The blog combining two passions most people could give a rat's ass about.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Corporate Hissyfits

Don't buy into the corporate hissy fits. I'm talking about when a new law is passed and affected industries start raising prices or adding fees so they can 'stay competitive'. It sounds reasonable but you must consider the source. If Bank of America, Exxon, or Goldman Sachs is saying it, probably not true. If it's a community credit union or small business that isn't publicly traded, then there might be something to it.
I'm not anti-prosperity, I actually do a lot of business with Bank of America. But big companies know they have the ears of our politicians. They make sure they do. Even when someone like Obama gets a lot of donations from individuals they make sure they make bigger payouts to maintain their influence.
This raises the question of how big of a deal it is when they bitch about restrictions the same way my 5 y/o may cry a little harder when mommy is home. These companies punish their customers and hope the politicians cave before the competition figures out how to take advantage.
When a small business raises prices in response to a national law it is because they have to. They don't have the luxury of taking their customers for granted. They are not having your tax money funneled to them. They can't dump a small portion of their budget to flood the media with ads.
One of the recent lines of crap I've been hearing is about 'job killing bills'. The problem isn't a lack of jobs. There are lots of jobs overseas and/or for robots. The problem (well one of many but we'll focus for now on) is that our tax money is paying big companies to run smaller companies out of business. Tax money driving companies too small to employ robots and too local to export the work.
Smaller companies thrive on being altruistic (generally) while publicly traded companies are legally obligated to endlessly raise the value of their stock even at the expense of their customers. The stocks and subsidies give them superhuman levels of purchasing power,shelf space, and regulatory override.

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