We can trace it back to 1919, with the landmark US Supreme Court case Dodge v. Ford Motor Company. At the time, the Ford Motor Company had a sizeable capital surplus, and Henry Ford had decided to devote some of it to raising his workers’ wages, which were already considered to be quite high. The Dodge brothers, two of the company’s biggest shareholders, sued Ford for this move, claiming that Ford’s capital actually belonged to his shareholders, and that unnecessarily raising wages was effectively stealing from them. The court ruled in their favour, and a precedent was set. Business decisions
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