It's reflected in stories like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/apr/27/inflation-corporate-america-increased-prices-profits

Simon sinek is a leadership coach and has some people centric views on corporations, profit and leadership. He's a hard critic of Jack Welch as a symbol of late stage capitalism.

Started on Adam Smith "the customer is the goal" and got it got to trickle down economics and shareholder supremacy at the cost of employees, customers and environment.

In this video you can see his shortest summary on historic views on capitalism.

Every video I see from him he's brutal when mentioning Jack Welch, the thought leader of GE in the 80s, that turned things from a generation of loyalty to a company over 50y to massive layoffs season at Xmas because shareholders are unhappy.

https://youtu.be/DNwHqrjB4rM?si=_TuPXme0xEvuzXyl

I think this is neat. I prompted chatGPT-4 with your question about the above comment. This was the result:

Your perspective on the issues with the current focus on continual profit growth in American businesses is indeed echoed in various discussions and criticisms in the business and academic world.

A significant point of critique is the heavy emphasis on shareholder value, often at the expense of other stakeholders. This shareholder-centric view has been dominant for some time, with the primary objective seen as maximizing profits for shareholders. However, this perspective often disregards the broader responsibilities and long-term vision of companies. Recently, there has been a shift towards "stakeholder capitalism," where companies are increasingly recognizing the importance of considering the interests of all stakeholders, including society at large, and not just focusing on short-term financial performance. This approach aims to foster a more sustainable balance between short-term pressures and long-term value creation, and helps restore trust in companies as vital contributors to society [❞].

The pursuit of continual growth and the pressure to exceed previous profit margins has also been critiqued for leading to other detrimental effects. For instance, unchecked business growth can result in increased workload, higher competition, a deviation from the original business vision, lower-quality customer relationships, and faster team member turnover. These factors can contribute to a loss of the unique qualities that made a business successful in the first place and may ultimately lead to less success in the long term [❞].

Furthermore, in the realm of stock prices and corporate valuation, the relationship between growth expectations and stock performance is more complex than often portrayed. Research suggests that growth expectations might have less impact on asset prices than traditional models suggest. This indicates that the market's demand doesn't react strongly to changes in expected returns, challenging the common belief that consistently higher profits directly lead to higher stock prices [❞].

These critiques highlight the complexities and potential pitfalls of the current American business model, which prioritizes constant profit growth and shareholder value, often at the expense of broader, long-term goals and responsibilities.