CORPORATIONS ARE NOT HUMANS---NOT EVEN CLOSE

                         POVERTY, WAR, AND DISEASE 
                         WERE NOT ELIMINATED BY 
                         THE ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF
                         THE OF THE 20th CENTURY 

   The twentieth-century institutions and leaders that promised a golden age are not delivering. They assail us with wondrous new gadgets, such as airplane seats with individual television monitors, and an information highway that makes it possible to connect to the Internet while sunning ourselves on the beach. Yet the things that most of us really want ---- a secure means of a livelihood, a decent place to live, healthy and uncontaminated food to eat, good education and health care for our children, a clean and vital natural environment --- seem to slip further from the grasp of most of the world's people with each passing day.

   Fewer and fewer people believe that they have a secure economic 
future. Family and community units and the security they once provided provided are disintegrating. The natural environment on which we depend for our material needs is under deepening stress. Confidence in our major institutions is evaporating, and we find a profound and growing suspicion among thoughtful people the world over that something has gone wrong.These conditions are becoming pervasive in almost every locality of the world and point to global-scale failure of our institutions. 

   In the United States, high levels of unemployment, corporate downsizing, falling real wages, greater dependence on part-time and temporary jobs without benefits, and the weakening of unions are creating a growing sense of economic insecurity and shrinking the middle class. The employed find themselves working longer hours, holding multiple part-time jobs, and having less REAL INCOME.  American workers are tired, depressed, and many are addicted to mindless late-night TV shows, or alcohol, or mind-altering substances. Many among the young---especially of minority races --- have little hope of ever finding jobs adequate to provide them with basis necessities, let alone financial security. Advanced degrees no longer guarantee jobs. 
   
  In rich and poor countries, as competition for land and natural resources grows, those people who have supported themselves with small-scale farming, fishing, and other resource-based livelihoods find their resources are being expropriated to serve the few while they are left behind to fend for themselves. The economically weak find their neighborhoods becoming the favored sites for waste dumps or polluting smokestacks.

   The world is increasingly divided between those who enjoy opulent affluence and those who live in dehumanizing poverty, servitude, and economic insecurity.  While top corporate managers, investment bankers, financial speculators, athletes, and celebrities bring down multimillion-dollar annual incomes, approximately 1.2 billion of the world's people struggle desperately to live on less than $1 a day. One need not go to some remote corner of Africa to experience the disparities. I could see it daily within a couple of blocks of my daughter's law office in midtown Manhattan. Shiny chauffeured stretch limousines with built-in bars and televisions discharge their elegantly coifed occupants at trendy , expensive restaurants while homeless beggars huddle on the sidewalk wrapped in thin blankets to ward off the cold. 

   Deepening poverty, social disintegration, and environmental destruction share an important characteristic : solutions require local action---household by household and community by community. This action can be taken only when local resources are in local hands. The most pressing unmet needs of the world's people are for food, security, adequate shelter, clothing, health care, and education ---the lack of which defines true deprivation. With rare exception, the basic resources and capacity to meet these needs are already found in nearly every country. The natural inclination of local people is to give these needs priority. If, however, control lies elsewhere, different priorities usually come into play.

  Unfortunately, in our modern world, control seldom rests with local people. Most often it resides either with  central governmental bureaucracies or with distant corporations that lack both the capacity and the incentive to deal with local needs. The result is a crisis of confidence in our major institutions.

 Nobody With A Brain Cell Believes A Corporation Exists For  
Any Reason Other Than Aggregating Even Greater Wealth & Power

Public-opinion polls reveal a growing sense of personal insecurity and loss of faith in major institutions all around the world. Particularly telling is the public attitude in the United States, the country that defines for many of the world's people their vision of prosperity, democracy and high-tech consumerism. Here the polls tell us that the real dream of the vast majority of Americans is NOT for fast sports cars, fancy clothes, caviar,  giant TV screens, and country estates, as the popular media might lead one to believe. Rather, it is for a decent and secure life ---which American institutions are failing to provide. The single greatest fear of Americans in 1994 was job loss. Only 51 percent of non management employees in the United States felt their jobs were secure ---- DOWN FROM 75 PERCENT TEN YEARS EARLIER.  A similar drop occurred in the sense of job security among management employees. Fifty-five percent of adult Americans no longer believed that one could build a better life for oneself and one's family by working hard and playing by the rules. The future looks even bleaker.

   The Louis Harris polling organization's annual index of confidence in the leaders of twelve major U.S. institutions fell from a base level of 100 in 1966 to 39 in 1994. At the bottom of the list were the U.S. Congress (8 percent of respondents expressed great confidence), the executive branch of government (12 percent), the press (13 percent), and major companies (19percent). Meanwhile, the Louis Harris "alienation index," which taps feelings of economic inequity, disdain about people with power, and powerlessness, rose from a low of 29 in 1969 to 65 in 1993. A Kettering Foundation report captured the mood of the American electorate : "Americans describe the present political system as impervious to public direction, a system run by a professional political class and controlled by money, not votes."


  Confidence in our major institutions and their leaders has fallen so low as to put their legitimacy at risk ---and for good reason.