, Columnist
Why Are Corporate Titans So Clueless at Politics?
If U.S corporate leaders want to play a useful role in public policy debates, they should offer ideas, not recycled talking points.
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The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executive officers of the largest U.S. companies, held a lunch for reporters this week on what's wrong with the economy. A better question might be what's wrong with the country's chief executives.
In the face of persistently high unemployment and slow economic growth, the two executives hosting the lunch (the Roundtable insisted they not be identified) didn't talk about this year's government spending cuts, the best course for monetary policy or even reducing regulations. Instead, they talked about theirplanto cut Social Security and Medicare, which they called a drag on economic growth.