Corporations Are Not People by Jeffrey D. Clements

Author:Jeffrey D. Clements
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Published: 2012-03-21T16:00:00+00:00

Jobs, Taxes, and Wealth

A lot of data suggest that the success of the corporate drive to power in our country over the past three or four decades has helped transform our economy from a broad-based growth engine for all into a plutocracy. It now is very difficult for any but the rich to prosper in healthy, strong communities.6

In the corporate era, most Americans no longer make enough money. Per capita income is now around $27,000, and “household” income (i.e., husband and wife both working in many cases) is around $50,000.7 Wages for most people have been flat for three decades. Personal savings have plummeted, and debt has soared.

This was not true in the previous thirty years: from 1950 through 1980, when the economy was growing, wages for most people grew too. The average income for nine out of ten Americans grew from $17, 719 to $30,941 in that period, a 75 percent increase in constant 2008 dollars. Since 1980, however, the economy continued to grow but the gains went overwhelmingly to the top fraction of Americans. The top 1 percent received 36 percent of the income gains between 1979 and 2008. The top sliver (again, 1 percent) received 53 percent of income gains from 2001 to 2006.8 Wealth now is more concentrated in the top 1 percent of American incomes than at any time since 1928.9

For average Americans, income went from $30,941 in 1980 to $31,244 in 2008, a gain of only $303 dollars in twenty-eight years.10 Total household income rose a little more than that, but only because most households required two paychecks and more women entered the workforce.11

The top 1 percent of income-earning Americans now takes a larger share of income—24 percent of the total—than ever before, and they own a larger share of total net worth—34 percent—than ever before. Ninety percent of Americans own just 29 percent of total net worth.12 Between 1993 and 1997, “corporations enjoyed double-digit profit increases for five years in a row…. Meanwhile, over the 1990s, hourly wages fell for four of every five workers.”13 CEO pay rose 600 percent in the same decade.14

In the past decade, the United States has lost thousands of factories, and thousands more are on the precipice.15 By 2009, fewer Americans worked in manufacturing jobs than at any time since 1941.16 Most other measures of the American middle class are just as bad. Hours worked? Since 1979, married couples with children are working an additional five hundred hours (equivalent to more than sixty-two eight-hour days).17 Vacation time? We have by far the lowest standard for vacation time in the developed world. Debt? With incomes stagnating, savings rates are near zero, and most Americans live under pressing burdens of credit card, mortgage, auto, school, and other debt. Affordability of housing? Ability to pay for college? Retiring with a safe pension? Health care? Most people have it much worse on these measures than thirty years ago.

Some people say that this steady decline is just the way it is, due to

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