Largely because of economic stagnation in Japan and mega-mergers among U.S. firms, the United States dominates the top 200. U.S. corporations hold 82 slots, followed by Japan, with only 41. In 1995, these countries were virtually tied, with 59 and 58 firms in the top 200, respectively. When I tell people that their sales are the equivalent of more than one-quarter of world economic activity, they assume that they must provide somewhere near an equal amount of the world's jobs or taxes. The reality is that they employ less than 1 percent of the world's workforce and many of the top corporations don't pay any U.S. federal taxes at all.
Many people also ask whether the clout of global corporations is really new.
What the report shows is that the concentration of power among the top 200 firms has been steadily increasing in relation to world economic activity in general. Yes, we've had mammoth firms for a long time, but we haven't had this level of concentration of economic clout on a global scale. USA Today quoted two people who were critical of the study. The first was Murray Weidenbaum, former economic advisor to President Reagan, who pointed out that a large share of corporate revenue goes to pay for worker compensation. My response to that is yes, many workers do depend on wages from these firms, but they are hardly getting their fair share of the dramatic profit growth we've seen over the past decade.