Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances

[AbtFet]

For many years conventional wisdom has said that the whole world is controlled by the monied elite, or more recently by the huge multi-national corporations that seem to sometime control the very air we breathe. Now, new research by a team based in ETH-Zurich, Switzerland, has shown that what we’ve suspected all along, is apparently true.


Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances

 

[taxslave]

And your point? Or do you have one?

 

[DaSleeper]

He must be talking about George Soros and his influence on Obama:lol:

 

[DurkaDurka]

funny, I haven't had CPR from a Jew lately...

 

[CDNBear]

OK, so I went to the link.

I read through it.

But there was no study. Just a lot of claims, with no names or actual evidence.

There was another link, http://www.dailytradealert.com/land/9-best-stocks.htm?gclid=CLTp-rPk3KoCFRDGKgod5Xku-w

So I followed it. Only to find a page pitching investment advice. If you give them your email that is.

So I went back to, Study shows powerful corporations really do control the world's finances

Looking for another link that would hopefully show me what Abtfet was trying to pitch to us.

And found, [1107.5728v1] The network of global corporate control

So I read it.

Again claims, but no substance, other than this delightful comment "So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally."

From a small paragraph of literally nothing.

So while there i went looking for a link that might show the date or some evidence, and found,

Where supposedly this info was to be found, which would be some substance...

Comments: Main Text (10 pages, 3 figures and 1 table) and Supporting Information (26 pages, 7 figures and 4 tables) Subjects: General Finance (q-fin.GN); Social and Information Networks (cs.SI); Physics and Society (physics.soc-ph) Cite as: arXiv:1107.5728v1 [q-fin.GN]

So I clicked on the link, and that took me here, [1107.5728v1] The network of global corporate control

Which of course is the page that link is on.

Did I miss something Abtfet?

Where's the meat?

 

[Nuggler]

we needed a study to prove that?8O You live on Mars??

 

[taxslave]

Yea I read it as well. Thats why I asked what his point is. Nothing there that is really false but not not provable or even necessarily bad. Except to freeloaders. Someone has to keep the economy running.

 

[Bar Sinister]

Yea I read it as well. Thats why I asked what his point is. Nothing there that is really false but not not provable or even necessarily bad. Except to freeloaders. Someone has to keep the economy running.

You mean freeloaders like GM, Chrysler, AIG and many other companies that so recently resorted to government welfare and now lobby so strongly against tax increases on the top two percent of US income earners?

 

[taxslave]

You mean freeloaders like GM, Chrysler, AIG and many other companies that so recently resorted to government welfare and now lobby so strongly against tax increases on the top two percent of US income earners?

I was thinking more along the lines of anyone that has an NDP membership card. You know, the ones that do nothing for society but want workers to pay for every thing they want.
Check out what percentage of income the top earners pay it taxes of all kinds and then compare it to the lowest income. Who isn't paying their fair share?

 

[JLM]

You mean freeloaders like GM, Chrysler, AIG and many other companies that so recently resorted to government welfare and now lobby so strongly against tax increases on the top two percent of US income earners?

To be fair G.M. repaid all they received. But for sake of argument let's say it was "welfare", at least it was being passed along to workers who actually WORKED for the money.

 

[lone wolf]

...or Weyerhauser, who used government incentives and local property tax surcharges to buy out a failing MacMillan Blodell mill in Sturgeon Falls, employ folk for a specified period, then move lock, stock, barrel and modern paper plant to Washington (state of)

 

[Bar Sinister]

I was thinking more along the lines of anyone that has an NDP membership card. You know, the ones that do nothing for society but want workers to pay for every thing they want.
Check out what percentage of income the top earners pay it taxes of all kinds and then compare it to the lowest income. Who isn't paying their fair share?

Are you not overlooking the fact that the bottom 50% of income earners make so little (only 2.5% of the total wealth of the USA) that it is almost impossible for them to make enough to pay taxes? While the top one percent in the US now takes home 24% of the total wealth. You don't seem to understand that people who live from paycheque to paycheque and often have to resort to food banks in order to survive might not have any spare cash for paying taxes. Pay the average wage earner a decent wage and then they will actually rise enough above the poverty level to be able to pay taxes. Or do you favour a society dominated by the ultra-rich in which the vast majority of the population scrabbles for what is left over?

As for your NDP comment I fail to see that it has the least bit of validity. As a matter of fact it makes no sense whatsoever, given the NDP's traditional policies. But then I expect you know very little about parties that actually want to help the average wage earner.

To be fair G.M. repaid all they received. But for sake of argument let's say it was "welfare", at least it was being passed along to workers who actually WORKED for the money.

Quite true. But to be completely fair; these corporations have a long history of talking competition, free enterprise, and a lack of government regulation. If they truly believe in such policies then they should be willing to accept the ultimate outcome of the capitalist system, which is that some businesses succeed and others fail. Also, if I remember correctly was it not our right wing friends who immediately pounced on the workers you mention and blamed them for everything that was wrong with the US automobile industry?

