"Corporations are people, my friend," quipped Mitt Romney, in rebuttal to a crowd shouting that corporations should be a source of revenue instead of taxing people.
He argued "that everything that corporations earn ultimately goes to the people."
How Republicans love to speak for the American people, without saying much about which people. Corporations are not people. They are tools that entrepreneurs use.
Incorporation provides limited liability and reinforces long-term organizational identity, which does not die like we do.
Much of our material prosperity in the last century sprang from the strength and productive efficiency of corporations manufacturing goods, often at increasingly lower prices. We became strong, and rich, and corporations became multinational entities larger than many nations.
There are growing pressures to constrain such big business from forgetting the broader economic, social and environmental impacts their expanded roles now have on us, the real people.
Corporations are like machines. A corporation is essentially a well-oiled hierarchical organization headed by a supervisory board and executive managers.
In Germany, half of a supervisory board is made up by representatives of the employees, resulting in an orientation that builds up the entire nation.
In our case, corporate policy has undercut and undermined the social and economic structure of America by exporting jobs and markets, as shortcuts to maximizing profits and minimizing costs.
They have created a society burdened by an economic crisis affecting real people, underpaid or unemployed real people, who are now unfunded consumers.
The bulk of our wealth is concentrated in the uncaring hands of a tiny fraction of us who are astronomically rich. Those few are now free to lavish money to con us and to influence who will be in Congress.
Talk about the redistribution of wealth. Romney took his cue from the Citizens United decision of the Supreme Court, which forbade the government to regulate political spending formerly banned by the McCain-Feingold Act.
Corporations buying political ads will supposedly not lead to corruption, the court said, because money would not go directly to or be controlled by the candidates themselves!
Now there's a fiction spun on top of an absurdity. It is not right, and it is not democratic. The corporate model has allowed for the socialization of costs, and the capitalization of earnings, i.e. the accumulation and centralization of wealth.
Because the individual stockholders are many, the costs of raising initial capital is spread to society in general. Stockholders and wage earners traditionally got return, but lately CEOs have grabbed outlandish portions, and the expertise of their leadership has increasingly focused on the short term, almost unrelated to their performance.
Unfortunately, there is another form of socializing cost _ that is to externalize it, to ignore the responsibility to clean up the environment after themselves, thereby defaulting such expense to consumers and citizenry.
The U.N. has been studying the cost of the environmental damage left by harmful industries that are often subsidized or spared by loopholes they have paid to have carved out of the relevant regulations.
The current trends, also "bought" by the influence of corporate wealth, of privatization and laissez-faire deregulation, show the close connection between maximizing profit while minimizing costs.
The mantra of conservatism is "keep it like it is," dedicated to the interests of the haves. It is no wonder that they deny the whole range of scientific warnings about global warming. They cannot allow themselves to see the horrific long-term change that is on its way.
Nor are they willing to acknowledge the large-scale increase in poverty and the destruction of our middle-class dreams in which children are blessed by economic improvement.
That is gone, and to maintain their false sense of moral worthiness, they blame the poor and the unemployed as lazy, prone to be dependent, and forming unions to protect themselves from responsibility.
What blatant hogwash!
The same mentality fuels the success of Walmart, which offers cheap products to the impoverished unemployed or under-employed, who desperately use credit for necessities now made in China.
We need the massive change of creating new, green industries. China is already doing this, while conservatives veto any government leadership to develop and support such an effort here. But that is what would bring manufacturing jobs back home.
Meanwhile, poverty is insidiously damaging the future potential of up to 40 percent of our children. These children are people. The corporations are but inhumane machines, selfishly run by an elite who insulate themselves from the social conditions and economic consequences they are fomenting.
William Masters can be reached at wmasters@thedailystar.com.
Columns
'Corporations are not people; they are tools that entrepreneurs use'
- Big Chuck D'Imperio
- Cary Brunswick
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Some wisdom is best passed down through books
I was visiting a friend out-of-town recently and the subject of providing a "reading list" to young people came up in conversation. He said years ago he had asked a respected acquaintance in Oneonta to compile such a list for his teenage daughter, to help her be better prepared for life, culture, education, politics and people.
