Two Financial Americas

Establishment corporate America is connected to the financial system and makes a significant amount of money from financial activities and from government schemes. That money comes with significant strings attached, and those strings explain why there's so many "woke" corporations, when the overall population doesn't necessarily subscribe to that political point-of-view.

There are lots of other companies who do not make money from Wall Street at all. That's mom and pop America. They probably do have financing from banks are other similar entities, but they still have to make a "profit" the old fashioned way.

Which approach is better? For employees and for the nation overall.

For employees, it seems to make sense to live in the bubble of establishment corporate America, because the salaries and benefits are higher. For some people like me, the wokeist nonsense is annoying, but it's pretty minimal. Over the past couple of years with covid, though, it reached a screeching level of insanity that shows the true character of those businesses--they're run by feckless cowards who will just go along with whatever a demented oligarchy demands of them. So while the pay might be better, and the benefits might be cushier, the enabling totalitarian asshole aspect of establishment corporate America is really toxic.

Also, establishment corporate America engages in nonstop misallocation of resources, and makework activity for employees. I think this is an even more severe problem. Since the money is basically free, as long as a corporation plays along with the agenda, it enables severe waste for the sake of waste, so an employee will end up with a real-world useless set of non-skills and become a sort of Renfield character--a servant of Vampires.

While the money might be better in the corporate Potemkin village, it's harder to be virtuous and a complete human there.

Mom and pop america, which certainly has flaws and problems, greed and corruption too, is probably a better bet. A worker in that context will be doing a real-world thing, even if it seems mundane. For example, if you worked delivering pizzas, you're accomplishing a useful real world task, or if you build houses, your work nets out to an actual house for somebody. All those skills persist and are reusable outside the context of this or that corporation.