THE MEASURE OF A MAN'S WORTH

In 1997, Ford Motor Company took a U.S. taxpayer subsidy of $1.5 billion; Chrysler, $966.2 million; General Motors, 899.5 million; Philip Morris, $603.1 million; Berkshire Hathaway, $489.2 million; GTE, $441.2 million; Mobil Oil, $439.6 million; DuPont, $388.5 million; Bristol-Myers Squibb, $369.8 million; and Merck, $314.3 million.[1]  In addition, Archer-Daniels-Midland received "corporate welfare" totalling $1.4 billion; Cargill, $1.3 billion; Boeing, $1 billion; Citibank, $795 million; General Motors, $240 million; Barrick Gold, $200 million; Philip Morris, $40 million; Sea-Land Services, $31.5 million; Xerox, $6 million; Sunkist, $2 million.[2]  If all this were added to the compensation packages of the top ten highest paid CEOs in the country [($646.6 million) see article this page], the tax breaks of ten of the largest corporations in the country ($6.4 billion), and the "corporate welfare" another ten of the biggest U.S. corporation have managed to wrangle for themselves, it would amount to almost $13 billion.

Now it’s difficult sometimes for ordinary people to put these numbers in perspective; but one way to do it is to compare all this to the number of employees some of the top Fortune 500 companies have "downsized" (laid off) through "restructuring" last year (a euphemism for shipping middle-class U.S. jobs overseas to workers in the Third World for a bare fraction of what U.S. workers were being paid): 129,090. If we were to calculate that the average pay of the workers who were "downsized" was $22,000, than the money that’s going for corporate welfare, tax subsidies, and CEO compensation would pay the salaries of app. 548,000 such workers. Is all this really worth that many jobs? If the answer is "yes," then democracy is a farce and ordinary Americans aren't really worth that much except to act as the maids, the butlers, the nannies and the chauffeurs of the world's new CEOs.

1. Calculated by the Institute of Policy Studies, based on the most recently available annual corporate reports. Figures given are the difference between federal tax paid in 1996 and the amount the company would have paid at the statutory rate (if no loopholes are involved, corporations pay 35% of their income in taxes). These ten are among the top thirty most profitable U.S. corporations with tax breaks of more than $300 million each.
2. Compiled by James Shields of the Corporate Welfare Project. These ten companies have received major federal subsidies, government-backed loans or loan guarantees from various government departments and programs. Figures are estimates only - exact welfare benefits per company are difficult to measure.