The earlier [capitalist] model said that corporations had a duty to ensure the well-being of employees, and an obligation to the community (chiefly but not exclusively fulfilled through corporate tax payments).
That model has been replaced by one in which corporation managers are responsible for creating short-term "value" for owners, as measured by stock valuation and quarterly dividends.
The practical result has been constant pressure to reduce wages and worker benefits (leading in some cases to theft of pensions and other crimes), and political lobbying and public persuasion to lower the corporate tax contribution to government finance and the public interest.
This evolution offends me to the core (even more than individual self-deresponsibilization): The emphasis on the bottom line has resulted in way too many things being left off the balance sheet, such as all the intangible benefits (e.g. reinvesting in the worker population by paying taxes) and environmental costs (e.g., pave paradise put up a parking lot, and all the packaging for single-serving commodities that ends up in landfills). I could go on...
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