Question: What do corporations do when we leave them unchecked?
Answer: They subtly manipulate the system in ways barely comprehensible to us, with the end result being our money lining their pockets.
Corporations have countless lawyers and lobbyists tirelessly working in their favor, rigging the economy and laws in ways that ultimately cheat the general public out of more and more money and power.
In George Monbiot’s latest article, he breaks down the intricate details of what could be “the biggest and crudest corporate tax cut in living memory”. Here’s some highlights from his piece:
If you’ve heard nothing of it, you’re in good company. The obscure adjustments the government is planning to the tax acts of 1988 and 2009 have been missed by almost everyone. They are, anyway, almost impossible to understand without expert help. But as soon as you grasp the implications, you realise that a kind of corporate coup d’etat is taking place.
[The UK Prime Minister David Cameron] has quietly been plotting with banks and businesses to engineer the greatest transfer of wealth from the poor and middle to the ultra-rich that this country has seen in a century.
So how did this happen? You don’t have to look far to find out. Almost all the members of the seven committees the government set up “to provide strategic oversight of the development of corporate tax policy” are corporate executives [from major corporations and banks].
Our political system protects and enriches a fantastically-wealthy elite, much of whose money is, as a result of their interesting tax and transfer arrangements, effectively stolen from poorer countries and poorer citizens of their own countries.
Governments ensure that we are thrown enough scraps to keep us quiet, while the ultra-rich get on with the serious business of looting the global economy and crushing attempts to hold them to account.
Sure, the methodology used by corporations can be subtle and complex, but the solution to corporate power grabs is quite simple: we need to make our collective voice louder than those of the corporations.
The power and influence of these billion dollar corporate empires will prove to be no match for the cooperative efforts from large groups of energized and motivated people.
We will take the power back!
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Tags: cooperation, corporation, corporations, empower, leash, power, tight
