There's always some stimulus for consumers and the command to shop heavily. Washington is beating on financiers to lend to somebody - anybody! - even though heedless lending got us into this mess. Warren Buffett and other tycoons are urging people to buy stocks.
But those with the power to create and destroy jobs seem to get a pass. It's time to bring employers into the national self-help group. The economy is in grave danger. Enormous financial institutions are crumbling. Yesterday, Goldman Sachs predicted U.S. unemployment will reach 9 percent, the highest since the early 1980s.
As taxpayers spend what's likely to be more than $1 trillion to help Corporate America, Corporate America ought to return the favor by minimizing layoffs.
I know what you're thinking. Businesses have a legal duty to maximize profits for shareholders. It's not strictly true. Courts give corporate boards broad authority to balance the interests of owners with those of employees and community. Otherwise shareholders could sue to stop United Way donations and other efforts toward the greater good.
The financial meltdown threatens everybody. Self-interest is making things worse. It's Independence Day, when Americans and Russians, Arabs and Israelis need to drop their differences to fight the greasy aliens.
Adam Smith, whom everyone quotes on the virtues of selfishness, realized philanthropy gets you only so far. But he also knew that "beneficence" is part of human nature and valuable for recipients as well as givers.
"How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their happiness necessary to him though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it," he wrote.
Going easy on the layoffs in coming months can certainly produce that kind of dividend. But if employers' beneficence helps the economy avoid the abyss, it'll eventually boost everybody's bottom line, too. Including theirs.
