Corporations

Low Wage Corporations Spent Half A Trillion Inflating CEO Pay

September 6, 2024 Sarah Anderson, Scheer Post. Educate! CEO Pay, Corporations, Finance and the Economy, Wages, Worker Rights and Jobs

Most of us believe in fair pay for honest work. So why aren’t low-wage workers better paid? After 30 years of research, I can tell you it’s not because employers don’t have the cash. It’s because profitable corporations spend that money on their stock prices and CEOs instead. Lowe’s, for example, spent $43 billion buying back its own stock over the past five years. With that sum, the chain could’ve given each of its 285,000 employees a $30,000 bonus every year. Instead, half of Lowe’s workers make less than $33,000. Meanwhile, CEO Marvin Ellison raked in $18 million in 2023. The company also plowed nearly five times as much cash into buybacks as it invested in long-term capital expenditures like store improvements and technology upgrades over the past five years.

The Supreme Court Made Regulating Corporations Nearly Impossible

June 30, 2024 Anthony Grasso, The Progressive Magazine. Educate! Chevron, Chevron Deference, Corporations, Corporatism, Supreme Court

On June 28, the Supreme Court published its decision in the case Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo. While the case has not attracted as much attention as some of the Court’s recent spate of controversial rulings, it revoked a long held precedent and will limit government agencies’ ability to do their jobs. Loper Bright deals with seemingly mundane questions of commercial fishing regulation. Current federal law requires fishing companies to allow National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS) monitors to board their boats for regulatory purposes. The NMFS, however, has interpreted federal law to create a new rule requiring the industry to subsidize this monitoring at a cost of roughly $700 per day.

What Leading Consumer Brands Drive Global Deforestation?

May 26, 2024 Laurel Sutherlin, LA Progressive. Educate! Corporations, Deforestation, Environment, Human Rights

Since the turn of the century, there has been a consistent average annual loss of 3 to 4 million hectares (7.4 to 9.9 million acres) of tropical forest globally. This puts us far from reaching the goal of zero deforestation by 2030, a target embraced in 2021 by 145 countries during the COP26 climate summit in Glasgow. Besides damaging the local environment, deforestation threatens our societies and economies by elevating carbon emissions and exacerbating the climate crisis. Land use change—mainly deforestation—contributes as much as a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. So, solving the climate crisis means ending rampant deforestation.

It’s Important To Focus On Companies Using Inflation To Jack Up Prices

February 16, 2024 Janine Jackson, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Inflation, Price Gouging

If you buy groceries, you know that prices are high. And if you read the paper, you’ve probably heard that prices are high because of, well, “inflation,” and “shocks to the supply chain,” and other language you understand, but don’t quite understand. One article told me that economists see pandemic-related spending meant to stabilize the economy as a factor, along with war-impacted supply chains and steps taken by the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates —all of which may be true, but still doesn’t really help me see why four sticks of butter now cost $8. Not to mention that the same piece talks matter of factly about “upward pressure on wages,” which sounds like people who need to buy butter are getting paid more, but I’m pretty sure the language is telling me I’m supposed to be against it.

Is Intellectual Property Turning Into A Knowledge Monopoly?

September 21, 2023 Prabir Purkayastha, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Capitalism, Corporations, Intellectual Property, Monopoly, Privatization, Technology

The twentieth century saw the emergence of public funded universities and technical institutions, while technology development was concentrated in the R&D laboratories of large corporations. The age of the lone inventor Edison, Siemens, Westinghouse, Graham Bell had ended with the nineteenth century. The twentieth century was more about industry-based R&D laboratories, where corporations gathered together leading scientists and technologists to create the technologies of the future. In this phase, capital was still expanding production. Even though finance capital was already dominant over productive capital, the major capitalist countries still had a strong manufacturing base.

‘Dirty Dozen’ Dangerous Employers Named For Workers Memorial Day

April 27, 2023 Luis Feliz Leon, Jenny Brown, and Alexandra Bradbury, Labor Notes. Educate! Corporations, Labor Movement, Worker Rights and Jobs, Workplace Safety

April 28 is Workers Memorial Day, commemorating those killed, sickened, or injured on the job. As part of a week of events, today the National Council for Occupational Safety and Health is releasing its “Dirty Dozen” report. Here are four of the employers COSH has picked out for the “Dirty Dozen” distinction in 2023 because they run unsafe workplaces, endangering workers and the public: Swissport, Packers Sanitation, the Class I railroads, and FedEx. Some also have attempted to silence workers who speak up about hazards or are trying to organize a union to make the workplace safer.

The Shadow Bank That Owns The World

July 29, 2022 Lee Camp, The Most Censored News. Resistance Report BlackRock, Corporations, Finance and the Economy

For most people in America and much of the world, our life is — to some degree — owned, run, managed, or manipulated by a “shadow bank” that few people even know the name of. It holds between 9 and 10 Trillion dollars in assets. It is the largest or close-to largest stake holder in most enormous media companies like Disney and Comcast, most big tech companies like Google and Meta/Facebook, most big banks like Citibank, Bank of America, and Barclays. This secretive cabal is one of the biggest funders of deforestation, fossil fuel use, weapons contractors, and basically destroying the planet. And yet, despite all that, most Americans and most people around the world have never even heard of them. Watch the video to learn who it is that truly owns the planet.