 

[JLM]

I'm not sure how valid it is but I've also heard it said that if you want a good G.M. product you have to buy one that was built on a Wednesday morning. If there is ANY truth to that statement it doesn't say much for G.M employees. :smile:

Are you not overlooking the fact that the bottom 50% of income earners make so little (only 2.5% of the total wealth of the USA) that it is almost impossible for them to make enough to pay taxes? While the top one percent in the US now takes home 24% of the total wealth. You don't seem to understand that people who live from paycheque to paycheque and often have to resort to food banks in order to survive might not have any spare cash for paying taxes. Pay the average wage earner a decent wage and then they will actually rise enough above the poverty level to be able to pay taxes. Or do you favour a society dominated by the ultra-rich in which the vast majority of the population scrabbles for what is left over?

QUOTE]

When I started working the head honcho of an organization earned 7 times what the lowest paid employee earned, now I'd venture to say it is more like 50 or 100 times more.

 

[Cliffy]

When I started working the head honcho of an organization earned 7 times what the lowest paid employee earned, now I'd venture to say it is more like 50 or 100 times more.

Eat the Rich! Or feed them to your dogs.

 

[damngrumpy]

In life and business there are no guarantees. Study or no study it is true that the
corporations control the economy. Who are the corporations? They are really
share holders who own the shares as part of their retirement. I get tired of the
people whining while buying shares and getting dividends and retiring on the
money they invested with those nasty people.
Actually the people who own the shares control the economy at least in theory
anyway. If corporations were not powerful they would not be able to manage
wealth that older people depend on in retirement. We complain about powerful
corporations and we complain about powerful trade unions but I don't see too
many people giving back the wealth and benefits that the two opposing sides
gained for them as workers and investors.

 

[petros]

Shareholders don't make the decisions.

 

[DaSleeper]

When I started working the head honcho of an organization earned 7 times what the lowest paid employee earned, now I'd venture to say it is more like 50 or 100 times more.

Every industry is different...Some unions negotiate percentage rates, others straight dollar raise...

When I first started in a paper mill, I started at $2 an hour and the top man on the machine was making $6 an hour or three times as much....big money in those days.

When I retired in that top position, I was making $31/hour and the bottom man $16/hour..
If we had had percentage raises I should have been making 48/hr to his 16.
The place I gained was in the number of weeks holidays in a year.

 

[Tonington]

But there was no study. Just a lot of claims, with no names or actual evidence.

The study is on the arXiv database, and the abstract of the study is listed as well, to which you partially quoted.

Again claims, but no substance, other than this delightful comment "So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally."

From a small paragraph of literally nothing.

That small paragraph is just the abstract....scholarly works have the abstract up front. Other academics can read the abstract to see if it's useful for their literature review, or for helping to build a hypothesis. For studies that are behind paywalls, all you will see is the abstract unless you pay for the document.

The full abstract:

The structure of the control network of transnational corporations affects global market competition and financial stability. So far, only small national samples were studied and there was no appropriate methodology to assess control globally. We present the first investigation of the architecture of the international ownership network, along with the computation of the control held by each global player. We find that transnational corporations form a giant bow-tie structure and that a large portion of control flows to a small tightly-knit core of financial institutions. This core can be seen as an economic "super-entity" that raises new important issues both for researchers and policy makers.
​

So, the researchers are saying that up to the point that they decided to investigate their hypothesis, there were only small national samples of financial control. So, they designed a study to test the control on a global scale. They basically performed network analysis, which showed that a significant portion of the global economy flows through a small number of organizations. As the quote from PhysOrg in the OP mentioned, that's not an unsurprising result.

It's not really different than performing the same type of analysis on a large multinational corporation. The flow of resources to various divisions and business units within the corporation will have large numbers of end units, with very few controls, ie. corporate dictates to the rest of the divisions how much money there is to hire new FTE's and how much money there is for capital expenditures.

If you go to the link at arXiv, you can click the link on the left hand side to get the pdf of the full study.

So while there i went looking for a link that might show the date or some evidence, and found,

Link to the study:
http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v1.pdf

 

[JLM]

Every industry is different...Some unions negotiate percentage rates, others straight dollar raise...

When I first started in a paper mill, I started at $2 an hour and the top man on the machine was making $6 an hour or three times as much....big money in those days.

When I retired in that top position, I was making $31/hour and the bottom man $16/hour..
If we had had percentage raises I should have been making 48/hr to his 16.
The place I gained was in the number of weeks holidays in a year.

Yep, when I retired I was getting an obscene 7 weeks of holidays a year. When I started I was getting two.

Shareholders don't make the decisions.

They get to vote on them!

 

[DaSleeper]

Yep, when I retired I was getting an obscene 7 weeks of holidays a year. When I started I was getting two.



They get to vote on them!

Yup....me too....And on a four on/four off 12 hr shift schedule, that would give me 12 days off in a row for every week.:lol:
You can do some fuzzy math with that and say that you get 84 days of vacation a year if you multiply the 12 by 7, while in reality It's only 28 paid days off:smile: