Corporations

In the US, we have seen corporations become disturbingly political and increasingly invasive. Left wing propaganda and political correctness has resulted in corporations having Liberal political positions. This usurps voter rights. They have added political objectives to their mission statements. They refer to these as “Our Values”.

When I wrote corporate mission statements, I limited the focus to keeping customers, teamwork and profitable growth. I believed that voters should determine the laws. When US corporations made their suicide pacts in the 1990s, they demoted themselves to the ranks of the special interests.

When I started working with the heads of corporations in 1965, they were customer focused and prudent with their resources. Most corporations navigated government rules and complied with laws. I worked in Personnel and Planning teams and dealt with the avalanche of Employment and Environmental Law as it gushed from Congress in the 1960s.

I viewed Corporations as mostly honest entities that were independent and free to serve their customers and their shareholders with profitable growth.  Corporations were free to move to other states and set up operations in other countries, but many remained where they were.

I was part of the cadre of manufacturing managers trained to create a team atmosphere in the corporate culture. We were there to treat employees with respect and improve operations. We hired the best fit, paid market rates and improved processes. We had great employees.

Manufacturing was huge in the US in the 1960s. We made our own cars, tractors, trucks, appliances, electronics, production machines, food, appliances and consumer goods. There were manufacturing plants in cities, suburbs and rural counties. Some companies had plants overseas to make goods for other countries.

Our competition in the 1960s included companies that made similar goods in other developed countries. We knew that labor and living costs in poor countries were cheaper, but dealing with the problems was more expensive. But we did see the shoe industry go overseas.

We dealt with the environmental problems, overpaid unions, bad laws and continued to develop our processes. We saw the US auto industry beaten by the Japanese auto makers for their failure to improve their gasoline efficiency in the 1970s. We saw interest rates and prices soar in the 1970s due to currency debasement to pay the costs incurred by the Vietnam War and federal welfare.

In 1980, we elected Ronald Reagan who cut taxes and regulations and set us up raise enough capital to improve our products.

I joined the electronics industry boom in the 1980s. The personal computer was coming on line along with the retooling of electro-mechanical equipment and communications. This gave us the funding to automate the design process and develop smaller, cheaper and faster electronics capability.

In 1980, foreign manufacturers were ready to dump their products into the US. The Japanese had the best electronics insertion machines. Some of our electronics manufacturers were trying to get flat screen monitors from Asia. I worked to set up foreign subsidiaries to function as sales offices. Foreign countries were busy reducing their corporate tax rates.

I began to notice changes in corporations in the 1990s. They were going global, were planning to move overseas and were setting up partnerships with foreign competitors.

In 1987, ISO 9000 was published by the International Standardization Organization and compliance was required to export manufactured goods to Europe. This required process mapping and continuous improvement and when combined with targeted robotics was helpful in controlling product quality.

Most of Europe imposed national sales taxes to rebuild after the World Wars.  This stayed in place and morphed into the VAT tax. France introduced the first VAT tax in 1954 and the UK followed in 1973. In 1993, the EU was established and took over the VAT tax. The VAT taxes rose as corporate taxes decreased, shifting the costs to consumers. VAT taxes in Europe average 20%.

The US has no national sales tax. Sales taxes have been reserved to the States.  The average US state sales tax in 2018 is 5.1%. The average US local sales tax in 2018 is 1.4%. Some states have no sales tax. The average US property tax on homes is $2,197, ranging from $550 to $7,601. The average home value in the US is $184,700.

ASPA, the American Society for Personnel Administration was founded in 1948 by my old boss Bob Bara and changed its name to SHRM, the Society for Human Resource Management in 1989 to go international.

The American Electronics Association founded in 1943 was discussing changing their name in the 1990s to go international; they did this in 2008 calling it Tech America and they went international.

I was asked about schools teaching “values” in the 1990s and objected stating that they needed to do a better job on reading, writing and math.

The wishes of US Voters and US corporations used to align so closely that voters assumed the corporations would keep government from going off the track. But after the 1990s, corporations became more international than national. The US began to off-shore its manufacturing operations in the 1990s. This resulted in the collapse of the middle class in the US.

In 2016, we elected Donald Trump to restore the US economy. He is implementing changes that will do that.

Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader