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This…“Companies don’t often say “We gave $1 million to charities” and “We reduced our lowest-tier employees’ hourly pay by 25 cents company-wide” in the same sentence.” And that is how they take from one mouth to “feed” another.

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Totally! One of the risks of compartmentalizing "impact" from other aspects of a business is the incentive to win at zero-sum games (or negative sum games - if you take from one mouth to "feed" another, while pocketing some for yourself). This can garner praise from those who can't see (or don't look) under the hood, even though in actuality there is no net positive impact occurring.

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