Buttigieg confronted by voters over work for McKinsey

[BeyondGeography]

CONCORD, N.H. — Pete Buttigieg is getting grilled by voters about his work at the corporate consulting firm McKinsey — a chapter of his career that's increasingly dogging his campaign.

The repeated questions about McKinsey on the trail here — Buttigieg was asked about it once on Thursday and twice Friday — come amid recent media scrutiny of Buttigieg's stint at the firm. The New York Times ran a lengthy article and an editorial this week titled "Buttigieg’s Untenable Vow of Silence."

... Buttigieg was confronted by one of them at a packed house party on Friday. Alan Cantor told the candidate that McKinsey is more interested in maximizing shareholder value than in helping communities or workers.

“They've done a lot of bad things,” said Alan Cantor of Concord, who is undecided in the race. “I don't think it's a good place. What do you think?” Buttigieg mentioned, as he often does, his work at McKinsey analyzing grocery store pricing. He said McKinsey's work for Purdue upset him.

... Cantor said he wasn't sold on Buttigieg's answer about McKinsey, though he thought the candidate was thoughtful. The Concord resident favors Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) for now. “I think his answer was very good as far as it went,” Cantor said. “The next question is: I'm trying to figure out where his values are?”

https://www.politico.com/amp/news/2019/12/06/pete-buttigieg-mckinsey-work-077173?__twitter_impression=true

Clip of this exchange below:

Link to tweet

[question everything]

1. Many young bright people have worked for them

They hire Harvard graduates no questions asked. Really. And working for a consulting company means that hey know only thier specific section. Give him credit for earning his living at the private sector as opposed to making it in politics and academia with no understanding of what making a living means for most of us.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Seriously?

Teachers and legislators have no clue about the real world compared with consultants tasked with finding creative ways to run up the score?

I can’t believe some of the stuff I read on this board.

[JoeOtterbein]

4. I feel your pain!

I'm often told that all will be ok.

[SaschaHM]

10. Yeah, no. They don't.

Ivy League grads go through a rigorous interview/recruitment/internship process to get hired by McKinsey.

I say that as a Yale grad familiar with the rigors of the process. They don't just hire anyone with an Ivy League degree. They winnow it down significantly.

There are places that hire Ivy League grads no questions asked. None of the big consulting firms were.

[stopdiggin]

2. oh, please!

well .. THIS is certain to be a real game changer for .....? Someone? BIG controversy!

“The next question is: I'm trying to figure out where his values are?”

and, again ... Oh, PLEASE!

[Grins]

5. AGREE!!!!!!!

This is a stupid nit by people who want a diversion.

You really want to base your vote on who should be the Party’s presidential candidate over who he worked for...how many years ago? Because he analyzed effing grocery prices?

The problems of this nation are immense. Discuss those.

Side note: McKinsey more concerned about shareholder value?
YES! That’s what companies do - ALL companies.

[BeyondGeography]

7. You could always read up on them and understand why this is an issue for Buttigieg

McKinsey & Company: Capital's Willing Executioners

An insider’s perspective on how the world’s most elite consulting firm spreads the gospel of capitalism…

The author of this piece has chosen to maintain anonymity.

To those convinced that a secretive cabal controls the world, the usual suspects are Illuminati, Lizard People, or “globalists.” They are wrong, naturally. There is no secret society shaping every major decision and determining the direction of human history. There is, however, McKinsey & Company.

The biggest, oldest, most influential, and most prestigious of the “Big Three” management consulting firms, McKinsey has played an outsized role in creating the world we occupy today. In its 90+ year history, McKinsey has been a whisperer to presidents and CEOs. McKinsey serves more than 2,000 institutions, including 90 of the top 100 corporations worldwide. It has acted as a catalyst and accelerant to every trend in the world economy: firm consolidation, the rise of advertising, runaway executive compensation, globalization, automation, and corporate restructuring and strategy.

I came into my job as a McKinsey consultant hoping to change the world from the inside, believing that the best way to make progress is through influencing those who control the levers of power. Instead of being a force for good, I found myself party to the most damaging forces affecting the world: the resurgence of authoritarianism and the continued creep of markets into all parts of life.

Your views of McKinsey’s impact on the world will be largely determined by your views on capitalism’s impact on the world, for few firms have made a greater impact on the prevailing economic system. If you believe, as I once did, that capitalism is the least bad system devised so far, that its worst excesses can be reined in through effective regulation, that it has been the largest engine for human progress in human history, then McKinsey is a Good Thing. As missionaries for capital, it has helped spread the Good Word far and wide, making the world more productive and efficient as a result.

If, however, you believe that, whatever capitalism’s role in history, its continued practice poses an existential threat to governments, the biosphere, and poor people the world over, then the firm’s role is that of a co-conspirator to a crime in which we are all victims. McKinsey is capitalism distilled. It is global, mobile, flexible, and unabashedly pro-market and pro-management. The firm has an enormous stake in things continuing more or less as they are. Working for all sides, McKinsey’s only allegiance is to capital. As capital’s most effective messenger, McKinsey has done direct harm to the world in ways that, thanks to its lack of final decision-making power, are hard to measure and, thanks to its intense secrecy, are hard to know. The firm’s willingness to work with despotic governments and corrupt business empires is the logical conclusion of seeking profit at all costs. Its advocacy of the primacy of the market has made governments more like businesses and businesses more like vampires. By claiming that they solve the world’s hardest problems, McKinsey shrinks the solution space to only those that preserve the status quo. And it is through this claim that the firm attracts thousands of “the best and the brightest” away from careers that actually serve the public...

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/02/mckinsey-company-capitals-willing-executioners

[OKNancy]

6. After Chelsea Clinton finished Oxford, she worked for McKinsey

At that time it was a huge honor to work for them. Cream of the crop went there.

[msongs]

8. one leading dem spent years being a republican and supporting republican policies nt

[BeyondGeography]

9. Like busing?

https://www.cnn.com/2019/07/06/politics/elizabeth-warren-busing-desegregation-kfile/index.html

And understanding why people go broke?

[brooklynite]

11. I managed a contract with McKinsey

They do a huge range of consulting tasks. Not clear what the concern is.