The state is thus effectively re-tooled to serve the interests of big business. Increasingly, the prime role of governments today is to guarantee security for profitable transnational investment. Transnational corporations capture the public policy agenda and re-write the rules at local, national and international levels. People's values, attitudes and tastes are determined by a bombardment of corporate images and logos, beamed into their daily lives through satellite communications. Corporations trigger a sudden rise in stock prices by announcing a massive downsizing of their work-forces, paying lower corporate taxes while reaping the highest profit margins in history, and paying their chief executive officers 150 times more than what they pay their average worker.
Politicians are no longer the prime movers and shakers.
Investors and their agents dictate the priorities that govern our economic system. It's not hard to identify the most powerful among them. The leading business association in Canada, it orchestrates a consensus among other business organizations and brought untold rewards for themselves. These policies, and more, create more profits for corporations and effectively curb the role and size of the state. At the root of the problem is an imbalance of power.