Progressive policies on the environment and diversity are swelling companies’ cost bases – but it’s consumers who will pay the price

Many big companies have started insisting that a living wage is paid right through the supply chain, even though that is virtually impossible to police, and varies wildly from country to country. Again, all of that is fine if countries or companies want it. And yet there cant be any question that it is going to drive up costs across the board.
Next, millennial staff are demanding more and more benefits, and woke companies are chucking in more and more goodies, without worrying too much about what happens to the cost base. There are plenty of start-ups that are playing around with policies such as unlimited holidays, while diversity training and unconscious bias courses (crap in the pithy phrase of KPMGs ousted boss Bill Michael) take up huge amounts of time and add nothing to output.
Finally, many companies are assuming that costs can simply be passed on to woke consumers. There is, for example, huge pressure to switch to electric vehicles and especially for big companies to adopt electric vans. Over the long term, they may be cheaper to run, or at least no more expensive than the old white Transit. In the short term, they are more expensive to buy.
Likewise, re-branding a product as ethically sourced may work in the short term, and it doesnt make much difference when it is just a niche audience. As it becomes mainstream, and applies to just about everything on the supermarket shelves, then prices rise for everyone, regardless of whether they want to pay extra or not.