I could, with pride go on for another hundred posts.
About my pride in taking part in Eric Lees international union campaigning.
The support I give for some, and those I see as may be not quite worthy.
But to what end?
We will not see the passion and dislike for cooperate crimes, for rewards for down sizing workers.
For overnight planned bankrupts that steal workers wages.
SOLIDARITY, do we understand with the Polish spelling of that name how some turned from union haters over night?
SOLIDARITY a union, with a Popes help bought down the slave master Soviet Union, now there is a union to hate.
I am waiting to send to Iran my discust at its intended flogging of that poor lady!
For making a film!
Need to watch us unionists!
Never know what we may get up to.
PS
self inflicted pain again but my LOVE for my AWU begs me to say lets get together in a state with 3 branches.

Thinker2:"This is Qld specific in a Melbourne newspaper, you don't get this sort of news in Qld because the Murdoch Press controls all of your print media."

Oh, really?

http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/toxic-harbour-fish-fears/story-e6freoof-1226145338037

It seems you haven't really been looking very hard.

I do tend to agree with your dislike of corporatism as a social force, but I suspect I have some more substantial reasons.

My main reason is that Corporations persist far beyond the lifespan of humans, while possessing under the law many of the rights that apply to people. They can be considered, in their own right, to be "legal persons", with an identity separate from the identities of their shareholders. In other words, they are effectively "superhuman" entities rather than merely the sum of the people that make up their ownership. Companies arose as a means for groups of individuals to pool some resources to achieve a common and usually specific end. These people "chartered" a Company with the charter defining the specific obligations and purposes of the collective enterprise.

Such companies could not "own" anything themselves, holdings were jointly and severally owned by the members and obligations devolved directly to the membership. Lloyds of London is such a Company, with its Names required to be liable for any shortfall in its underwritings.

Modern public corporations are a different kettle of fish with little obligation to anything but maximising profit year-on-year. The massive advantage of being long-lived is wasted by short-term self-interested management in many cases, with Governments often expected to pick up the tab when the Corporation doesn't have the resources to meet its obligations.

It's pie-in-the-sky, but it would be very nice to see such large Corporations forcibly broken up and Companies returned to the Private sphere alone. I'd have no problem with a group of private firms coming together for a specific purpose (say mining a particular deposit, or financing a particular project), but limited by law to a brief existence of (say) 40 years, or about half a human lifetime. That way, they can't accumulate the massively disproportionate power and influence that being effectively immortal allows.

Yabby:"disposable incomes for low and middle income earners
actually increased dramatically between 2000 and 2010 in real terms. "

Yabby, that's not down to wage increases, it's quite simply down to redistributive taxation and welfare. As I've said before, spending on welfare and transfers increased from 20% of GDP to over 35% since Keating's "recession we had to have".

Net wealth per capita peaked in 2008, according to the ABS.

Anti,

All powerful companies bother me too, especially when their influence affects good government. Maybe we just need stronger government that does not buckle at the knees whenever these companies put the pressure on.

Cannot see that happening though. Moral cowardice does appear to be a necessary qualification for a politician these days. Maybe it always was but I never noticed.

There does not appear to be any solution on the horizon. I shall return to pastimes such as scratching the dawgs ears and contemplating my navel and the lint therein.

Less harmful to ones person as compared to getting fretty about the world as it be.

Take it easy.

SD

Sorry yabby, I should have said "net disposable income per capita" peaked in 2008/9.

Shaggy, big corporations are more powerful than many governments and they are not afraid to use that power. It's a shift in power realtionships that is still to be fully realised, I think.

Time did a study a few years ago into corporate inducements from Governments, including some that they themselves had received. Their conclusion was that none of them were either required as inducements or of net benefit to the populace within the Government area concerned.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989508,00.html

Here's the story refered to in the one linked to above.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,989509,00.html