Politics: Interesting Stats

Here is an interesting statistic: 51% of the worlds 100 wealthiest bodies are corporations.

Here is another: The GDP of the worlds 48 poorest nations (1/4 of the worlds countries) is less than the wealth of the worlds three richest people combined.

In Britain one in every seven pounds spent by consumers is spent at Tesco (the UK eqivalent of Wall-Mart).

Today a report by the Center for Medicade and Medicare Services (CMS) was released in the USA that states that 20% of the US GDP will be spent on healthcare by the year 2015.

Half the world (three billion people) live on less than two dollars a day.

Every year more than 11 million children (30,000 per day) will die before the age of five due to poverty.

20% of the worlds population in the developed nations consumes 86% of the worlds goods.

President Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29, is quoted as saying, " The business of America is business."

Well, with Globalization and Corporate Greed in the ascendancy, it has finally come to pass that the business of America truely is business. The corporations have well and truely taken their place in governments in all the developed world. They have bribed and coerced their way to global economic and political influence and power. They move easily from the boardroom to the cabinet, from the congress to the lobby, and they seem to prosper and enrich themselves unashamedly as they do so.

We the people seem to exist to simply pay taxes and to consume goods. The real evil of this is that the money always seems to go to the same handfull of people in the end.

Corporations exist for profit and are entirely self-serving. Governments should serve the people of the nation and the world. These are conflicting stances.

If the criteria for high office in government is high office in business, and they are seen to be interchangeable, then when the corporate bigwig, temporarily residing in governemnt, issues a call to arms..how can we trust his motives? Can the leapord change his spots so easily?

I don't think so. I don't mind that big business exists...I do mind that they are now running the world and that we seem powerless to stop them. Who chooses the candidates who run for high office? It's all about money.