BrianGarst.com

I’ve had this article open for several days now, so it’s probably time I get around to a response. Reuters reports on the World Economic Forum with a headline that ominously warns “Rich corporations ‘must share wealth’ to avoid unrest:”

Poverty and unemployment reared their heads at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, with speakers urging the elite audience to bridge a growing gap between booming multinationals and the jobless poor.

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who also chairs the Socialist International group of center-left parties, said the global crisis had led to an “unsustainable” race to the bottom in labor standards and social protection in developed nations.

…Maurice Levy, chairman and chief executive of French advertising giant Publicis, said there was “a huge suspicion about CEOs, bankers, corporations.”

“People do not understand that these large corporations are doing extremely well, while their lives have not improved and without the support of the people, there is no way we will be able to grow,” he told a panel discussion.

“We have been led by greed. We have been led by only the bottom line, the profit and we have sacrificed the workers in order to please the stockholders.”

The increasing division between fast-growing emerging market economies and stagnating, jobless nations in the developed world has been a theme at the talks in Davos this year, which some corporations pay tens of thousands of dollars to attend.

Their lives have not improved compared to what? Since these greedy corporations are doing so well but are failing to “give back,” clearly we would be better off without them. So let’s just abolish them. We’ll see how well off the people are without their convenience stores or cheap electronics. Ah, but of course that’s silly. People are clearly much better off than they would be if there were no “greedy corporations” servicing their demands by supplying them with necessities and luxuries.

If you want to look at why some people are not better off than they were some number of years ago, I’d suggest starting with politicians and the excessive burdens of debt that they have heaped onto the taxpaying citizens of those stagnating welfare states.

debt economics