Corporations are usually owned by a wide array of wealthy individual and “institutional” investors. The latter collect funds from many places – mutual funds, retirement funds, college endowments. Behind the institutions are millions of small investors.
Corporations are considered legal “persons”, and carrying that logic to its extreme, the Supreme Court decided last year (Citizens United) that these persons should be able to engage in advocacy politics. So now more than ever before we are seeing anonymous groups with healthy sounding names like Citizens for Kindness running ad campaigns.
This country is so goofy that I cannot even be disgusted anymore. I can only laugh. We must surely be near the end!
Which takes us back to the beginning when our country was founded on a tax revolt – “No taxation without representation!” was the rallying cry, we are told. How is it that a corporation comprised of stockholders from millions of sources can speak for all those various persons?
Is this not contributions without representation? Isn’t it kind of, like, you know, ludicrous?
Piece of Mindful 
Something like 2/3 of American-based global corporations actually pay “0” income (U.S.) tax. Some Fortune 500 companies, like Bank of America, receive tax benefits and returns amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars. Debating the tax rate is meaningless when loopholes, paid and free media propaganda, and exemptions distort the picture average Americans are getting.
Citizens United just confirmed what everybody suspected. It’s over for average working stiffs. So why vote? Some 50% already know it’s a waste of time.
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Mark
Actually more Corporations shares are owned by “average” people by orders of magnitude.
However, ultimately, the Corporation is owned by the government.
Government loves Corporations. One feeds bribes, the other sells armies.
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Any one that has a company pension is a stockholder.
Maybe he’s saying that janitors and delivery boys are wealthy.
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A janitor with a 401(k) that doesn’t want his retirement account invested in the stock market has few options. Pension funds are largely captive capital to a system that limits individual choice.
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Ladybug,
That may be sadly so, and much to the loss of the janitor.
However, as you said limits choice, not eliminates it.
But I agree with your basic point, the system has insulted itself quite well.
Off topic, I believe 401(k) will be seized by government.
By seized I mean will be required to be invested into US T-Bills or some such unmarketable government security, which will be come ever-increasingly unmarketable and irredeemable.
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Going for the assist. Via US Money.
“I hate to use the “S” word, but the American government would never do something as, well, socialist as seize private pension funds, right? This is exactly what cash-strapped Argentina just did in the name of protecting workers’ retirement accounts (Efharisto, Fausta’s Blog). Now, even Uncle Sam isn’t that stupid, but some Democrats might try something almost as loopy: kill 401(k) plans.
House Democrats recently invited Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor at the New School of Social Research, to testify before a subcommittee on her idea to eliminate the preferential tax treatment of the popular retirement plans. In place of 401(k) plans, she would have workers transfer their dough into government-created “guaranteed retirement accounts” for every worker. The government would deposit $600 (inflation indexed) every year into the GRAs. Each worker would also have to save 5 percent of pay into the accounts, to which the government would pay a measly 3 percent return. Rep. Jim McDermott, a Democrat from Washington and chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support, said that since “the savings rate isn’t going up for the investment of $80 billion [in 401(k) tax breaks], we have to start to think about whether or not we want to continue to invest that $80 billion for a policy that’s not generating what we now say it should.”
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Use the s-word all you want, as I am a European-style socialist and would much prefer their “slavery” over our “freedom.” I also favor public pensions that are more like insurance, or inter-generational transfers, aka Social Security. There isn’t much security in 401K’s – fees knock off as much as 26% of the return over the long haul, and if you happen to need those funds when the market is tanking, you’re screwed.
Best of all the bad private options,
notnow that guaranteed benefit plans are history, are Roth’s.LikeLike
The janitor has no political representation in either party. This produces anger, and frustration, and opens the door to totalitarian lunatics that wouldn’t get to first base in a time of reasonable prosperity. Totalitarian-socialism has produced some really awful conditions for average working people. Obama and Congress are making all the wrong moves, further enriching the liberal/conservative ruling class by ditching low and middle income families when they need help more than ususal. What’s the name of our K Street lobbyist?
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