Tame runaway corporate control of America through socio-capitalism

byProgToddNorCalFollow

"The industrial revolution brought us our current model for capitalism, and it has served us relatively well for over a century. Yes, the system has had its flaws, yet somehow we have always managed to recover.

But the parameters have changed for the 21st century. From Reagonomics through to the Bush era we've received a near lethal dose of the worst aspects of capitalism. The current level of corporate power would make even robber barons jealous. And finally America has woken up to this. Between the Occupy movement and the recent elections, the rumblings towards fixing a broken model have grown louder and gone more mainstream.

The problem with capitalism as it now stands is that large multinationals have a disproportionate influence on politics, media, the economy, the environment, and the middle class. These corporations have slanted the tax, anti-trust, and environmental laws further in their favor with lobbyists. Corporate profits are through the roof, yet CEO's salaries have gone even more stratospheric because taxpayers have had to shoulder the external costs of these behemoths. We pay the healthcare costs for those stricken by their pollution, or in the case of oil companies, the cost of our military's protection of American tankers in the Middle East.

Add to this picture the fact that many board members receive most of their compensation as stock options, which under current law are only taxed at 15% as capital gains rather than 39.6% as regular earnings. The end result is that we've created a class of super-rich where the top 1% in America hold 65% of all wealth.

""Throughout time, massive income disparity between the haves and have-nots has been at the core of how civilizations collapse. Our current corporatist tendencies push us towards that brink; it's a downward spiral that is hard to break.

This is how runaway capitalism can be our downfall, and it's a hard rut to crawl out of. Since a corporation's key goal is to maximize profits, CEOs and board members have a fiduciary responsibility to game the systemvia these aforementioned lobbyists. Wolves in multiple henhouses are part of the multinational business model.

But what if we find a way to use the forces of each CEO's own greed to help benefit society rather than leech from it? What if tax rates vary dramatically dependent on how well a corporation treats its employees, its physical neighbors, the environment, and society as a whole through the quality of its products or services?""