Corporations are not people

I’ve heard some awfully strange things about corporations lately. Let’s see if we can put to rest some myths being spread by politicians, mass media and yes, people also!

Tens of thousands of years ago, people took up trades. Farmers, fishermen, blacksmiths, millers, carpenters and shoemakers worked hard to offer products or services to each other to create a higher standard of living for the whole community.

Sometimes several people worked together to operate a farm, bring in a haul of fish, or build a house. These groups of professionals gradually evolved into today’s corporations.

But a group of people is not one person. You can say that “Apple did this” or “Exxon did that” but in reality, it was actually one or more real people at that company that made a decision to do something. A company cannot do anything by itself. Decisions are made, and actions taken, by real people, not company logos.

A company is not your mom or dad.

A company’s only responsibility to you is to give you what they promised when you chose to accept their job offer.

A company has no responsibility to give you health care, vacations, read you bedtime stories, put away money for your retirement, tuck you into bed, pay for your contraception, help you with your homework, give you holidays off or do absolutely anything other than what they explicitly promised.

If a company offers you the best job out of all available options, then you should be grateful for the opportunity.

If you feel you can find a better job offer, then quit and get a job that pays more. This is not greed on your part. It’s a natural part of your career and life.

If you cannot find another company to offer you more money, perhaps it’s time to ask yourself  questions like: How hard have you worked to become one of the best in a highly in demand profession? And how many hours per week away from work do you spend studying and improving your job skills and value to a potential employer?

If you devote yourself to striving to be one of the best in a high demand industry, it’s only a matter of time until you find an employer that will appreciate you going above and beyond, and truly caring about the success of the business you work in.

If you think changing jobs is hard, think for a moment about the millions of poor families that came to the USA from all around the world with children, elderly, and little more than the clothes on their back over the last couple hundred years. That might put your first world problem in perspective.

Or, start your own company. Tons of people do this every day.

A company is not your nanny.

A company’s job is not to take care of you. Their job is to do their best to make sure your paycheck does not bounce. Their job is to try and increase their revenues by continually improving the product or service they offer and minimize costs so they stay profitable and survive in a competitive market.

How would you feel if your next door neighbor demanded that you had an obligation to cook them dinner every night? You might protest, saying that you never made a promise to cook them dinner, therefore you have no obligation to.

But if your neighbor cannot ethically demand that you have obligations you never promised anyone, how can you ethically demand that people who work at a company take on obligations they never promised anyone? There are no ethical double standards.

A company is not your college career counselor.

A company is not a charity. A company has no obligation to offer anyone a “living wage.” If a company offers a job, and you don’t like the offer, don’t take the job.

There are only two paradigms of work: one, where you are free to accept any job or not, and the other, where you are a slave. No politician should be able to dictate to you what jobs are available to you. That power should lie with the People.

History proves over and over again that economic freedom results in the greater good. The countries with the greatest economic freedom have always had the highest standard of living for the poorest people. They also have many other benefits, but that’s the one you should care about most.

Companies are not some collectively owned, public institution.

Each company is comprised of a group of private citizens and shareholders who have decided to work together to offer some kind of product or service that they hope the market likes enough to freely pay them for it. A private company is not owned by all citizens, only by the legitimate shareholders, and only the shareholders and managers should have any say in what that company does.

You can say that because you paid taxes that built the roads that the company used to ship their goods, or schools to educate their employees, that you have some claim over them, but that’s not very smart, because you obviously haven’t thought things through. That also means companies have a claim on you because they also paid taxes, and a lot more than you did. If this is a valid and ethical argument, companies will win this one, and own your house and car, so I would say, you really don’t want to go there!

But this is fine, because the free market is a completely democratic, self-policing system. If a company is not producing a product that benefits the community, people will not pay for it, and that company will go the way of Kodak, Blockbuster, Kaypro, Woolworth’s and countless others.

No politicians should have the power to dictate to us by force what companies win or lose, what products we can buy or how much we should pay.

That power should be in the People’s hands and the People’s hands alone.

If you gave a company money, it means they gave you something more valuable in return (or obviously, you never would have made the trade). Now, the thing you bought is yours, and the money is theirs.

How much a company pays their CEO, with their own money, is no more your concern than how much the woman living next door spent on her husband’s birthday gift. In both cases, it’s not your money and none of your business.

