Slap on the wrist?_其他_趣味英语-查字典英语网

Slap on the wrist?

In fact, one could well argue that we are currently closer to Friedman’s utopia than during any other period in living memory. The Supreme Court has vastly loosened restrictions on corporate spending on the political process, trade policy has supported a decades-long trend toward foreign investment, offshoring and outsourcing, corporate taxes are at a historic low, and even the worst financial crisis in decades has hardly resulted in more than a slap on the regulatory wrist for the guilty parties.

But one wonders what even Milton Friedman might think if he could survey today’s wreckage. Would he have any remorse at the sight of bailed-out banks generating huge profits while ordinary Americans struggled to find and keep jobs and millions more faced foreclosure? Would he feel any necessity to reexamine his own argument, in particular that line that states that businessmen should conform “to the basic rules of the society, both those embodied in law and those embodied in ethical custom”?

Because the huge loophole gaping wide open there is hard to miss. It has two parts:

First, what does it mean to play by the rules when you are writing the rules in your own favor? It is obviously in the interest of corporations to lobby Congress for laws that help them to increase their profits. But it is by no means clear that such a practice is in the best interest of society as a whole.

Second, there is the matter of just what precisely is defined as “embodied in ethical custom.” What do Americans believe, what values do we share that should, perhaps, also be shared by our corporations? Inadvertently or not, by throwing “custom” a bone, Friedman opened up a huge can of worms. Maybe, as a society, we do believe that corporations have an obligation to boost employment at home rather than abroad, or pay their fair share of taxes. Maybe, as a society, we think it is repugnant that Fortune 500 CEOs make 400 times as much as their average worker. Maybe, in general, we support the clean air and water regulations that corporate lobbyists are so eager to castrate?