gbaji wrote:
Technogeek wrote:
Way to not actually answer the question.
It was an unfair question. It starts with the premise that private companies have some kind of obligation to spend their money on what you want them to spend it on, and further that spending money on "political activism" is somehow automatically at ends with spending it "creating more jobs". If a company can make more money by hiring more people, it will. That decision isn't capricious, or political. If, by lobbying government, it can prevent laws from being passed which will hurt their bottom line, and thus allow them to hire more people, they'll do it. Said activism benefits both the company *and* the people they employ.
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I also knew you or Varus would drag up Unions. I view unions as just another big business that should be spending it's peoples money on the people in the union, not on political activism.
And yet, you mentioned companies. You singled them out as though somehow them getting involved in politics is "wrong", but not anyone else. I could just as easily argue that all those non-profit "community organizations" which take money from donations and then spend it on political activism could instead spend that money on soup kitchens and loans to small businesses to help the community members directly. Yet I don't see you complaining about them, either.
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The point is, Big business, the people really making the big money, do not give one red damn about the economy. They will be rich whether the economy is good or bad.
Except that they become rich by providing a good or service to the public, which the public freely chooses to use. They overwhelmingly do this via employment. Thus, their profit motive helps all of us. It helps the people they employ, and it helps the consumers by providing them a better product. And if the company does things which the public doesn't like, the public can boycott them. Can we boycott the government? I'm much much more concerned about government power and influence than private companies getting wealthy.
What does a union do? It increases the cost of labor, thus increasing the cost of the goods and services they provide. And they do this with a virtual monopoly in the areas where they exist. Public employee unions don't have *any* competition at all. And they're funded by taxpayer dollars. And the unions get a piece of that. And they spend it lobbying for even more support for the union.
If we're going to talk about political activism which is negative in effect, what the hell can be said about a process where a group of politicians increase funding for some public sector jobs, which in turn enriches the union, which then turns around and spends that increased money supporting the issues and campaigns of the very politicians who just gave them that money? It's about as corrupt as can be, yet almost no one talks about it.
When a private corporation lobbies the government, the end result is almost always going to be positive for everyone else. When public unions do, it's almost always going to be negative. So yeah. It's relevant to point this out.
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The right wing like to say "What's good for business is good for America" I say bullsh*t to that. "What's good for business is good for business".
But what's good for business is good for America, so we still end out in the same place. Are you trying to argue that a law which decreases corporate profits will somehow magically result in increased hiring by that corporation? How exactly do you think that works? When you make the people who hire people less wealthy, you really only hurt the people they might have hired. Do you honestly think it works some other way? If so, how about you explain why?
Edited, Sep 23rd 2010 1:14pm by gbaji
I'm saying that as long as entities can bribe our government freely, we are screwed. The more money these people throw at the government to get things the way they want them, the more we are screwed. We are no longer a county by the people, and for the people. We are a county by the richest people, for the richest people.
I usually don't wish ill on people, but Gbaji, here's hoping you get outsourced. Tada!