Continued ... - Let pragmatism, not politics, determine birth control debate
- As Center Street Elementary goes, so goes Center City
- U.S. intervention in Syria's uprising would be a gamble
- Santorum, Obama both got it wrong on Honduras
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- Chuck Pinkey
- Guest Column
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If we don’t develop a sustainable system, who will?
In Otsego County’s local elections last fall, a number of candidates — most of them on the independent Sustainable Otsego line — ran on an anti-fracking, pro-sustainability platform. They recognized that our current way of life — dependent on increasingly scarce, costly and polluting fossil fuels — cannot continue.
Continued ... - Time to get off the bus and on the computer
- Cuomo's Machiavellian maneuvers are a danger
- Home rule laws aren't a radical idea
- Sustainable shouldn't be a dirty word
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If we don’t develop a sustainable system, who will?
- Lisa Miller
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Being a parent is a constant learning process
I am sitting cross-legged on the floor in the dressing room, waiting for Allie's dance number to be called. The cave girl costume has been donned, the jazz shoes double-tied, the hair pulled back, the requisite dab of lipstick applied.
Continued ... - Healthy doesn't have to mean expensive
- A family era ends with close of Potter series
- Independent stores make up for loss of Borders
- Untethered from the cable box
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Being a parent is a constant learning process
- Mark Simonson
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Perfect attendance by Saturday’s Bread for 20 years in Oneonta
Oneonta became a settlement and has been a place to do one's "trading," whether it was the 18th century, or 2012, because of the five valleys that converge here. Only the places of doing the "trading" have changed a bit over the last 100 years, and Oneonta remains a place that attracts visitors and has always been a decent place to live and work.
Continued ...
100 Years Ago - Recalling the Hindenburg, John D. Rockefeller in May 1937
- Oneonta residents had diversions aplenty in the spring of 1952
- Damaschke essential to ensuring Oneonta baseball in 1927
- Area tunes to WONT in November 1972
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Perfect attendance by Saturday’s Bread for 20 years in Oneonta
- Rick Brockway
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Climbing is one thing, but skydiving?
OUTDOORS COLUMN BY RICK BROCKWAY ... Last week, my friend George and I returned to the Gunks for another rock-climbing adventure. After last week's column, I asked about the rattlesnakes and was told not to worry. Rattlers are usually quite timid and will avoid people as much as possible. It's the copperheads that'll give you trouble. They're aggressive and will stand their ground to defend it. Oh great!!
- Rattlesnakes may be closer than you think, so pay attention
- Spring is here, so fishing should pick up soon
- Sneaky fox may be the next animal looking to horse around
- Pass down the rush of turkey hunting to your kids this weekend
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Climbing is one thing, but skydiving?
- Sam Pollak
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I'm happy with our kids to a certain degree
It was several years ago, and I was in the kitchen, telling my eldest daughter and my then-teenaged son about the person who was taking over as publisher at The Daily Star.
Continued ... - I get by with a little help from my 'friends'
- It’s not easy for a politics junkie to get off the stuff
- The Encyclopaedia Britannica in print, unmourned by me
- Angelo Dundee was always a good man to have in your corner
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- William Masters
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
Richard Lugar, after six terms as a Republican senator -- known for his middle of the road rationality and his foreign policy finesse -- has been ousted by a Tea Party extremist backed by outside right-wing funding.
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War not worth gambling with lives of soldiers
Are you not tired of our war in Afghanistan? It had a point, once, after 9/11. Bush couldn't distinguish his myopic personal agendas from the nation's needs and let Osama escape, dropping the ball entirely, causing many deaths.
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Titanic was a microcosm of U.S. economic disparity
Haunting reminders of the Titanic tragedy have wafted over us with the centenary of its sinking. The maiden voyage of an impressive, state of the art vessel, was a little like that of the Challenger space shuttle, at the cutting edge of developing technology. But the shuttle carried our pride in science and space exploration, not hundreds and hundreds of people.
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William Masters: Nation stands divided between 'us' and 'them'
In February, Trayvon Martin was shot dead as "suspicious" by a volunteer neighborhood watch man. The case has aroused community reaction in Sanford, Fla., and is still echoing across the country.
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A quarterback can't win the game alone
What is the relationship between democracy and wealth? Democracy is a political system, while wealth relates to economics. We have equal political rights, but we don't all have money. Extreme differences destroy the continuity of community solidarity.
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Time for lawmakers who put needs of society first
