Corporate America

Corporate America is frequently demonized by both sides of the political spectrum, but even more so on the left. They call foul that the big boys don’t let the little guys compete, and put them out of business. They cry out against their labor practices, resorting to sweat shops for their cheap labor. They cry against the leaders of those corporations for their ridiculous salaries, while others are barely scraping by.

I guess they’re totally oblivious of just how much big corporate business has done for them.

I find it interesting that so many are intent on saving the little guys. I assume it is because they themselves are a little guy. But while the little guys provide us with valuable products and services, it is the big guys that make the valuable products and services cheap.

Should we count the mainstream items that we own and use that were made affordable because of corporate business? Cars, computers, television, appliances. What about food? http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2009/07/spending-on-food-at-all-time-historical.html.

Consider we take away the advanced business model that has enabled large corporate businesses to provide our products at an incredibly cheap price. Consider all our products are instead produced by local small businesses. What would happen? The streamline process of corporations would be gone, and the expenses of product development would be huge. Costs of production would be large. Very little money, if any, would be able to be invested in development and product improvement. And the price of the products would skyrocket, as those increased expenses would be passed to the consumer.

It is often brought up that corporations outsource jobs, removing American jobs, and furthermore they pay pittance to foreign employees. Sure, they go to other countries who will work for much less to provide the same service as their American counterpart. I discussed the fallacy of this argument in the previous post. And unless they are a government entity driving actual slave labor, the argument of sweat shops is bogus. The workers choose to work there. I lived in Honduras. The factory jobs there were coveted. Yes, they got paid almost nothing compared to our standard of living, but for them it was good pay.

So let’s ask this question. Which is better for America: to produce the most products for the cheapest price, or to keep the most jobs? Answer: to produce more products. That is the wealth of the nation. From that production (GDP) comes the wealth to purchase all the services that we use. All our car and home maintenance services, health care services, fine dining, massages, entertainment, etc. All these services are made possible only because the wealth of the national production is enough to pay for them. Interestingly, these services are jobs, ultimately made possible by the products produced.

So why do we demonize the corporate businesses that create the most product at the smallest expense? These are the businesses that create the wealth of the country. These are the businesses that made owning a car possible to even the lowest class. These are the businesses that made food little more than an afterthought on our budgets. These are the businesses that transformed computers from rooms full of machines to tiny devices that we all can afford.

Corporate America is what transformed the world from wood fire stoves and horse and buggy transportation to where we are now. If you want to kill Corporate America, be prepared to make a return to the dark ages.