re: #157 Jeff In Ohio

That might be the first rule (although I thought it was there are no free lunches) but the second rule is (since we’re just making shit up) blindly adhere to the first rule at your own peril. Many large corporations (the kind that you might want to invest in for the long haul, not the ones you day trade), are not embracing unfettered capitalism driven by the micro parsing of the bottom line, but viewing the world as an integrated market place where issues of resources are as much local as they are global and sustainability are no longer buzzwords for green jobs, but future jobs.

Many, and I mean MANY progressive ideals are being embraced within the upstream marketing R&D of Fortune 50 companies. The wagon train your wagon is in is heading for the river crossing while everyone else is going over the pass. It’s a higher climb, but the rewards are greater. Hope you can swim.

Dinner time.

Very good point. Not everything can be described in terms of dollars. Some responsible companies actively seek to mitigate the negative externalities.

IMO, if we are going to consider corporations legal persons then why shouldn’t we start expecting them to act responsibly, as we do for real people?

re: #165 BryanS

Very true, it is easy to ship jobs overseas for some things. But think of it this way—if a corporation does expand by hiring more employees overseas, if that corporation is still taxed in the US, both in terms of taxes paid and wealth generated, they increase for the US. If however that company is somehow prevented from hiring those workers, a firm in that company instead will gain the cost advantage and the US firm will not be able to sell their product at a competitive price—thereby reducing income and taxes paid.

Sure. But don’t forget that, among other things, customers within the US market would subsequently have less purchasing power because their jobs were shipped overseas.