m o n e y

changes everything...

here's an interesting article from seattle weekly

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It's our relationships with other people that account for most of our happiness, says Cecile Andrews, author of The Circle of Simplicity: Return to the Good Life. "After a certain point," she says, "community declines as affluence goes up, because you don't need each other."

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Community leaders are warning that the rise of corporate power is widening the wealth gap. Says the Rev. Don Mackenzie of the University Congregational United Church of Christ, "The limited-liability, publicly held corporation, a product of the 19th century, is like all institutions: very vulnerable to getting off the track or losing sight of its purpose. For many corporations, the bottom line has shifted from the quality of the product or the service being produced to the accumulation of wealth for investors."

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I've never been a religious person, but I was touched by a concept my former girlfriend shared with me, the Jubilee. According to the Old Testament, the Jubilee is a time every 50 years at which all wealth is redistributed—"a time of freedom and of celebration when everyone will receive back their original property, and slaves will return home to their families."

Could any institution be more anathema to the Jubilee than the immortal, limited liability corporation, designed to create and amass wealth for a privileged minority while progressively externalizing costs and harming the majority? Is the modern corporation consistent with our ethical, spiritual, and democratic values?

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-joseph

ps. and the winners for the 10 worst corporations of 2004 are...