CombatEffective - This madness must stop!

The Libertarian Party has become shills of giant corporations. I believe it, and that has always been one sticking point as to why I don't join them. This kind of behavior is also the reason I am quite outspoken against giant corproations.

I keep hearing "corproations create a lot of jobs" but largely this is untrue. Small to medium sized businesses and manufacturing create a lot of jobs, but the giants of the earth do little to help the overall economy (except when they distribute the products of smaller companies). They spend far too much of their energy creating a climate favorable to them and hostile to the smaller businesses they see as competing with their bottom line.

TRex

All parties are in the end shills of the people that pay the bills. Both Republicans and Democrats get massive sums from corporations, special interests, and hostile governments.

At least the Libertarian party is the only one that makes membership dues voluntary. You get a vote as long as you sign up with no need to pay to play. Obviously, because it is so small membership wise, the corporate sponsorship would be more visible and not as well hidden behind front groups. Plus many of the members of the party are corporate execs, which explains the corporate donations.

Overall it is the last party that has an actual platform based on principle (as small a government as possible) and not on a patchwork of compromises between competing special interests.

As for corporations, I would have to disagree on creating jobs. At one point GM used to be the biggest employer in the US and Wal-Mart is the biggest employer now, so Corps do create jobs. From personal experience, I am employed by a major multi national Partnership that hires tens of thousands in the US alone, for above average wage, which in turn creates service jobs for others. My clients are major Financial services companies which hire tens of thousand of the highest paying jobs in the US that in New York at least create three jobs for every one job created in the IB sector.

I do agree with you that the growth of the multi national more then the corporation itself is having a negative effect on the US. Plus the lack of the loyalty from the corporations that used to be there after WWII and before the eighties is a major problem. However, that can be attributed to the shift from long term viability that used to be the corporate strategy, to the new bonus induced move for more immediate stock price increasing strategies, which do a lot of harm, might be the biggest culprit here.

Aleksandr

While I agree that GM created many jobs (they are manufacturing) Wal-Mart creates NO jobs. They simply transfer jobs from smaller businesses into themselves. And to the extent they are more efficient, they have a negative effect on the immediate area, and to the extent they have persued imports from competitor nations like China, they actually hurt the job market here.

Same goes for "financial service sector" corporations. These, strictly speaking, in our economy, are overhead. They do not create jobs, even though they employ people. Just like they simply move wealth from one place to another, they simply move employment from one place to another. True, we may be more efficient because of what they do, but in another sense, the only way they create US jobs is to sell their services to other nations (which I understand is part of what they do).

You can see from above, I have a higher standard for what I consider to be an economic asset to our nation, compared to the malarky that comes out of the Washington Department of Labor or Commerce.

And, by the way, I had not even looked at the finances of the Libertarian Party. I just assumed they spouted corporate talking points because they did not know better. I didn't realize any corporations gave them money to talk like that.

TRex

learned form that exchange

I cannot agree with you T-Rex on Wal-Mart not creating jobs. That is BS and propaganda that has been fed to you by the unions (themselves heavily socialist sponsored organizations, not to mention the mafia, but that is another long post). In the 1950's when US manufacturing began its fifteen year boom it had to provide employment for a population of a 150 million people versus today’s more then 300 million (not counting illegals). Here is a graph of US unemployment from 1950 to 2005http://static.wikipedia.org/new/wikipedia/en/articles/u/s/_/Image~Us_unemployment_rates_1950_2005.png_34f1.html.

So this, “services not creating jobs”, is a bunch of crock. Now there might be an argument that the quality of jobs is different, but even that is very easily disputed, since not everyone worked in the factory. Most people serviced the factory workers and their families, just like most people today service information workers and their families.

In the end, the numbers just do not follow that the Wall-mart jobs are just transfer jobs. Never was and never will be true.

I don't agree that we should have a free market trade policy with a country that is pushing anti-market policy in their own economy in the hopes of being more competitive (China), but I also don't agree with people say that certain sectors are more important because they used to be so good in the past.

Obviously the unfair competition with China is the main problem the US faces, but this issue has been so distorted by the unions and in turn their Democratic lackeys, that it stopped being about the US vs. China and became an anti-democratic market and pro socialist government controlled economy argument.

Aleksandr