{"id":4937,"date":"2022-11-22T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-22T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/?p=4937"},"modified":"2022-11-22T08:36:11","modified_gmt":"2022-11-22T13:36:11","slug":"corporate-welfare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2022\/11\/22\/corporate-welfare\/","title":{"rendered":"Corporate Welfare"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>When you start to decouple the ideas that money &amp; property are the be-all and end-all of everything, capitalism as it exists these days really starts to seem awfully misguided.<\/p>\n<p>But even if you don&#8217;t do that, and you just believe in the idea that &#8220;hard work bears fruit,&#8221; then it still seems awfully misguided and certainly terribly unfair.<\/p>\n<p>Consider that in any large corporation, by far most of the work is done by the employees, often lower-level employees. The CEO, presidents, and vice presidents make up an absolutely <em><strong>tiny<\/strong><\/em> portion of the workforce and their contributions, while important, are almost negligible compared to what everyone else in the company contributes. Yet we pay these few people far more than all the employees &#8211; often unimaginably more. How is that fair? How does that jive with the idea that &#8220;hard work bears fruit?&#8221; The people who work the hardest are arguably paid the least!<\/p>\n<p>And then there&#8217;s the shareholders of the company &#8211; the ones who do no work at all, those shiftless, lazy, layabouts! They do nothing but profit from other people&#8217;s work &#8211; how in the world is that OK, and why do we consider that to be the &#8220;American way?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>If you sit around and collect money from the government, you&#8217;re a worthless, lazy, dead-weight on society &#8211; but if you sit around and collect money from other people&#8217;s labor, you&#8217;re a valuable, important, contributor to society?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you start to decouple the ideas that money &amp; property are the be-all and end-all of everything, capitalism as it exists these days really starts to seem awfully misguided. But even if you don&#8217;t do that, and you just believe in the idea that &#8220;hard work bears fruit,&#8221; then it still seems awfully misguided&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2022\/11\/22\/corporate-welfare\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Corporate Welfare<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"webmentions_disabled_pings":false,"webmentions_disabled":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[199,2],"tags":[412,418,338,385,417],"class_list":["post-4937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-opinion","category-politics","tag-america","tag-capitalism","tag-corporations","tag-politics","tag-welfare","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pimUj-1hD","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5282,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2019\/05\/16\/a-mini-rant-on-presidents\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":0},"title":"A Mini-Rant on Presidents","author":"Keith Survell","date":"May 16, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"A mini rant on what \"the President\" actually means, since so many people seem to have forgotten.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":587,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/08\/04\/shoot-to-kill-revisited\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":1},"title":"Shoot-to-Kill Revisited","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 4, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"This sort of thing is becoming increasingly worrisome.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6280,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2025\/02\/11\/oathbreaker\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":2},"title":"Oathbreaker","author":"Keith Survell","date":"February 11, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"Talking about sworn oaths and the people who break them.","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":323,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2004\/12\/28\/teen-sex-and-media-hype\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":3},"title":"Teen Sex and Media Hype","author":"Keith Survell","date":"December 28, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"An interesting take on the subject. It compares \"teenagers\" with \"welfare recipients,\" and suggests that they (teenagers) develop the same sort of attitudes because of that situation (laziness, \"the world owes me a living\" attitudes, etc).","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":585,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/08\/04\/big-brother-inc\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":4},"title":"Big Brother, Inc.","author":"Keith Survell","date":"August 4, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Some people worry about the powers that unions have, and the abuses of that power ... they argue that unions give too much of an advantage to workers, at the expense of the employer. Well, apparently someone thought \"we've regulated unions enough, let's go the other way now.\"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":657,"url":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/2005\/10\/05\/can-this-nomination-be-justified\/","url_meta":{"origin":4937,"position":5},"title":"Can This Nomination Be Justified?","author":"Keith Survell","date":"October 5, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"\"[T]he president has forfeited his right to be trusted as a custodian of the Constitution. The forfeiture occurred March 27, 2002, when, in a private act betokening an uneasy conscience, he signed the McCain-Feingold law expanding government regulation of the timing, quantity and content of political speech.\"","rel":"","context":"In &quot;politics&quot;","block_context":{"text":"politics","link":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/category\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4937"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5922,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4937\/revisions\/5922"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.starkeith.net\/coredump\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}