Private greed and the economic crisis, part 3-big corporations, big money

This will be the last post about the greed of the high and mighty.  I'll then finish off the topic with a blog about the greed of the little man (and woman) and that should be the end of my rantings about greed.

Multinationals and huge businesses--nothing by definition wrong with either of these, although I personally prefer small businesses where the owner is there running the shop, with maybe a couple of employees.  More friendly, more personal, more we're-neighbors-and-we're-in-this-together.

But ok.  We have a big world, with lots of international communications;  and multinationals plus very big businesses are going to be a part of it.

What I do NOT like, however, is businesses whose chief focus is on raising the level of their profits, or cornering the market, or driving the small shops out of business.  And I also really dislike businesses--and here, it's pretty much exclusively very big businesses that do this--who in the name of efficiency and productivity replace workers in positions that are not arduous with machines.

I'm not talking about assembly lines, or tractors, or that kind of thing.  I'm talking about all those machines that answer the phones.  And all those other machines which, once the basics of letting machines do the back-breaking work, go on to do work which human beings can easily handle and traditionally have, machines that are purchased do so as to let the company fire their workers and not have to worry about paying higher wages or awarding better benefits packages.

So sure, you probably want your automobile assembly line mechanized, but when you mechanize beyond a certain extent, you create unemployment.  There needs to be a balance.

[NOTE:  I´d planned a photo of a homeless shelter or other relevant image but on contacting one, find that it needs to be arranged "through channels," so if they decide to give me information, I´ll do a separate blog specifically on that center.]

Surely this is something government can do--reward job creation instead of wealth creation.  Figure out about how many working adults you'll have in the country, and encourage big businesses to have that many positions available.

And big businesses, instead of having the steadily rising profits that they have now, even as unemployment is way too high, could determine that they would raise wages and/or create new jobs instead of allowing profits to continue rising when the gap between rich and poor is growing, and there are 14 million people looking for work.

THE NEXT BLOG will be about our screening on Jan. 26..