Corporations

I got asked once why I don't like corporations.

The answer is not that I don't LIKE corporations, the answer is that I don't TRUST corporations.

I have worked for various corporations for most of the last 20+ years of my life. Corporations are an integral part of the American economy. But they are not trustworthy. BP develops of culture of cutting corners in the pursuit of profit and we have the oil refinery accident a few years ago followed by the largest unintentional oil spill in history. They and the other oil companies basically infiltrated and compromised the agency tasked with regulating and monitoring their actions and now we have an environmental disaster of literally unknown proportions where we won't know the final cost for years. The company that owned that mine in West Virginia where 29 miners died had a long history of simply ignoring the safety rules and then protesting/contesting the fines for as long as possible before finally paying the fines since it seemed to cost them less that way than actually caring about the safety of their workers.

I could go on and on and on.

The newest proof, as if more was needed, was a proposed deal between Verizon and Google where Google's YouTube site would get priority access (and the resulting higher speeds) than other sites not willing to pay a premium. Two big corporations getting together in a way that will in the end only profit other big corporations while relegating smaller companies and non-profits to second class status on the internet. Its not like they aren't already making money on their investments. They just want to make more.

That, after all, is a corporations job. To make money so they can pay dividends to their shareholders, so their stock price will go up.

To make money.

That is their job. That is the principle, even sole motive.

I have no problem with that. Corporations making money drives the economy.

But nowhere in there does the corporation have my best interests at heart. Even if I work for them, they are only as good to me as they need to be to keep me from leaving (unless they decide they can save money by replacing me with someone else, perhaps in China).

Nowhere in there does the corporation care about the environment. Nowhere in there does the corporation care about the larger economy. Nowhere in there does the corporation care about national security. That's not their job. Profit is their job.

So if I think we should regulate industry, so if I think that allowing corporations should be allowed to spend unlimited amounts of money directly supporting the candidates of their choice, so if I think that corporations should not be allowed to get to big to fail, its not because I don't like corporations. I am hoping that some corporation will decide that they like my skill and experience set and hire me.

But I don't trust corporations.
And neither should you.

Its not the Profit Motive, its greed

I have watched with growing dismay the whole health care debate.

Single Payer wasn't even on the table. It was impossible to think about taking the profit motive out of health care.

The public option was opposed, frequently by people who had taken huge sums in campaign contributions from medical insurance or pharma companies, because it would be unfair to expect private companies to compete with a government chartered non-profit.

Why is it that some seem soo determined to protect the profits of the insurance companies?

Is it because they are motivated by profit to become more responsive and efficient to their customers? Not even close. Motivated by profit they now spend more than 25% of their income on overhead, including huge salaries for top executives and huge staffs who are devoted, not to providing better care, but to denying care, to canceling insurance, to ensure that they only insure those who are very healthy.

Is it because the Insurance industry is doing ANYTHING to constrain costs?? Not even close. Health Insurance rates continue to go up 10% a year when inflation in the rest of the economy is less than 3%.

I have no objection to the profit margin. I have always worked for companies that wanted to make a profit. I have profited my self because they were able to hire me.

But is that what we have here?

Not really

Most insurance markets in this country are dominated by no more than 2 huge companies. And without competition they don't really have to compete. And they don't. So overhead costs to up and executive salaries go up and stock prices go up and the amount of money they actually spends on patient care goes down.

This isn't the profit margin

Its greed, pure and simple.

Its the same level of greed that led major banks to take ridiculous risks with our money. And when they failed horribly and brought the entire country to the brink of disaster, many of them still insisted that they deserved million dollar bonuses.

40 years ago, the average CEO made 40 times as much as their average worker. Now they make 400 times as much.

Wealth and income are now as concentrated in fewer hands than any time since the great depression. Thats not profit motive, thats just greed. When the top 1% of wage earners make more collectively than the bottom 50%, we have left the simple profit motive behind and moved into naked avarice.

The health care reform debate has been an argument between people who want to bring this great country into the company of every other industrialized nation in offering health care to EVERY CITIZEN and those who seem determined to protect the greed, pure naked greed, of the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

Its not about profit, its about greed.

And greed is winning.