Corporate greed is more harmful than taxes collected by the government

""Corporate Greed" to me is the "most toys" mentality that people wish to be much better off than having to worry about affording a place to live, food, etc." And, they shouldn't be much better off than that? If corporations could magically "sex up" such cars, they'd "sex up" transportation via cardboard box-- low costs, therefore higher profits for them if they pull it off. Yet they haven't. People like high horsepower vehicles on their own. At best, a company can convince a customer that THEIR high horsepower vehicle is better than the competitor's. It cannot omnipotentrly convince them which sort of vehicle is best for their needs. "The basic necessities of life are all owned by corporations," They are PRODUCED by corporations. But they stop being owned by them when sold. This is, again, points in favor of the corporation-- the only reason you buy from the corporation instead of anything else is that the corporation does a better job producing it. All of the things you mentioned, except such advanced things as cars which only result from corporate greed, are things you can attain in other ways-- but not as well. This is because corporate greed is BETTER at providing them. "completely out of democratic control" Not entirely true, unfortunately the mob manages to pass all too many regulations with those tax monies of yours. But to the extent it is out of democratic control, yay. It replaces it with control by RIGHT- control of everything by the one who created it until he chooses to sell it. This is superior to the advance auction of stolen goods by whoever can steal them which is an election. "and the moment the CEOs determine that you are not a profitable sector of the economy to keep making their products affordable to you (or by contrast, that the loss of quality their products would endure by dumping your job for overseas slave labor)." Corporations do not enslave overseas labor. They hire overseas labor that was starving due to an insufficient amount of corporate greed being allowed in their countries, using their size to threaten local tyrants into allowing them to provide the things people need by trading it for those people's labor, saving millions of lives by the simple act of trying to make a profit. To the extent the people in question are "slaves," this is the fault of governments. " Compare Medicare to private HMOs. Medicare offers significant bang-for-buck efficiency in terms of revenues it collects from payroll taxes to what it doles out for actual medical services, and in addition HMOs actually have people hired strictly to refuse to pay for critical services for their customers in dire need of medical attention using very flimsy excuses" There is no such thing as a "private HMO" in today's world. The "private" health sector is CRIPPLED by government regulations. Taxes go into DESTROYING the values it could have created. http://www.theobjectivestandard.com... Furthermore, you're measuring efficiency improperly. The proper measure of efficiency would be whether the people whose money is being spent value the health services in question more, or what they would have otherwise bought-- and there is no question there :). If you wish to find HMO's that refuse fewer claims, pay for a better contract. It's that simple. "You've now had a 100% loss of income. Now tell me, which is the greater harm that impacts your life more, in the above scenarios: the 50% increase in tax or the 100% cut in income?" Things like the 100% cut in income are CAUSED by the tax money, and the regulations it's spent on. Without tax increases, employers can employ more, and there are fewer regulations that can be bought by tax money to make you less employable. In a free market, even if somehow outsourcing were possible, you'd just find a job slightly down the wage curve-- and the loss would be efficiently minimized :)