In the midst of the current economic crisis, one group isn’t struggling so much: corporations. They’ve had sky-high profits, have opted out of paying taxes and have all the governmental support they need. Must be nice, huh?
So, last night the folks over at The Daily Show wondered, well, if corporations can be considered people — as the U.S. Supreme Court and presidential candidate Mitt Romney have alleged — could people use the same money-grubbing tactics corporations use to rebound from their financial plight? Let’s explore.
First, The Daily Show crew needed an expert. But who? Aha! That’s where we come in. Daily Show correspondent Samantha Bee called in Public Citizen president Robert Weissman to guide a struggling family through the same processes corporations go through to save cash.
The family slims down its workforce (sorry, small child, you’re going to have to hit the road); forms subsidiaries (let’s push our debt on the family’s other child!); outsources for cheaper labor (skilled workers? pssh); lobbies Congress and scores some subsidies (hello, tax breaks!); and when all else fails, relocates to an offshore tax haven.
Sound fishy to you, too? We agree. Maybe people aren’t meant to be like corporations, and corporations certainly should not behave like people.
Public Citizen maintains that corporations are not, in fact, people and have no place in our democracy. Why? Democracy is for people. Join us in our Democracy Is For People campaign and sign our petition to kick corporations our of our elections.
Watch Public Citizen president Robert Weissman’s first foray on The Daily Show.
Money and Democracy Update: Daily Show on corporate personhood, Perry arsenal grows and more « CitizenVox
[...] sky-high profits, have opted out of paying taxes and have all the governmental support they need. The folks over at The Daily Show wondered, if corporations can be considered people — as the U.S. Supreme Court and presidential [...]
September 30, 2011 at 6:08 pm
Andrea Chisari
I love the analogy between a family and a corporation! I have always felt that the real difference between a corporation and a human being is one of morality, of the human ability to empathize with the problems of another human being and do a bit of “paying forward”.
But what “morality” can a corporation have?
Being “humane” means being kind and compassionate – having empathy. Humans can be humane. But whatever idiocy the “Supreme” Court spouts about corporations being people doesn’t change the fact that corporations are NOT people. Corporations are businesses.
People – humans – can choose to be humane. They can see things from a human perspective, where every situation is as individual and unique as the humans involved.
Corporations are businesses and must needs see all things from a business perspective. Businesses die if they do not make money. Everything that does not maximize profits must therefore be treated as a threat to the business. A business must see everything that is not profit as an illness.
A human who has worked productively for a business for forty years and expects a pension would be seen as one of these no-profit illnesses, from a corporate point of view. The human is no longer as productive and must be removed. Even as a human uses chemotherapy to kill a cancer that has invaded his body, so must a corporation kill off the lesser-productive humans, lest the corporation die from lack of profits.
In other words, for a corporation to be “moral” – that is, true to its higher nature – it must treat humans as any other resource – use it until it is all used up and then discard the waste that remains.
And this is the system we have created by de-regulation.
In the 50′s and 60′s there were a lot of Sci-Fi shows and books and magazines (I’m thinking Twilight Zone and Ray Bradbury and so on here) that explored the idea that machines – especially computers (which were conceptualized a WHOLE lot differently then) – might some day take over the world.
The corporate machine has taken us over, and if we do not put humans back in charge there will be no more humanity, no more compassion, no more help for those in need, no more care or concern for the individual human situation – only corporations, greedily consuming every resource until there is nothing left but toxic trash.
And THAT is the morality of corporate greed.
October 1, 2011 at 2:01 pm