Do you think a company has the right to control what foods you cook in the pan you bought from them, where you drive in the car you bought from them, or what music you should listen to on the iPod you bought? Of course not. And, conversely, you have no right to tell them how to spend the money you freely gave them in exchange for the product you now enjoy. You chose to make the trade freely.

How much money a private company chooses to offer job applicants or employees, or what benefits a company offers, is no more your business, or right to dictate, than what a woman a thousand miles away offers a kid to mow her lawn. Let the kid decide if it’s enough money. If it is, he will mow the lawn, otherwise he won’t. History proves that he best possible outcomes result from when you leave the woman and kid free to work it out for themselves.

Companies are not saviors. Companies are not God or the Devil, they are just groups of people trying to produce a product that makes other people’s lives better in some way, to hopefully make a profit, put some money in their pockets and food on their tables. This is not evil or greedy. It is honorable, natural and commendable.

Companies cannot exploit workers.

A company just posted a help wanted ad offering $1 per year in wages. Did they just exploit every person in the U.S.? Of course not.

Companies will pay the lowest wages they can to hire people with the skills they need, just as consumers will price shop and spend the least amount of money they can to buy things they want and need. This seeking to lower costs by companies and people is not evil, it is actually valuable to the free market, as wages and prices transmit information so companies can make smarter decisions about what product to create, and workers can make smarter decisions about which skills to develop.

A hundred years ago, people understood, and were grateful to companies who offered them an opportunity to earn money and support themselves and their families.

Companies are the “givers” of society. They not only provide the goods and services we need to live, and that enhance our lives, they also provide all the jobs that put food on our tables (yes, even the cost of government “jobs” are paid by corporate profits). Companies also pay, directly or indirectly, all taxes, either directly or through withholding money from paychecks.

But in the last several decades, the spoiled, entitled, selfish side of our culture has taken center stage, where politicians, unions and the media have brainwashed millions of people into thinking companies are somehow the villains of society, greedy leeches soaking up, rather than generating wealth, and government is the generous, benevolent institution. It is bizarre that the truth is precisely the opposite.

A company cannot be a monopoly, as in, “the only place to work” in a town.

This is a myth only a silver-spoon-fed journalist or politician could dream up. Anyone in the U.S. has a thousand employment possibilities if they are willing to do the hard work it takes to develop the valuable job skills required. If you don’t believe that anyone with ambition, regardless of income or background, can become a millionaire if they devote themselves to it, spend an hour listening to the Entrepreneur on Fire podcast. You will change your mind.

Capitalism is not a “rigged game,” as this Treasury report proves.

You can’t tax a company.

This is obvious to anyone who knows basic economics. You can try and tax a company, but that money always comes out of consumer’s pockets in the form of higher prices, making the cost of living higher, and out of worker’s pockets in the form of lower wages.

If you want poorer people to struggle more each month in paying their bills, then try to keep wages low and prices high by keeping the U.S. corporate tax rate the highest in the industrialized world and you will put friction on upward mobility and force a record number of people on public assistance. If you hate poor people, vote for whatever politician keeps yelling that “companies should pay their fair share.”

If you think taxing companies more means money comes out the CEO’s pocket, you really haven’t been paying attention. Higher corporate taxes come out of your pocket. And the USA has the highest corporate tax rate in the developed world.

The more you vote to push the cost of living higher, and push wages lower, the more people will be forced onto the public dole, increasing government expenditures, and raising the cry to hit companies again with higher taxes and more regulations, strangling the golden geese until no one but the rich are financially free.

Why do these myths about companies persist?

Many of us grew up in homes with parents who paid for our housing, food, clothing and medical care. It was really nice to be taken care of! As long as we obeyed the rules and kept our room clean, we had no worries.

The shock of moving out on our own and having to be responsible for our own needs is devastating. We would much rather that our employers take care of us, or the government, or someone, anyone! Corporations are convenient parental substitutes, hence the need for us to desire that they fill the void left by us not wanting to grow up.

Some people will read this article and feel that it leads to a better, more humane world when corporations are forced to bear all the responsibility in society, not only providing all goods and services, providing all jobs, and paying all taxes, but also providing health care, guaranteed wages, pensions, vacations and an endless list of other demands.

