Corporate behavior is largely to blame for the growing concentration of wealth that is one of the distinguishing features of our era. The expanding power of multinational corporations, the largest of which now have more economic clout than most nations--are fundamentally authoritarian, anti-union, pro-fascist and anti-democratic. Thus, they pose a growing threat to the ability of nations to protect their people and resources from uncontrolled exploitation. The 500 largest industrial corporations control 25 percent of the world's economic output but employ only one twentieth of one percent of the world's population. Corporations benefit disproportionately from economic globalization, often at the expense of individuals and communities.
What has happened in the United States is even more telling; even though
profits are high, the Fortune 500 companies cut their payrolls by
eliminating millions of jobs and helping to drag down middle-class incomes.
Sales of the ten largest corporations exceeded the combined GNP of the 100
smallest countries and the top 300 transnationals owned some 25 percent of
the world's productive assets.
Corporate decisions to cut jobs or relocate to low-wage, low-regulation
countries therefore have a heavy impact on the global distribution of
wealth. The millions of U.S. jobs that Fortune 500 companies shed
while the average annual compensation of their chief executive officers
by many millions of dollars. This was part of an ongoing process of shifting
wealth from those who are engaged in the production of real value to those
who already have large amounts of money. The result is a world where the
income of the wealthiest 20 percent of the population is 200 times greater
than that of the poorest 20 percent. In the past, such inequality has been
a harbinger of economic instability, and social unrest, which leads to
demagoguery, war and leaders who promise simple or "final" solutions.
During the 1920's, for example, 0.5 percent of the families in the United
States controlled 32.4 percent of the total wealth--an inequity that was
only reduced when the Great Depression dropped their share to 19.3 percent.
Since then, the concentration of wealth has crept back up to a higher imbalance.
Current trends are promoting not just economic insecurity but social unrest,
terrorism, a growing stream of refugees across the globe, and environmental
destruction.
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