A New Era of Corporate American Service

As an MBA student, I remember studying the health care issue in an economics class. There was an article that made an impression on me so much that the gist of it I can still remember. The author stated that much of the health care costs were being driven in part by laws that have been passed by Congress over decades. In other words, according to this author, it was the government intervention that created the environment for escalating costs in the first place. My questions are these... Why in a nation that has a multitude of wealthy corporations has the government been pointed to as the solution for regulating health care costs? Why can't companies directly provide services/solutions directly to their workers instead of relying on the increasingly more and more costly insurance system?

The author of the aforementioned article went on to state that he felt that the solution was not government socialism but corporate socialism. This would take place with corporations who provide basic societal needs to its workers rather than the government. Of course, many of us realize that corporations could be doing much more in looking after the needs of its workers. All too often the mindset of corporate America is that it's workers are nothing more than an expense on their balance sheet.

The military model is one that I understand due to having served in the Air Force. I remember having no bills and all of my meals were provided to me as I served my country. Married couples would be provided a house to live in on the base. There was a commissary (military word for grocery store) that we used to buy food. Military members who lived off base or were married living in based housing received separate rations (extra pay) that paid for at least a majority of the food purchased in the commissary.

In this era of media exposed corporate greed, corporations have a responsibility to their workers and to nation. This means that many of them must "step up" to change their priorities from "making money" toward the greater purpose of serving their workforce and the public with good products & services at a fair price. Corporations, like individuals, must rule themselves well if they wish to remain free.

I believe that due to the external factors of the recent past that the era of corporate indulgence is over and the era of "servant-centered" business and corporate entities has begun. It is time to begin to think in new ways by replacing paradigms that produced billion dollar payouts at the top and low-wages without benefits at the bottom. For America to remain free, corporations as a whole must begin to act worthy of that freedom.