If this is what you feel, study the history of Detroit, once the world’s richest city with the world’s highest wages and world’s highest standard of living with almost no government regulation, taxes or unions, then, after government and unions take over, “America’s first third world city.”

The 60% of children living in poverty in Detroit are a direct result of the devastation caused by progressive policies.

Do people at companies commit crimes sometimes?

Of course. People who work at a company should be subject to the same laws any person is. If a person in a company decides to dump toxic waste in a river, that person is a murderer and everyone who helped is an accessory to murder and all should be prosecuted like any murderer. Just because the murder or harm happens while a person is at work should not indemnify anyone from punishment. If a person at a company commits fraud by lying about the product they offer, they should be prosecuted for fraud and, if convicted, sent to jail.

But making the leap that a person committing a crime at work somehow reflects badly on all corporations is like saying a Hispanic who commits a crime somehow reflects badly on all Hispanics. It is not a rational conclusion. Some people commit crimes. That’s reality. The court system exists to ascertain guilt and assign punishment.

Are the courts in the U.S. perfect? No, far from it, but they’re far better than any alternative.

Are companies guilty of government corruption?

People criticize corporate executives for making large campaign contributions so those politicians with power over tax money will send a stream of cash back into the company’s coffers with special grants, corporate welfare, sweetheart contracts and other corrupt uses of taxpayer’s money.

While this is obviously despicable, blaming the executives at the corporations doesn’t solve the problem.

The politician swears an oath to protect the Constitution and devote their lives to serving the People. The corporate executive promises to further the success of their company in whatever legal way possible. The politician is the one violating their oath. The corporate executive is merely keeping their promise they made in their job interview to whomever hired them.

Only politicians can pass laws, hand out public money, give out grants or bailouts. Companies are powerless to do any of these things. Blaming executives for doing their jobs rather than politicians for violating their oaths is understandable, but not rational. Unless you know of a magic spell you can cast that would make all corporate executives refuse to buy favors from politicians when they are freely available, then blaming corporations is not the solution.

The solution:

If you want to get money out of politics, if you want to solve cronyism, the answer is to fix the problem at the source. Simply pass an anti-corruption law to make it illegal for a politician to introduce or vote for a law to favor one company or industry over another. And all laws currently on the books must be phased out.

If an anti-corruption law like this is passed, the problem of money in politics is solved. If there is zero incentive for corporate executives to bribe politicians, then why would they bother, when there’s nothing in it for them?

Thanks for reading!

Honey, I statistically shrunk the kids!

Statistics have value if interpreted correctly.

But we all know statistics can be manipulated as well. You can report statistics that are 100% true, yet interpret them to provide a misleading, or often opposite conclusion than the truth.

Here is a common statistical interpretation error:

A couple has three kids. One is 2 feet tall, one is 3 feet tall, and one is 4 feet tall.

The father, a statistician, makes note that 24 + 36 + 48 = 108, so he realizes his kids are an average of 36 inches, or 3 feet in height ( 108 / 3 ).

The next year, the kids have each grown 4 inches, and they have a new baby, who is 20 inches in height.

Now, the father calculates that 20 + 28 + 40 + 52 = 140 inches, and 140 / 4 =  35.

What??!?

So in one year, his kids have gone from an average of 36 inches to an average of 35 inches!

The father calls the doctor in a panic, yelling “The kids are shrinking! The kids are shrinking!”

The truth is, that the kids are not actually shrinking. The sample has changed.

Concluding that their kids have shrunk an average of 1/4″ each is an invalid way to explain the drop from 36 to 35 inches in their kids’ average height.

The true interpretation is, that because of the addition of a new baby that is shorter than the rest, the average height statistic has been skewed. The truth is that all kids are actually growing in height.

This is the invalid method used by every “rich get richer, poor get poorer” study ever done. The study does not follow individual households (as the study I cite here does), and makes the false assumption that rich and poor people are the same people over a span of time (which my article shows is usually false).

 

Why do you want money in politics?

Maybe someone can ‘splain something to me:

I hear people go on and on that they care about “getting money out of politics.”

Well, then I have a question:

If that’s true, then why do people continue to vote for the politicians who spend the most money???