Who Actually Owns Corporations, Anyway?

December 22, 2021 Alex Park, Current Affairs. Educate! Corporate Personhood, Corporations, Law, Shareholders

According to elementary students of economics and Wall Street financiers alike, the answer to this question is as simple as it is intuitive: the shareholders. The standard narrative goes like this: a share is a “piece of a company.” Accordingly, the holders of those shares are the company’s collective owners. Shareholder ownership explains why an army of retail investors coordinating trades on Reddit could claim they “owned a piece” of the struggling video game retailer GameStop and why Warren Buffet is as certain he “owns” companies as varied as GEICO and Dairy Queen as less wealthy Americans are certain they own the gadgets in their kitchen.

Biden’s ‘Global Tax’ And The 40-Year US Corporate Tax ‘Shell Game’

November 2, 2021 Jack Rasmus, Counterpunch. Educate! Biden administration, Corporations, Media, Taxes

The corporate media in recent days has been busy resurrecting and re-reporting the deal negotiated weeks ago by Janet Yellen, US Treasury Secretary, to get 100+ other nations to sign on to and introduce a 15% global corporate alternative tax in their countries. But why is the mainstream media bringing it up again now? Is it to soften the blow of Biden’s repeal of his proposal to hike corporate taxes in the US from Trump’s 21% to 26%? (It was 35% pre-Trump)? Or is there something else as well that explains why the media is running the global tax story that’s already weeks old? The global sign on to Biden’s 15% global minimum tax, announced weeks ago, is purportedly designed to prevent big multinational corporations’ manipulating governments by seeking out, and getting, special tax deals in certain countries at the expense of others.

55 Corporations Paid $0 In Federal Taxes On 2020 Profits

April 7, 2021 Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy. Educate! Corporations, Tax Breaks, Taxes

At least 55 of the largest corporations in America paid no federal corporate income taxes in their most recent fiscal year despite enjoying substantial pretax profits in the United States. This continues a decades-long trend of corporate tax avoidance by the biggest U.S. corporations, and it appears to be the product of long-standing tax breaks preserved or expanded by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) as well as the CARES Act tax breaks enacted in the spring of 2020. The tax-avoiding companies represent various industries and collectively enjoyed almost $40.5 billion in U.S. pretax income in 2020, according to their annual financial reports. The statutory federal tax rate for corporate profits is 21 percent. The 55 corporations would have paid a collective total of $8.5 billion for the year had they paid that rate on their 2020 income.

Ending Private Prisons Is Not Enough

March 7, 2021 Ashish Prashar, Business Insider. Educate! Corporations, Joe Biden, Prison Labor, Private Prisons

President Joe Biden, by executive order, directed the Department of Justice to end its private prison use. It's a step in the right direction and a symbolic moment for this administration to say they are going to take criminal justice reform seriously. While this step decouples the federal government's relationship with private prisons, let's remember that such institutions hold just about 9% of the federal prison population — a little more than 14,000 people. Profit from incarcerated people doesn't meet the moral standards of justice. However, private prisons aren't even where the biggest profits exist. Private companies continue to profit off the labor of inmates in the public prison system, or, the "prison industrial complex." President Biden must also dismantle this repugnant practice. These corporations have monetized crime and punishment with the government's help.

Corporations #Resist Trump By Cutting Funding For Republicans

January 13, 2021 Tatiana Cozzarelli, Left Voice. Educate! Campaign Finance, Capitol, Corporations, Republicans

Dozens of large corporations are stopping all donations to the political parties and their politicians in the wake of the right-wing storming of the Capitol last Wednesday. In many cases, they’ve targeted specifically the 147 Republicans who refused to certify the Electoral College vote. The latter group includes MasterCard, American Express, Dow Chemical, and others Even Blue Cross Blue Shield, whose PAC has supported Republicans in every election since 1996, withdrew money from members of Congress who challenged the election results. And it’s going even further: an internal email reveals that the PAC will pull its yearly donation to the National Republican Congressional Committee and the Republican National Committee.

Why Do Americans Give Away So Much Control To Corporations?

September 22, 2020 Ralph Nader, Counterpunch. Educate! Corporations, People Power, The Commons, wealth inequality

The American people own most of the wealth – private and public – and most of the information in the country. The top one percent do not. The American people have most of the power in the country. The top one percent do not. These assertions may surprise you, because the top one percent and the giant corporations work overtime to control what you own. This means they do not have to seize what you own so long as their control provides them with both riches and power over you.

Corporate And White-Collar Prosecutions At All-Time Lows

March 10, 2020 Staff, Trac.syr.edu Educate! Corporations, Corruption, DOJ

The latest available case-by-case records from the Department of Justice (DOJ) show that the prosecution of white-collar offenders in January 2020 reached an all-time low since tracking began during the Reagan Administration. Only 359 defendants were prosecuted in January 2020. Almost all of these were individuals rather than businesses.

The End Of The Corporation?

March 10, 2020 By Marjorie Kelly, Longreads.tni.org Create! Corporations, New Economy, Profit

Imagine your town is crisscrossed by giant trains that travel insanely fast, because the train owners pay their drivers based on speed. The town establishes speed limits, installs flashing lights, brings out police to keep pedestrians off the tracks. Inevitably, the trains continue to crash into people and cars, causing injury and death. How does the town council respond? By repairing crossings and fences.

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