Corporations Are People, too, Or Are They?

Photo by P. M. Schlenker 

Did you know that corporations are people too? I didn’t, at least not until I heard presidential wannabe Mitt Romney say it on national television a few weeks ago. Not that I believed him, so doubting Thomas that I am, I looked up the word “corporation” in my handy, dandy dictionary; and according to Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, a corporation is “a group of people who get a charter granting them as a body certain of the legal, powers, rights, privileges, and liabilities of an individual, distinct from those of the individuals making up the group.”

“Hmm,” I thought after reading that definition; “so I guess Romney was right; corporations are people.” But then I thought again and concluded, “No, Webster’s says that a corporation, although made up of “people,” plural, has the rights of “an individual,” singular; therefore, a corporation isn’t people but a singular entity that has certain rights that just happened to be shared by flesh-and-blood human beings . (Socrates would be proud of my reasoning, wouldn’t he?)

See, now that makes sense, I guess. After all, Romney himself is a walking, talking corporation, as are probably most of his cohorts, so naturally he thinks corporations are people, too. What? You don’t think Mitt Romney is a corporation? Then you need to think again. After all, here’s a man who earns $50,000 per day (Yes, that’s each day of the week) for doing absolutely nothing. And how do I know this interesting bit of trivia about Mitt Romney? I know it because I read the newspaper, namely the Advocate, which is my newspaper of choice, and I learned what Romney earns per day from an Associated Press article by Connie Cass in the Sunday, January 29 edition.

Fifty-thousand dollars a day! Why, the typical American family’s income is $50,000, and that’s for a year, not a day. Of course, Romney, as it turns out, since he finally got around to revealing his net worth, will be “among the richest presidents in American history,” if he’s elected, so I guess $50,000 is pocket change for him (Cass, p. 3A).

As Cass says, in order to get an idea of just how wealthy Mitt Romney is, “add up the wealth of the last eight presidents, from Richard Nixon to Barrack Obama. Then double that number. Now you’re in Romney territory” (p. 3A). Then again, George Washington, as it turns out, was much wealthier, at least if you adjust Old George’s net worth for inflation. With nearly 60,000 acres and more than 300 slaves, Washington is considered the wealthiest president in American history, with an estimated net worth, based on 2010 dollars, of $525 million (Gass, 2012). Yet, with a net worth somewhere between $190 million to $250 million, according to Gass, Romney is “50 times richer” than our current president, who is worth a mere $2.2 million to $7.5 million.

Photo by Michael Caski

Interestingly, by reading Gass’s article, I also learned what I had always suspected, which is that “Congress is flush with millionaires,” although only a few are as wealthy as Mitt Romney, aka The Man Who Would Be President.

I guess if there’s a point to my blog tonight, it’s that not just Romney but all the candidates presently vying for the chance to run for president of our nation are among the “haves” and “have-more” in this country. (Of course, so were our previous presidents, and so is our current president.) And let’s not leave out all the senators sitting up there on Capitol Hill who’re supposed to be “our” representatives, with “our” best interests in mind; they’re all wealthy, too. And being wealthy, how can these men and women possibly relate to the reality of millions of Americans? After all, they have no earthly idea what it’s like to worry about paying their mortgages, feeding and clothing their families, buying gas, affording healthcare, or being able ever to retire. Heck, you sure won’t see any of them welcoming shoppers to Wal-Mart, buying day-old bread, or having to depend upon Medicare and Medicaid when they’re 75-years-old. They’re too rich to have to worry—ever.

So the question is why should they worry about us, the working class, let alone the poor and destitute in this country? The reality is they don’t worry about us because, frankly, they don’t care (Granted, they do a good job of pretending to care whenever election time rolls around). But face it, we don’t belong to the same corporation, that elite group of moneyed folk, who share powers, rights, and privileges that we, the “common folk,” will never know. So, that said, I guess Mitt Romney was right. Corporations are people, too. But then, I guess Mitt Romney should know. He is, after all, a corporation masquerading as a man.

Source:

Cass, C., Romney Would Be Among Richest Presidents Ever. Associated Press.  Baton Rouge, LA: The Advocate. Sunday, January 29, 2012, p. 3A