Peter Georgescu, Chairman Emeritus of Young & Rubicam, believes the conscious uncoupling of productivity and worker prosperity, if continued, will eventually lead to social unrest or drastic taxation in America.

That’s hopeful, really. It means citizens won’t forever settle for bread and Kardashians and will demand remedies for a sick system. In a New York Times op-ed about wealth disparity, Georgescu suggests preemptive steps corporations can take to move the haves and have-nots closer to one another, strategies that would require businesses to take a long-term view and unilaterally make concessions–not how things usually are done. He also doesn’t address how increasing automation might impact his prescriptions, but it’s still worth reading. An excerpt:

We business leaders know what to do. But do we have the will to do it? Are we willing to control the excessive greed so prevalent in our culture today and divert resources to better education and the creation of more opportunity?

Business has the most to gain from a healthy America, and the most to lose by social unrest or punitive taxation. Business can start the process in two steps. First, invest in the actual value creators — the employees. Start compensating fairly, by which I mean a wage that enables employees to share amply in productivity increases and creative innovations.

The fact that real wages have been flat for about four decades, while productivity has increased by 80 percent, shows that has not been happening. Before the early 1970s, wages and productivity were both rising. Now most gains from productivity go to shareholders, not employees.

Second, businesses must invest aggressively in their own operations, directing profit into productivity and innovation to boost real business performance. Today, too many corporations reduce investment in research and development and brand building. As a result, we see a general decline in the value of their brands and other assets. To make up for those declines and for anemic revenues, businesses buy back their stock (now at record levels) and thus artificially boost earnings per share.•