Americans enjoy a form of pension fund socialism
Janan Ganesh rightly says that the US has become a social democratic country (“Popularity of Biden’s stimulus reveals a changed US”, Opinion, March 3). But it has been a social democratic country long before the issue mesmerised millennials. Ever since the antebellum period and Werner Sombart’s Why is there No Socialism in the United States? (1906), pension fund socialism has given Americans a large stake in equity capital and control of the largest US corporations.
It’s less like chess than an AI-powered video game
You ask what is the goal of the business corporation. But this is a fallacious question. This is tackling the corporation on the level of a grade schoolchild. The business corporation sets more than one goal and they vary significantly.
German management in the Wirecard headlights
There is one misunderstanding as to why fatal “accidents” such as Wirecard occur in German businesses (“German corporations — and regulation — are in the dock,” Opinion, July 1). The driving economist in Jonathan Guthrie’s article claims that accidents happen because Germany adopted the structures of top management from the US. But, the board and top management structure were first invented and designed in Germany, by Georg Siemens (1839-1901) when building Deutsche Bank in the 1870s. The US gleaned from Germany, not the other way around.
