Corperations create poverty

Originally posted by whodey
This is a must see Bill

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=naBmYqtvs2U

The history of the British East Indies Company and the British government is helpful in understanding how the real world has worked for a very long time.

Essentially, England conquered India through their corporation. Corporations are nothing more than a tool of war for various cou ...[text shortened]... taxes actually came down. The fight was to not allow the East Indies Company a monopoly on Tea.

Interesting series. Money and Power makes people do things they would not normally do.

Originally posted by bill718
When I was a business student in college (all those years ago) the # 1 thing they drilled into our heads was: "The function of any business is to maximize profit, and minimize loss" I must have heard this 100 times! This has always been the case, and will always be so. Contrary to what many here think (since I'm a Liberal), economy's based on free enterprise ...[text shortened]... e few. (Sadly, conservatives here in America think this is the way things are supposed to work!)

"...business's don't operate for the benefit of the public, they operate for the benefit of themselves..."

Or specifically, their shareholders. This is why the public must have enough wealth to be shareholders. Paycheck-to-paycheck is the road to ruin for any society.

Originally posted by finnegan
Durkheim said: “What is needed if social order is to reign is that the mass of people be content with their lot. But what is needed for them to be content, is not that they have more or less but that they be convinced they have no right to more.”

So bloody true.

Originally posted by jimmac
I suspect that this is old news but many do not seem to get it. ANY system that rewards those at the top for hurting society is fundamentally flawed. I work at PPG Australia and the Americans have decided that they no longer want to share productivity with anyone. The more productive we become the worse of we are. End of story. We keep being told that we need ...[text shortened]... ve themselves.I have much much more to say but will see if anyone has a comment.
Jim Mc

Ah yes! You are absolutely correct. How we all yearn for those salad days when only miniscule amounts of poverty existed prior to the advent of Capitalism. Those wistful days prior to the 18th century when there had been century after century of wealth equality throughout the people of the nations of the world.

The most glaring example of the ruination Capitalism inflicts upon its adherents is best demonstrated by the destruction of China at the hands of Capitalism. After WW II Mao Zedong successfully kept China away from the evil influence of Capitalism. While it was true that China failed to appear in any listing of wealthy countries, everyone lived in a perpetual state of bliss due to the fact they all shared equally in the fruits of Communism. After the death of Mao in 1976, Deng Xiaoping let the devil Capitalism run amok in China, and just observe how the Chinese living standards have suffered since.

Originally posted by Quarl
While it was true that China failed to appear in any listing of wealthy countries, everyone lived in a perpetual state of bliss due to the fact they all shared equally in the fruits of Communism. .

LOL

Originally posted by bill718
Interesting series. Money and Power makes people do things they would not normally do.

The love of money is the root of all evil.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/04/east-india-company-original-corporate-raiders

An excellent recent account of the East India Company. Fun to read.

Originally posted by sh76
Go start your own company and run it how you like. If you want to work for PPG, then abide by their rules.

A corporation is a tool. It can be used however the people running it choose to use it. Capitalism creates wealth, not poverty, though of course some reigning in of excesses is an important government function and a desirable part of the market.

That's only true in a strictly numerical view.

Yes, capitalism tends to increase the average wealth slightly, but it also increases inequality disproportionally more. The more capitalist a country is, the more massively rich its richest few are, and the more the unseen poor struggle. Your call for government to reign in capitalism's excesses is justified and admirable, but unfortunately rarely supported by capitalist economists and politicians, and therefore ultimately (and unfortunately) futile.

Originally posted by whodey
Essentially, England conquered India through their corporation. Corporations are nothing more than a tool of war for various countries.

Were. Now, countries are a tool of war for corporations. And you think this is an improvement?

It seems your lawmakers in Australia have some work to do, since some business's in your area are operating to the detriment of many, for benefit of the few. (Sadly, conservatives here in America think this is the way things are supposed to work!)[/b]

I don't think the law makers can do a damn thing. The problem is that the corporations control the money and if the government does not like their rules then they go somewhere else. That leaves a void when we are so used to them being a part of our system. They have become like a necessary evil. To stop them governments need to operate collaboratively on a global scale and that seems most unlikely.I would love to know what to do, but I do my own very small thing and that is try to talk to as many people as I can, including the bosses.I tell them clearly that"productivity is the curse of the working man.
I also think that the most powerful group of people in the world are the unemployed. They give the corporations the power over you.you know the'if you don't like working here go somewhere else" mantra. They can say that a lot easier when the unemployment is high.

Originally posted by jimmac
I don't think the law makers can do a damn thing. The problem is that the corporations control the money and if the government does not like their rules then they go somewhere else. That leaves a void when we are so used to them being a part of our system. They have become like a necessary evil. To stop them governments need to operate collaboratively on a gl ...[text shortened]... ng here go somewhere else" mantra. They can say that a lot easier when the unemployment is high.

Joseph Rowntree, a successful entrepreneur but also a Quaker, whose first publication on the topic was in 1901, was the first to study in a competent way what it is that causes people to live in poverty, and other studies since then have consistently confirmed his work, one excellent example being an area study of poverty in a slum area of Nottingham (UK) called Saint Ann's. Nothing has changed. The overwhelming reason people live in poverty is because of unacceptably low wages. They cannot work their way out of poverty. Hard work simply fails to provide even subsistence without state support, which is typically grudging and insufficient.

With that in mind, conservative governments around the world have taken up the capitalist mantra that low wages are essential for a successful economy and that people must be driven to accept not only low wages, but even unpaid internship and zero hours contracts, on the grounds that work is in some obscure way beneficial for them. An impoverished workforce is seen as "flexible" and "competitive."

The comfortably off decline to understand how this threatens them as much as the working class and indeed, evidence shows that the middle class are a declining part of the economy and losing their comforts to an alarming degree, always under the Newspeak of neoliberal slogans.

Far from being alarmist or Henny Penny, these and related claims are deeply researched and published for example in the work of Pikkerty: "Capital in the Twenty First Century." The cold reality is that the neoliberals are hollowing out our economies and creating a social world that cannot be sustainable.

Originally posted by Shallow Blue
Were. Now, countries are a tool of war for corporations. And you think this is an improvement?

I suppose it depends only your perspective.

Who created the corporation in the fist place? Was it not government?

Originally posted by finnegan
Joseph Rowntree, a successful entrepreneur but also a Quaker, whose first publication on the topic was in 1901, was the first to study in a competent way what it is that causes people to live in poverty, and other studies since then have consistently confirmed his work, one excellent example being an area study of poverty in a slum area of Nottingham (UK) c ...[text shortened]... liberals are hollowing out our economies and creating a social world that cannot be sustainable.

This is 'Grapes of wrath ' stuff , armies of unemployed begging for any work just to survive. I cant see any change though , we need a homogeneous working class with the same political goals. This kind of unity has been eaten away , sold cheap for false materialism. Materialism made possible by fellow worker slaves in the far east. I just cant see where the blindness set in and the post war collective power of the labour movement evaporated.

I was talking about this to two fellow socialist electricians on site , both were as bewildered as me , both were in their fifties.

Originally posted by crikey63
I was talking about this to two fellow socialist electricians on site , both were as bewildered as me , both were in their fifties.

crikey, if you don't like coporations you shouldn't deal with them.