If CEOs Think Consumer Demand Is a Problem, They Should Demand Economic Policies That Address It

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The Wall Street Journal reports that American CEOs are worried about the lousy state of consumer demand:

Chief executives at top companies expect to face a series of pitfalls over 2014, including wage stagnation in the developed world, uneven growth in the developing world and looming cuts in the U.S. health-care sector.

….In the U.S., executives highlighted wage stagnation and underemployment as undermining demand for their goods and services. For instance, although car sales have helped prop up overall growth in the U.S., Renault-Nissan CEO Carlos Ghosn said the 15.7 million cars sold there last year was still below the level reached in 2007.

Alan Clark, chief executive of beer giant SABMiller PLC, said in an interview that growth for premium light beers, which make up a quarter of the U.S. market, is still slow because of higher unemployment or underemployment rates among beer drinkers.

….The problem of passing along high costs to employees also looms large. “It is not a solution to pass (health-care) costs on to the working class, who haven’t seen real wage increases,” said Bernard Tyson, chief executive of Kaiser Permanente.

This seems very sensible. Wage stagnation and unemployment are huge challenges for companies that make consumer products—which, eventually, includes just about every company in the world. So why aren’t these CEOs clamoring for economic policies that might actually address this?

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2022 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate