The Importance Of Corporations In The United States

Corporation Opinion Essay The United States’ entire economy was built upon the idea of capitalism, private ownership, and this can be seen in many of their institutions. One of the most prevalent examples would be the corporations that have expanded to every corner of the world. These corporations are institutions whose purpose used to be for the public good but now strive to maximize profit for its shareholders, people who bought shares of the company. Due to this goal corporations will use any means necessary to accomplish this even if it calls for questionable moral actions. By looking at the effects of these corporations’ actions, one can see the damage brought to both the economy and society; this is important because as their power increases

In general, CEOs of corporations in the United States will make an average of four hundred fifty times as much as their workers and that is without outsourcing jobs (Reich). When job are sent to developing countries workers will make on average less than two dollars an hour. By doing this, both the workers who have lost their jobs and the outsourced workers are essentially being kept close or in poverty, while the corporations make a profit upwards of forty dollars on shoes that cost five dollars to make (Nike’s track record). In fact, when ranking America on most scales of economic equality in developed countries it will rank “sixth of six, seventh of seven…thirteenth of thirteen, or fourteenth of fourteen” (Lovell, 213 or 10). It seems that the “land of the free” isn’t even in the top ten of economic freedom when put up against other developed nations with smaller wealth

Small businesses such as sole proprietorships are numerous but often lack the sizeable financial capital that “big business” has (Waters). This means that in order to be able to a profit they aren’t able to go below a certain prices as they have to be able to pay their workers a livable wage. So when corporations start to lower prices in order to gain consumer favor they (small business) usually have stop well above where the price will settle as acceptable for consumers. Now corporations are able to drop their prices incredibly low and still make profit as their workers are usually making next to nothing unlike small business employees (Landau). A lack of consumers for their higher priced products means that many small businesses will eventually shut down due to a lack of profit. If small businesses disappear from corporate competition thousands of people will lose their source of income and job options and poverty will eventually