Corporations aren't people

100+ years ago the US Supreme Court said that Corporations are people entitled to the protections of the Constitution.  Recently the Supreme Court relied on that old case to say that means government can't regulate campaign contributions by Corporations.

Here are some basic facts about Corporations.  They do not exist in nature.  They are artificial entities that are created by government (in the United States each individual state has its own Corporations law) to allow investors to pool their money to engage in investing.  Their purpose is to encourage risk taking and the way that they do that is provide special rules for Corporations.  If you or I invest money in something on our own, and something goes really wrong and it really hurts some other people, those people can sue us for everything we have.  Corporations were created to allow people to pool their money and if the worst happens, and everything goes really wrong, only the money they put in the Corporation is at risk.

This limited liability protection is a huge benefit that will sometimes result in unfairness to people that are injured.  That is how lots of the guys who made millions by selling the borderline fraudulant mortgages that blew up the economy a couple years ago are still sitting on their millions while millions of homeowners suffer.  They are protected because they pulled lots of money out while times were good and the Corporations are now insolvent.

That is why the Supreme Court decisions are so non-sensical.  Government created these organizations.  They could abolish them tomorrow if they wanted.  The first Supreme Court decision over 100 years ago was grounded in the right of free association guaranteed in the Constitution.  The Supreme Court was evidently unable to figure out that regulating corporations has nothing to do with the right of the people who own corporations to associate, it only regulates the economic terms upon which they are granted limited liability status.

The result is our political process is drowning in so much money it  has become almost completely disfunctional.   People who want to be in politics spend their lives raising money, they can't make any decision without thinking how it is going to impact their reelection war chest.

We need to start moving toward reversing those Supreme Court decisions.  It is unlikely the Supreme Court will do it any time soon.  We could move toward an amendment to the US Constitution to clarify that the bill of rights does not apply to Corporations or other entities authorized by the State for economic purposes.  But that is a slow process.

It might be quicker to do State by State.  Each state has the right to dictate the terms of by which Corporations operate within the State.  An initiative measure in California that specified that a Corporation doing business in California is not a person or protected form of association would be a good start toward bringing some sanity to our political system.

Factoids from the media regarding the economy

The Economist of August 20, 2011, p. 67 figures out which of the big rich countries have been hardest hit by the recession.  Britain is worst.  The US and Italy are next on the misery list, then Canada is slightly better, Japan better still, France even better and Germany has fared the best.  All the countries have seen negative growth in GDP per person since 2004 excerpt Germany where GDP per person has grown slightly.

Factoids from a Robert Reich article in the Sep 4 San Francisco Chronicle Insight section, p.E5:  
1.  The last decade has been the worst in a century for American workers.  Wage gains in the last 10 years have even lagged behind wage gains during the great depression.
2.  Big American corporations make more money, and create more jobs, outside the US than in.
3.  CEO pay has soared.  The median value of CEO compensation at the 350 biggest Corporations was $9.3 million a year, not including stock options.