An Open Letter to Corporate America

Congratulations! You are managing to strangle the life out of the country you helped to convince capitalism was the basis of the American Dream. I know that life for you is stressful, having to responsibly control all of your bank accounts, making sure that all your employees make the equivalent of a 1950's meat-packing plant whilst you sleep every night on your mattress stuffed with hundred dollar bills, but I think it may be time to wake from this American fantasy. The problem with growing a corporation to the point that it nears a monopoly is simple, as other businesses shrink, and the large businesses get larger and larger, the large businesses become all there is, and therefore become the backbone of a nation's economy in two ways: one, they become the largest single employer of the majority of a nation's citizens, in that, there really is no other place to work, and two, they become the largest single avenue of economic redistribution of funds, because there really is no other place to shop. Now, as the ruler of a large corporation, this means at some point, you would have to realize that your actions dramatically have the power to either stimulate an economy, or to cripple it. If, say, your business is running in a time when major banks all across the country had to get bailed out of debt by the government, the housing market is in a state of decline, and the government itself is in a state of nearly defaulting on loans, while inflation has lead to middle and lower class families struggling to make ends meet more than ever and the gap between these classes and the upper class continues to widen, when the media follows unemployment levels as if they are the stock market, and sensationalizes the struggles of everyday Americans as if we are going through the beginnings of a second Great Depression, it would be sort of counter-intuitive of any business to be expecting to produce large profits in such a chaotic economic environment. Yet, the large corporations continue to do so! How is this possible? The oil companies, despite poisoning the beautiful Gulf, despite being invested in overseas wars (and yes, they are), and despite dealing with the decline in American demand due to the increased sale of hybrid vehicles, raise their gas prices to obscene amounts, and fluctuate the prices for reasons that make no sense, as they really have no basis on the supply and demand of the product in this country. They supply a product that they know is necessary to the mobility of the world, and they are milking the lower classes dry by price gouging in a recession, managing to post record profits every year with this tactic. Meanwhile, other large corporations also continue to grow, despite the odds. Companies whom refuse to post declines in sales or profit, even in economic downturns, because for some reason, they feel like perpetual growth of a business is a possibility. I don't know how this became the norm, but it is a fallacy. There is no such thing as perpetual growth of a business. At some point, you will hit a ceiling, in which you have grown as much as you can possibly grow, while retaining enough income to stay in business. Why? Because at some point, you will have saturated the market. How can you expect to INCREASE your sales and profit margin, by growing a business especially, if you have saturated a market to the point that there is no where left to go, and there is no one left to sell your product to who is not already made available to it? What is a business to do at this point? Has anyone thought about this at all? But that is beside the current point I am trying to make. Growth during a recession would seem a hard task, but it is being managed.

So, if a corporation is already so huge that it really has a dramatic effect on the economy, because of how many people it employs, this corporation has a choice to make, to either help stimulate the economy by continuing to hire people and give them comparable pay rates so these people can make money to redistribute back into the money pool, or they can help hinder the economy, by not hiring people, and cutting hours to the point that they run on the bare minimum of wage expense, so that while they still make profit, the majority of their employees are forced into worse states of poverty. On one hand, in the short term, a corporation that continues to hire and give employees enough hours of work to live on may temporarily post less profit, or they may even post negative numbers, but on the other hand, the economy will have a chance to dramatically improve. Have these people ever thought that cutting wages from the bottom up might not be the best option, if they want to provide good service to their consumer base, because if they run their business on the bare minimum of wage expense, their customer service needs will be hurt considerably? Wouldn't it make more sense, to lower the salaries of the executives and the higher ups, who make more money than they could possibly need, just until the economy improves? In fact, this should be a clause in every executive contract, that salaries can be lowered during times of recession, to help manage expenses. Hell, if you are making 200,000 a year, a fifty thousand pay cut would be hardly noticeable, unless you are living an extreme lifestyle. In fact, I don't even see the logic whatsoever, in running a business model where the majority of workers get hurt, because that would only be hurting the big picture of the economy, instead of the small picture. What sense does it make, to in a time of recession, cut millions of people's wages to the point they can barely survive? The only logical explanation, is that they are doing it on purpose. Why? Well, if your goal as a corporation is to become a true monopoly, which really is the goal of capitalism as its core, then making an economy worse during a time of recession will drive more smaller businesses to close, because the less money available to flow back into the economy will mean the less money these smaller businesses can generate, so you are in a prime area of opportunity to knock more competition out of the picture. Especially in poorer areas, your chances of becoming the only avenue of spending increase, as the smaller businesses are driven away. So, you can move closer and closer to true monopoly status, so if you keep hindering the economy during times of recession, you are helping make your business the biggest ant on the anthill. It's the American Dream, baby!

But why, why, why??? Ultimately what is the point of this perpetual growth? Would it really matter so much to be the only business in an area, if that area has no money left to spend in your business? Would it matter to be the richest person in the world, if that world has nothing left to sell you of value? Would it be worth it to be the last person alive, with all the money in the world? This attitude of the richest person wins, is just leading the world down that path of destruction. At some point, the people with the money need to realize that having all the money is not the answer. Everyone needs to have some money to keep a constant steady redistribution of funds into a healthy economy. If only a few have the money, and everyone else suffers and dies, then the rich will have no one left to steal from. So, in a sense, strangling the economy to the point of frailty, is setting themselves up for death as well. Capitalism pushed to its fullest extreme destroys everything. Moderation is the key. So, the government needs to step in and find a way to fix the system. Before its too late.