Corporations: Greed Tempered by Fear

Corporations are not evil, as some people believe.  They're just greedy and heartless by nature.

I was reminded of that by a series of articles in the New York Times this week that focused a spotlight on just that: Corporations exist only to  make money, and everything else be damned.

As is true of Wall Street itself, greed drives corporations and only fear tempers them.  They have no moral compass.  They pit cities and even states against one another in bidding wars to find where they can get the most tax breaks, new infrastructure, or whatever else they can get in return for a promise to come to town and create jobs.

But when those plans don't make money for the corporations, or when they don't make enough money -- and often they don't -- the corporations pull up stakes, leave town, and stick us taxpayers with the bill.

Does the principle of greed/fear work for corporations?  Of course it does.  But not so much for their employees.  Corporate profits have risen some 300 percent since the Great Recession began, while the average employee's paycheck during that time has remained about the same, or gotten smaller.  (Executives continue to get their bonuses, however.)

As Chris Hedges writes in his book, Death of the Liberal Class, "They (corporations) exploit, pollute, impoverish, repress, kill and lie to make money.  They throw poor families our of their homes, let the uninsured die, wage useless wars to make profits, poison and pollute the ecosystem, slash social assistance programs, gut public education, trash the global economy, plunder the U.S. Treasury and crush all popular movements that seek justice for working men and women."

-Skip