 

The fact is that the candidate who raises and spends the most money almost always wins.

By rewarding the candidates who raise the most money, voters force politicians to make ever bigger and bigger promises to the special interests that fund their campaigns in order to get the money they need to compete and win.

We can all deflect the blame to the lobbyists, corporate and special interests who offer millions to political campaigns in return for continued and increased subsidies, favorable legislation, corporate welfare, and sweetheart contracts, but the truth is, the people who are ultimately responsible are voters, who fuel the money-in-politics system and reward increased influence of money in politics by voting for the big spenders.

99% of voters in the 2012 Presidential election voted for one of the two major corporate-financed candidates, again sending the clear signal to all politicians that if they want to buy your vote, they need to go nuclear on funding and campaign spending, meaning ever bigger promises to moneyed interests, even though there was a third candidate, more qualified for the Presidency than either Romney or Obama, who was not beholden to any special interest.

Think voting for a third party is a bad idea? Here are some thoughts on that.

it’s not about us

This morning’s epiphany:

A true artist subjugates themselves to their work.

Explanation: to a true artist or entrepreneur (I think of entrepreneurs as “business artists”), their work is more important than they are.

That doesn’t mean they need to sacrifice their lives for their work (though many choose to). It means they understand that their life is not about them, it’s about their work and mission.

Much in the same way a monk, nun, rabbi or priest chooses to devote their life to serving God, or a soldier chooses to serve their country, an artist is servant to their art, not the other way around.

Relationships

There is a coin between us.

I say, look, it’s George Washington’s head!

And you say what? No way, that’s not George Washington, that’s an eagle!

And I say, no, unless Washington was a bird, that’s definitely Washington.

At first we think the other person must be joking. But we are both so insistent, that at first we lean from side to side and squint our eyes to make sure we’re not nuts. But there is no doubt what the coin has on it.

You think I’m crazy for confusing a President with an eagle. And I think you’re crazy as well. We both try, unsuccessfully, to convince the other that they are not seeing the coin clearly.

My feelings become hurt because you don’t trust or believe me. And your feelings are hurt for the same reason. How can the other person be so obtuse?

We both gather friends and family around us, point at the coin, and ask them what they see. When they affirm exactly what we believe, we become more convinced than ever that we are right, and the other person is completely delusional.

We are both so dismayed at the utter stubbornness of the other person, we give up. They are obviously beyond reasoning with.

Perhaps we begin to treat each other like acquaintances, or stop speaking altogether, our bonds of respect broken, our bridge burned. Why on earth the other person would stick to such a blatantly ridiculous point of view (and, by the way, one so insulting to a rare bird and/or our first President) is completely beyond us.

But then, at some point, we happen to be on the other side of the table for a moment, and quite unexpectedly, see the coin for an instant from the other side. What?!? We can’t believe it! For an instant, it looks exactly as they said! We shut our eyes, bewildered. Did we see it right? Was it a hallucination?

Now that’s we’ve caught a glimpse of the other side, we are shaken to our core with the sudden fear that indeed, it might have been us that was wrong the entire time.

Sometimes, this turns into a deep feeling of guilt and remorse at having wronged the other, and we ask for forgiveness, which is conditionally granted, and the relationship now takes on the appearance of having worked things out. But this reconciliation is superficial at best, and soon falls apart, since other coins appear, and the cycle repeats.

As it turns out, win-lose is not a sustainable solution.

Much more often, our fear that we may be wrong is redirected as anger towards the other person, and we now become ever more defensive and furious. We know in our hearts that it cannot possibly be true that the other person was right and we were wrong. And since this belief is accurate, it resonates within us and fuels our conviction of righteousness.

But, if we can find the inner strength to get up, and continue to circle the table, seeing first one side, then the other, gradually, we are able to stop looking through the distorted lens of our past, and after examining both sides repeatedly, our prejudice slowly subsides, and we come to an epiphany:

The problem was not that the other person was not seeing clearly. They were. And the problem was not that we were not seeing clearly. We were. We were both right all along. Not seeing clearly was never a problem.

The problem was that we did not understand the true nature of a coin.

Stealing hope

Amazing how blatant, rampant lies spread as truth.

This article says:

“In America, it seems that belief is still very much alive that the poor, if they work hard enough, can become rich.

