Yunus understands grassroots capitalism and his Grameen Bank gives small loans to people in the poorest villages in Bangladesh to start small businesses.
It sounds as though "social dividend" is a euphemism for "loss." If the shareholders want to be charitable with their money, they can do so out of dividends. There's no need for a phony "social dividend."
This is really nothing new. Under Marxist president Salvador Allende, the Chilean government tried a similar scheme. In addition to "capitalist" profit, nationalized firms were credited with all kinds of other "social benefits," to make it look as though they were doing something besides losing money.
Unless some way is found to subsidize the firms crediting themselves with a "social dividend," they'll eventually eat up all their capital and go broke.
"For instance, how many children did a food company rescue from malnutrition or how many lives did a pharmaceutical company's drug save in a given quarter?"
Both of those are impossible metrics to determine.
Not every kid who doesn't eat your yogurt would have starved to death. If that were the case, that country wouldn't be be overpopulated.
Not everyone who doesn't take your drug, dies. Ditto.
What a load of caca!
People will take the cheap yogurt and sell it door to door, at market price, well past it's expiration date I'm sure.
It will also put all the poor mom n pop yogurt shops out of business. He's going to be the walmart of yogurt! ;)
I hate socialism more and more each day.
Thanks to this article, I have a new tagline.