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Edited on Tue Jul-20-04 09:26 PM by jpgray
I've heard various plans being espoused from both sides of the aisle to the effect of lowering costs for insurance companies or for corporations so that they will lower the cost of insurance, or hire more people in the US, respecitively.
But in all likelihood they won't do that--there does not come a point where these entities say 'Okay, now that costs are down, we're making enough money and can do what's best for our fellow people.' That point DOES NOT EXIST in our system for people in business administration. It simply is not there. They will take the extra profit and try to push their costs down even more, by lobbying for tort reform and further deregulation/subsidies/tax breaks. Anything you give to a large corporation, they will simply take it and give nothing back--why should they? The corporate world is Machiavellian--those who try to do good will always be out-maneuvered by those who are not limited by any set of morals in their decisions.
We're one of the largest and wealthiest markets in the world--we shouldn't be throwing these people a bone, we should be wresting one back from them. If you trust a large corporation to do the right thing when they can simply pocket the extra profit, you are seriously deluded.
According to Business Week, the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the average hourly worker's pay in 1980. By 1990 that had almost doubled to 85 times. In 2000, the average CEO salary reached an unbelievable 531 times that of the average hourly worker. Were CEOs criminally underpaid in 1980 or 1990? No. Yet so much of the extra money made goes not to improving the lives of workers or the world community, it simply goes to make rich people richer. Do NOT trust corporations to respond to reduced costs in any way other than increasing the size of their own wallets.
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