Another New Column: "For the Corporation"
Wednesday, 26 march 2008 - 637 words
When your basic philosophical tenet is “From each of his own, to each of his own,” it’s going to be hard to understand how and why corporations work, which is why liberals are so vexed by the idea of jobs being moved overseas. Here the conservative takes a split: Of course something awful happens whenever an American loses a job, but there isn’t a Right-winger worth his salt who doesn’t take the Kudlow Creed imminently more seriously than its Communist counterpart. [ii]
Corporations aren’t in business to provide jobs. They’re in business to turn profit and, where applicable, serve shareholders. To the degree any large company is a “good citizen,” it becomes one against its own self-interest, tolerating repetitive regulation, over-regulation, and prohibitive rates of taxation. The Left’s answer to ExxonMobil turning record profits was not to dig into its quarterly filing and take note of how much of that profit will be pumped back into its own infrastructure, or how much will be dedicated to R and D, or what the company means by R and D, or the dividend it will pay its shareholders. Its first reaction was to read the top line and wonder how much more they can pilfer. Which is fine if you want to be France by 2015, not so great if you continue to hope capitalism will work its magic.
[i] Hardball, 19 March 2008; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23725038/; last accessed 23 March 2008.
[ii] The Kudlow Creed: “I believe free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”
Bill Maher said something interesting last week, which by itself is newsworthy because Maher tends to bypass interesting and linger somewhere between thoughtless reaction, easy joke-getting, and provocation. Asked by Chris Matthews to lend his vast military experience to the Iraqi War on its fifth anniversary, talk eventually got around to Senator Obama’s Pivotal Speech About Race. Say, Bill, isn’t Barack dreamy?
“I thought it was great that Barack Obama, in the speech, made the point that you [meaning “little people”] are not being kept down by the immigrants or the black guy,” Maher said. “That is not who is your problem. Your problem is the corporation, the greedy corporation and those people who – who put politicians in office, who do the bidding of those corporations, who rapaciously plunder the workers’ pensions, who take their jobs overseas and so forth. That is the real problem.” [i]
It would be interesting to know what corporations Maher is talking about; if he knows of companies that are uniformly plundering the pensions of its employees, he’d do better to reach out to the Feds than blabbering about it to Chris Matthews. For the time being we’ll assume he knows of none and additionally forego the obvious question of whether, in Maher’s view, it’s better for environmentalists, trial lawyers, and George Soros to put politicians into office, taking the opportunity instead to discuss corporations as a modern ideal.
The Left uses “Corporations” as a derisive term, in much the same way it puts Big in front of things it doesn’t like or understand (e.g., Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Fast Food). Not necessarily because they’re bad companies (though some certainly are), and not because they’re shortchanging shareholders, but because they’ve committed the cardinal sin of not behaving to the Left’s exact specifications (Wal-Mart), or because they’ve had the nerve to win the same sorts of no bid contracts as during previous administrations (Halliburton), furthermore having the insolence to provide the services contracted to provide.
Granted there is something serious to be said about instances of corruption and over-charging, but I for one find it impossible to believe that anyone who stands stoic while a government spends four trillion dollars really gives much of a damn about over-charging for corn, or whatever it was. (You’ll find that Big Government is the only Big the Left supports without reservation.) More likely the Left's contempt for King Hal is Cheney related than it actually understands what happens there.
“I thought it was great that Barack Obama, in the speech, made the point that you [meaning “little people”] are not being kept down by the immigrants or the black guy,” Maher said. “That is not who is your problem. Your problem is the corporation, the greedy corporation and those people who – who put politicians in office, who do the bidding of those corporations, who rapaciously plunder the workers’ pensions, who take their jobs overseas and so forth. That is the real problem.” [i]
It would be interesting to know what corporations Maher is talking about; if he knows of companies that are uniformly plundering the pensions of its employees, he’d do better to reach out to the Feds than blabbering about it to Chris Matthews. For the time being we’ll assume he knows of none and additionally forego the obvious question of whether, in Maher’s view, it’s better for environmentalists, trial lawyers, and George Soros to put politicians into office, taking the opportunity instead to discuss corporations as a modern ideal.
The Left uses “Corporations” as a derisive term, in much the same way it puts Big in front of things it doesn’t like or understand (e.g., Big Tobacco, Big Oil, Big Fast Food). Not necessarily because they’re bad companies (though some certainly are), and not because they’re shortchanging shareholders, but because they’ve committed the cardinal sin of not behaving to the Left’s exact specifications (Wal-Mart), or because they’ve had the nerve to win the same sorts of no bid contracts as during previous administrations (Halliburton), furthermore having the insolence to provide the services contracted to provide.
Granted there is something serious to be said about instances of corruption and over-charging, but I for one find it impossible to believe that anyone who stands stoic while a government spends four trillion dollars really gives much of a damn about over-charging for corn, or whatever it was. (You’ll find that Big Government is the only Big the Left supports without reservation.) More likely the Left's contempt for King Hal is Cheney related than it actually understands what happens there.
When your basic philosophical tenet is “From each of his own, to each of his own,” it’s going to be hard to understand how and why corporations work, which is why liberals are so vexed by the idea of jobs being moved overseas. Here the conservative takes a split: Of course something awful happens whenever an American loses a job, but there isn’t a Right-winger worth his salt who doesn’t take the Kudlow Creed imminently more seriously than its Communist counterpart. [ii]
Corporations aren’t in business to provide jobs. They’re in business to turn profit and, where applicable, serve shareholders. To the degree any large company is a “good citizen,” it becomes one against its own self-interest, tolerating repetitive regulation, over-regulation, and prohibitive rates of taxation. The Left’s answer to ExxonMobil turning record profits was not to dig into its quarterly filing and take note of how much of that profit will be pumped back into its own infrastructure, or how much will be dedicated to R and D, or what the company means by R and D, or the dividend it will pay its shareholders. Its first reaction was to read the top line and wonder how much more they can pilfer. Which is fine if you want to be France by 2015, not so great if you continue to hope capitalism will work its magic.
[i] Hardball, 19 March 2008; http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23725038/; last accessed 23 March 2008.
[ii] The Kudlow Creed: “I believe free market capitalism is the best path to prosperity.”
posted by Brian S. Wise | 3:20 PM
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