One lost job is a tragedy. 30,000 jobs lost is statistics.
But it's way less satisfying that emotional appeals.
The base of your statement is just wrong.
A company is a legal fiction. It doesn't have thoughts, wants, desires. It's not rich or poor. It's a piece of paper. It's an entry in government database.
What is not a fiction is Oracle's owners i.e. shareholders.
They are not rich. Majority of them, either direct owner of stock or in-direct owners via pension plans etc. are like you and me. They are not rich and the price of Oracle shares can be a difference between them being able to pay rent today or being able to retire tomorrow.
Those people rightfully care about the share price.
The executive are correctly responding to wishes of owners of the company by managing it to make a profit and therefore keep the stock price high.
What in the above chain do you find objectionable?
That millions of Americans investing in public companies depend on and therefore care about stock price?
That management of public companies is correctly responding to demands of owners of those companies by managing companies for profit?
Or maybe you just want to skip to the end of the line and seize means of production from private citizens to bask in the warm glow of collectivism?
Interesting how “American dream” was forgotten and now it’s either under corporatist boot or collectivism.
Sure you can show easy empathy for the employees but this is how economy runs. A static economy where layoffs are hard or punished will lose to a more dynamic one.
Is that why workers are generally happier in Europe even though on paper their economy loses?
The floor is universal: starvation, suffering, death.
The ceiling...
For someone who's starving & facing death, would simply be good health, easy access to food, healthy family, house & car.
But the ceiling for someone who already has these things is different. The ceiling for a billionaire is different.
The only way I can imagine not doing this type of subjective self-reporting is... maybe you can draw blood from populations and record cortisol and oxytocin levels?