Jenny's Argument

I wish that I had copied it, but I didn't, and now it's lost somewhere in the black hole of Face Book. As it so happens, I will be visiting her tomorrow, so I will ask her to elaborate on the meaning of her statement. By the way, I won't be going on line tomorrow, see you Friday. The way I remember it, Jenny was responding to a guy who had asserted that corporations are evil incarnate. Her argument was that, although corporations might not be perfect, they are certainly better than politicians. Corporations get things done, while politicians just dither around, accomplishing little. Corporations generate income for people, while politicians take money away from people. Corporations produce useful goods and services, while politicians cause more problems than they solve.

Of course corporations have not wiped out poverty, but neither has government. Corporations do, however, hire people, and an employed person is generally less poor than an unemployed person. The government just gives handouts to the poor, the poor spend the money, and then they're still poor. It's like that old Chinese saying: "Give a man a fish and you feed him for one day. Teach a man how to fish and he will be a regular customer at your bait and tackle store for the rest of his life." Of course corporations don't hire people as an act of charity, they spend money to make money, and their employees also make money in the process. Their stockholders make money too, if they just hang on to the shares and collect the dividends. Of course they hope to make more money than that when they sell the shares for more than they paid for them. That's kind of a gamble, but it's a risk they take of their own free will, nobody forces them to do it.

I would never invest in a company whose motto is "lie, cheat, and steal", but I'm sure you were speaking allegorically with that one. Picking individual stocks is a job for the professionals anyway, which is why most of my money is in a mutual fund. This fund has been good to me for 24 years now, and I have no intention of changing it. Vanguard, the parent corporation, has been in business for a long time and, to my knowledge, they have never cheated anybody or otherwise ran afoul of the law.

I have heard of that Dodd-Frank law, but I don't know a lot about it. I took a quick look on Wiki, and it's way too long and complicated for me to get involved with tonight. As far as corporations making political campaign contributions, I think they passed a law regulating that, but the Supreme Court threw it out, so it's back to the drawing board on that one. Soon it will be a brand new year with a brand new congress, so I'm sure they'll have everything straightened out by spring. ( I  make small joke.)

Merry Christmas!