Americans hold onto this belief even as the data suggests that… the possibility for any American to rise from poverty to wealth is becoming increasingly difficult. Some analysts would say it is now virtually impossible.“

First of all, this is entirely false. Upward mobility has been unchanged for decades, and the truth is, upward mobility is the rule, not the exception, as I detail in this article.

But the problem I have with propaganda like this is not just that it is a lie. The problem is the devastating, hope-destroying effect false propaganda like this has on the very people the propagandists purport to care about.

The despicable nature of such lies is that it robs our most precious resource from those who need it the most:

Hope.

Lies like these rob people of their hopes and dreams, their ambitions, their optimism, and their dedication to working hard and providing themselves and their families with an ever better life, leaving them with only an empty sense of hopelessness and a bitter resentment  and hatred for the “haves” who somehow “gamed the system” to acquire wealth in a mysterious way the poor have no chance of doing.

You can steal a person’s possessions. You can commit violence against them, or lock them up. You can deny them a decent education and deny them job opportunities, all things the government and voters who support the status quo do to the poor every day.

But the very most despicable thing you can do to someone who is struggling to make ends meet is robbing them of their hope with soul-destroying propaganda like this.

I pray that voters one day wake up to the utter hopelessness and devastation these kind of lies, and legislation driven by them, cause in poor communities.

Headed to Silver Bank!

On our way to Silver Bank to swim with humpback whales!

What is Worker Exploitation?

No one has ever been able to explain to me how any entrepreneur or business who freely offers jobs– any kind of job at any wage– that people are free to apply for or not as they wish, can be “exploiting” people.

If it’s not the very best possible job opportunity available, then I should simply not take the job, right? And if it is, shouldn’t I be deeply grateful to the employer for offering me the best possible opportunity available to me?

If I am worth more than a job offers, or my current job is paying me, shouldn’t I just get another job that pays what I’m worth, or start a business myself?

If I just can’t find a job that pays me what I think I’m worth, then isn’t that pretty much proof that I’m not worth as much as I think I am?

If an employer can make a healthy profit from me at a higher wage, and I ask for that higher wage, and the employer says no, in other words, they would rather lose the profit they make from me that pay me more, does that mean the employer is not greedy enough?

I asked someone this:

“I offer you a job requiring 70 hours a week that pays $1 per week. Did I just exploit you?”

And the reply was,

“No, it only becomes exploitation if someone accepts the job.”

So the employer, making a job offer, cannot exploit anyone. Only a worker can cause exploitation, by accepting the job.

Interesting!

It’s not politics, it’s religion, stupid

(The word “stupid” in the title refers to myself, of course 🙂 )

One great joy in my life is the constant discovery of people who see the world far more clearly than I.

This article brilliantly states:

“Statism is about a failed top down 20th Century religion based in the feverish dreams of Marx and Hegel. Seriously, it is a religion.”

Wow. “It is a religion.” Brilliant! Of course! Religion is based on faith, not logic.

Now, I don’t mean to denigrate religion. Individual beliefs, whether religious, spiritual, philosophical, or otherwise, are sacred and every individual should be free to believe whatever they wish. But some beliefs are unarguably based on faith, and others on logic.

This is the mistake I have repeatedly made:

I have always believed people approached politics as I did, like a scientist intent on finding the truth, connecting the dots as data points emerged, or a detective trying to solve a case by weighing various theories against the known facts.

I used to think that if someone disagreed with me, they could show me where the flaw in my logic was, so that I could improve my thinking, or, I could demonstrate to them that my logic in a specific case was sound, where theirs was not.

But I was wrong.

People don’t believe in a political party out of logic or intelligence. People believe in a political party out of emotion, blind faith, loyalty, tribal instinct… in short, religious fervor.

People don’t vote Democrat or Republican due to the facts. People vote Democrat or Republican despite the facts.

When it comes to buying a new TV or car, people study the available data and generally make decisions driven by logic.

But Democrats and Republicans are not scientists or detectives. They are all too often zealots, ready to blindly die for their flag without ever questioning and delving too deeply into what that flag actually represents.

Income and Wealth Inequality

In a recent speech, our President said that income inequality was “the defining issue of our time.” The new mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio, vows to use government to attack income inequality. The Occupy protesters used the “99%” number to represent the wealth and income gaps between the top 1% and the bottom 99% of people in the U.S.

