Summer+K’s+2016+OpEd+Article



Fat Corporations Get Even Fatter by Summer Khouvilay

Even though huge corporations such as Apple and Target make millions of billions of dollars each year, there are companies like Amazon and General Electric that have the audacity to cut corners and take shortcuts for more money. As if they don’t have enough money as it is!

According to the Tax Foundation, large corporations earned 62 percent out of the $30.9 trillion dollars made by businesses in 2011. To top the profits cake, a 2013 Forbes magazine article stated that CEOs alone make 331 times more than the average worker. The average worker only makes $25,000-$35,000 a year! These corporations have no right to complain about not earning enough, nor do they have the need to trample on their employees and customers to earn even more.

Yet, there are still those selfish CEOs and higher ups that continue to scrape every single dollar they can, whether it’s from their employees, consumers, or the economic system itself. Did you know that some of the biggest and richest corporations in America--Google, Microsoft, and General Electric to name a few--don’t pay a single penny in US taxes each year? Google, Microsoft, and GE combined together made $171.9 billion last year, and none of that went back to the government because the companies all funneled their money into offshore accounts in foreign countries where the government can’t tax them ("U.S Companies are Stashing $2.1 Trillion Overseas to Avoid Taxes"). How outrageous! Shifting to domestic problems, Amazon was discovered to “misclassify” their drivers as contractors, so that the company doesn’t have to pay them overtime. FedEx did the same thing earlier that year. But if you thought cutting wages was bad, Nestle obtained fish for their Fancy Feast cat food from slave ships where “kidnapped workers were chained and beaten” ("Top 10 Brand Scandals of 2015"). The big question is now if all these companies make more than enough money, then why do they use dirty tricks and illegal shortcuts?

The answer is greed.

It’s another thing when small companies have to crack down on their failing business to save money, but when successful companies are found cheating the system to make a few more extra dollars, it is just deplorable. Absolutely disgusting. And the government can’t do anything about it because 1) most if not all the politicians in Congress have ties to these corporations and 2) big business has always rejected government intervention and they will do anything to keep it that way. Therefore, a tight reign must be kept on these corrupt businesses by the people, or else they will spiral further out of control and cause even more problems.