Sarah Anderson and John Cavanagh of the Institute for Policy Studies released their report Top 200: The Rise of Corporate Global Power. The one fact that got my attention was that as of 2000, of the world’s 100 largest economic entities, 51 are corporations and 49 are countries. With General Motors, Wal-Mart, Exxon Mobil, Ford Motor & DaimlerChrysler leading the charge with economies more powerful than most countries. According to their report, these are the key findings:
The Top 200 corporations’ sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity.The Top 200 corporations’ combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10.
The Top 200s’ combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in “severe” poverty.
While the sales of the Top 200 are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world’s workforce.
Between 1983 and 1999, the profits of the Top 200 firms grew 362.4 percent, while the number of people they employ grew by only 14.4 percent.
A full 5 percent of the Top 200s’ combined workforce is employed by Wal-Mart, a company notorious for union-busting and widespread use of part-time workers to avoid paying benefits.
U.S. corporations dominate the Top 200, with 82 slots (41 percent of the total). Japanese firms are second, with only 41 slots.
Of the U.S. corporations on the list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corpo-rate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world’s biggest corporation—General Motors.
Between 1983 and 1999, the share of total sales of the Top 200 made up by service sector corporations increased from 33.8 percent to 46.7 percent. Gains were particularly evident in financial services and telecommunications sectors, in which most countries have pursued deregulation.
My previous post on the the rights of the victors resonates stronger than ever as a desperate claim to analyze the path we’re walking. These corporations are not thinking twice before withholding the spoils of their victories over the rest of the human race. They are growing but barely returning the profits of their activity. At this pace the concept of nation-state will be obsolete in our generation, with one scary consequence: the majority of us will not belong to a state (corporation).
[...] But, despite all these theoretical abundance, the only winners are the global corporations, and the big loosers are those in the middle class. Hope is fading as we awaken to the realization that companies have no loyalty to a nation, moving entire production facilities to the cheapest possible places, taking advantage of whichever local incentives are available. In a desperate move to compete, governments are doing nothing else but fueling this strategy. [...]