Corporate Greed

So, here’s the deal, greed has become the guiding principle of US business. Greed is destroying this country, and it needs to be addressed. Now, I am not so simple as to think that we can eliminate greed by legislation or fiat. However, I do think that we can make greed extremely expensive for the greedy. “But, old Zorro,” you ask, “how can this be done?” The answer is by levying surcharges for various behaviors while granting direct tax credits for others.

On the surcharge side, for every job outsourced overseas, the surcharge is $50,000/year for every year that job stays outsourced out of country. Another surcharge might be $20,000/year for every employee not covered by full medical insurance. Yet another surcharge could be $15,000/year for every full time employee who does not make enough to support his/her family without supplementary income (i.e. a second or third job.) Of course, most of these surcharges would be only for companies of a certain size as determined by either/or/and number of employees/annual revenue. Companies which fall below a threshold value would be exempt from the above surcharges. (I don’t think Joe’s Plumbing is going to be exporting jobs to China, or wherever, nor do I think Joe will pay his employees less than the going local wage. Small businesses are not the problem. The problem is with our larger corporate citizens.

On the credit side, on the other hand, corporations could get a tax credit for every employee who has access to full medical insurance. They could get a tax credit for every full time employee who makes enough money to not qualify for low-income public assistance. Corporate citizens could get tax credits for creating rather than cutting jobs. And they should be rewarded for being good citizens by treating the environment as a precious resource which should be protected rather than exploited.

The bottom line is that we need to stop with our obsession with the bottom line. It is time corporate America remembered that both their employees and their customers are fellow citizens. Our trip through life together should not be a zero sum game. There is room for us all to be winners. Greed is one of the things we don’t need. We are a rich country; what our corporate citizens need to remember is how to share…it’s something we all were supposed to learn in kindergarten.