Yet it’s easy to prove nobody truly believes that income inequality, or wealth inequality, in a society is wrong or immoral.

What?

Imagine Oprah Winfrey (net worth: $2.8B) is on a yacht with Ted Turner (net worth: only $2B). Oprah is worth a whopping $800 million more than poor Ted.

$800 million is a gargantuan gap in wealth.

$800 million dollars is enough to buy Ted a fleet of 400 two million dollar yachts, or send 8,000 of his descendants to a nice college. It’s more than the gross national product of many countries.

Obviously, Oprah needs to correct this immoral inequity immediately by giving Ted $400 million of her ill-gotten gains to even things out, right?

Of course not.

No sane person would protest the huge, $800 million dollar wealth gap between Oprah and Ted as being reprehensible, immoral, or unfair.

Well, that’s just two rich people. What about the wealth gap between a rich and a poor person?

Many might protest the wealth inequality between Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, and his lowest paid employee, even when that gap is only $60 million. So $800 million inequality is fine, yet $60 million is too much? That makes no sense.

An arbitrary rule is not a rule.

Well, then it’s not the absolute dollar amount, it’s the ratio.

Nope, you don’t believe that, either.

Some of the Wall Street brokers laughing out of the windows at the Occupy protesters make well over a million a year, or approximately 100 times what a Walmart worker makes. But if a 100x gap is immoral, then Oprah, who makes $385 million a year, should definitely be transferring oodles of her wealth to these multimillionaire Wall Street shlubs.

No, not even the most progressive, class-warfare warrior, Socialist Party-card-carrying Daily Kos reader would demand that these Wall Street millionaires go on welfare.

Those are all bad examples. Anyone who cares about social justice believes that as a society we need to work towards more income and wealth equality.

Nope. You don’t believe that. 

Want more proof that inequality is not the issue that anyone cares about? Let’s say there was a vote that would make everyone in the U.S. exactly equal in net worth. And that net worth was the average net worth of a person in rural India or sub-Saharan Africa.

Even though that law would result in perfect wealth equality in the U.S., you know no one would ever vote for it, including you.

I need more proof.

Okay. Let’s say you had a choice between two possible future Americas:

1. A country where the poorest households had an income of $10,000, and the richest had an income of $20,000

or

2. A country where the poorest households had an income of $20,000, and the richest had an income of hundreds of millions

Which would you vote for?

Obviously, if you have any compassion at all, you would vote for the second, even though it is far more unequal than the first. And this example most closely resembles the actual choice we need to make, between socialism and capitalism.

So clearly, inequality is not perceived as a problem by anyone (except, maybe, for those driven by simple envy and not social justice). We’ve proven that.

Okay then, so if it’s not inequality, what is the issue we all care about, really?

We don’t care about wealth inequality when people are doing well. We care when households on the low end of the income scale are struggling to pay bills, or can’t afford the basic necessities of life.

So, we’ve learned the issue is not “correcting inequality.” It’s eliminating poverty.

And while it might seem to some that there are many reasons a household lives in poverty, in truth there is only one: The household has no wage earner with a good paying job.

Well, that changes the picture–and the goal–dramatically!

If even the very poorest households in America could live what we would currently call a “middle class” lifestyle, and easily afford the basics (and then some), would anyone (besides the simply envious) protest inequality? Because if the answer is no, then the goal changes. The goal is no longer reducing inequality.

The goal is simply getting everyone who is able and willing to work a decent paying job.

How do we do that?

We know that businesses must make a profit from each employee to cover their costs and overhead. And we know not all employees are profitable (if they were, every company would hire every last person they could find, of course!). So, in order to solve the problem of poverty, does it make more sense to:

1. wage war against companies, regulating and taxing them to make it extremely difficult for them to make a profit from each new employee?
2. or the opposite?

More:

https://jmellicker.wordpress.com/2013/10/20/wiping-out-poverty-again/

https://jmellicker.wordpress.com/2013/01/03/war-on-poverty-now-officially-over/

https://jmellicker.wordpress.com/2012/08/27/the-progressive-conundrum/

https://jmellicker.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/robbing-peter-to-pay-paul-is-not-progress/