mobility has ossified. Economic ossification has a fatally corrosive social impact: it extinguishes hope. The same is true across much of Europe and other developed nations. Formerly typical “rags to riches” stories have become all but impossible to achieve. The vast majority of those few who now fall into this category are professional athletes, fashionistas, or pop stars. As the Harvard ethicist John Rawls persuasively argued, the idea of anyone being penalized or favored simply because of the circumstances of their birth tears at our innate sense of justice.13 No one reasonably believes one’s starting point in life or one’s unchosen familial circumstances should forever be one’s ceiling. Individual desires, abilities, and, most importantly, personal initiative and effort should also matter. If not, why proclaim that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights? A fourth systemic social issue that has suffered from insufficient progress over the decades is long-standing civil inequities relating to race and gender. How much business and finance can do about these is unclear, but they are stubborn problems that should be fixed. American justice isn’t color
