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Forbes Research’s Inside The Numbers recently highlighted a striking trend: C-suite leaders keep telling the public that employees come before shareholders, and companies are busy telling themselves — and voters — that their people are their priority. That chorus of corporate conscience has become the new playbook for public relations from the boardroom to the quarterly call, as executives try to recast their mission away from old-school profit talk and toward a kinder, gentler stakeholder rhetoric.
This new posture was made official in 2019 when nearly 200 CEOs signed the Business Roundtable pledge to serve customers, employees, suppliers and communities alongside shareholders — an apparent revolutionary rewrite of corporate purpose. But serious skeptics and academic researchers have pointed out the obvious: rhetoric is cheap and governance rarely changes; empirical studies and reporting show many of these promises have not translated into concrete legal or structural shifts.
The proof is in the balance sheets. While companies trumpet their devotion to “stakeholders,” corporate America is still flooding investors with cash — buybacks and dividends remain massive, and S&P data shows buybacks reached eye-popping levels in recent years as firms prioritize returning capital to markets. That’s not a detail; it’s the clearest measure of whose interests really come first when the rubber hits the road.
Let’s call this what it is: virtue signaling dressed up as policy. CEOs have mastered the art of polishing their brands for the woke court while keeping business models tuned to lift stock prices and enrich executives. Hardworking Americans who clock in every day don’t need platitudes about “investing in employees” — they need higher wages, real job security and companies that invest in productivity, not just headlines and acquiescence to activist fads.
Conservatives have every right to be skeptical of this double talk. The free market rewards companies that deliver value, create jobs and keep America competitive; shareholder accountability is the tool that disciplines bad management and protects ordinary investors and pensioners alike. If CEOs want our trust, they should stop using workers as props in a PR campaign and start showing sustained, measurable commitments that improve pay, training and long-term investment.
In the end, patriotic Americans should demand transparency and results, not corporate virtue theater. Shareholders and voters must hold boards and executives to the same standard they apply to every other institution: show the outcomes, not the slogans, and prove that putting people first really means investing in the businesses that employ them and keep this country prosperous.
