Forum Post: Why just corps? What about unions?
Posted 12 years ago on Sept. 21, 2011, 9:36 a.m. EST by casualEcon
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Look at overall political spending for the last decade and it's dominated by unions. http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php Getting the money out of politics is the way to go but you seem to be focusing on half the problem.
I support publicly funded elections, with each candidate being given equal funding and equal time and space to air their views. That would solve the problem entirely and disallow campaign funding from unions and corporations alike.
There is also a "one dollar, one vote" proposal that I would be equally in favor of: http://usdayofrage.org/
I don't agree with everything that Ron Paul stands for, but we're going to need his kind of thinking if we're ever going to take the monetary power away from the government and the corporations.
Because Unions put up a good front as being for the average, little guy. Corporations are big, bad and mean and are an easy scapegoat. Nevertheless, people usually forget about the biggest "corporation" in this country.
The largest corporation? You mean Wal-Mart, which doesn't allow collective bargaining and steamrolls local economies and local cultures?
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2011/index.html
Maybe you were thinking of GE, which paid NO taxes last year?
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/25/business/economy/25tax.html?pagewanted=all
I was referring to the government. Though not technically a corporation,it's still a business - a poorly run one at that. And Apple is the world's largest corporation when measured by Market Capitalization.
You know, Walmart started off as a small mom and pop store too. Do you know why they grew to their current size? Because they offered the best value to the general public. Do you know who determines this? The general public every time they decide to shop at Walmart. Sounds pretty democratic to me. Personally, I prefer to shop elsewhere.
Actually, GE paid over a billion dollars in taxes last (2010) year. But, I know, this is a strong talking point. If you know how to read financial statements, you can see that GE didn't pay US income taxes in 2009 below. But that's because they deferred them due to the current economic environment.
http://www.google.com/finance?q=NYSE:GE&fstype=ii