A rather silly idea when farming is becoming increasingly automated. Within the next 50 years a ‘farmer’ will be little more than a man who sits on ‘capital’ and collects a ‘fee’.
We don’t need them, but they are awfully useful. Corporations aren’t the problem. The problem is that regulation is wrong headedly designed. The goal should be to: “Control the environment in which corporations and other free market entities exist, so that the earning of maximum profit is synonymous with providing the maximum benefit to the people.”
That, and we lean toward overly complex and unenforceable regulations (Differences in simplicity and enforceability is why a carbon tax is vastly superior to a cap and trade system).
A rotten idea. Free trade is, in the long-term, beneficial to all parties. That is why ‘Kansas’ has free trade with ‘New York’.
The problem with the current system isn’t free trade itself, but rather that the system encourages countries to ‘compete’ with each other for the ‘business’ of corporations. An insane idea that can be summed up with the inverse of the well known saying: “When companies compete, the customer wins” – or in this case “When countries compete the people lose.”
(Remember that the next time some senator or talking head claims we need to lower corporate taxes to ‘boost’ our economy. What he’s suggesting is that we compete even harder with other nations to ensure a ‘corporate presence’. Therefore, he is advocating a policy that in the end causes you - and the rest of the world - to lose)
Instead, what we need is clauses added to our free trade agreements establishing ‘minimum ground’ for all goods and services produced for export into the USA and all other member nations. This includes:
* Basic labor rights
* An international minimum wage
* Basic environmental laws
* Bottom level corporate taxes
etc…
In other words Europe, the Americas, Australia, etc… should all gang up against the corporations to shutdown this self destructive international competition, or at least reduce it to sane levels.
(A simple penalty for violation would be a nasty tariff)
Probably doesn’t need to be that high. Personally, I’d prefer to set it to $9 and index it to per capita economic growth. After all, the wealthier our nation, the more the bottom should get paid. (And, inversely, if our country becomes less wealthy, it is perfectly reasonable that the bottom gets paid less too)
That, and economic growth is something the government likes to nudge up in its doctored statistics, while inflation is something it likes to fudge down.
Agreed. While we are at it, make our income tax more progressive. And get rid of the medicare and social security taxes. These are just ‘general income taxes’ like the rest, disguised to make our tax structure regressive instead of progressive near the top.
Again, probably not a good idea. I’d rather a legal revocation of a corporations ‘personage’.
–
Steve