“Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.” James Baldwin, writer.
How big international companies escape public scrutiny
Accenture Consulting is an example of how big companies are shedding national identities and becoming unaccountable. Originally, Anderson Consulting, Acenture is now domiciled in Ireland (low tax), and has a series of loosely connected regional hubs, such as Prague and Dubai that also have low tax rates. To avoid residency problems for its 373,000 employees operating in 200 cities and 55 countries, it ensures that no one spends too much time at their project sites. Accenture is organised to be effectively stateless. It is paid to improve company efficiency (or tell feckless management what they dare not decide on its own), but could ‘t care less about communities and ordinary people.
ExxonMobil, Unilever, BlackRock, HSBC, DHL, Visa, all choose locations for personnel, factories, executive suites, or bank accounts based on where regulations are friendly, resources abundant, and connectivity seamless. Big corporations often have legal domicile in one country, corporate management in another, financial assets in a third, and administrative staff spread over several more. Large American firms — GE, IBM, Microsoft, to name a few — are collectively holding trillions of dollars tax-free offshore in companies incorporated in Switzerland, Luxembourg, the Cayman Islands.
Corporations are likely to overtake states in terms of clout, complete with their “stateless income”. Already, the cash that Apple has on hand exceeds the GDPs of two-thirds of the world’s countries. The 10 biggest banks still control almost 50 percent of assets under management worldwide. Meanwhile, the EU is pushing for a common tax-base policy among member states to prevent corporations from taking advantage of preferential rates. In which case firms would just look beyond the continent for metanational opportunities. Indeed, since social communities increasingly exist online, businesses and their operations might move entirely into the cloud and make nations effectively irrelevant. Already, the idea of taxing a multi-national corporation based on its headquarters’ location is painfully antiquated.
The world’s 25 biggest companies by sales
Walmart 486 bn (2015)
Exxon Mobil 269 bn
Shell 265 bn
Apple 234 bn
Glencore 221 bn (2014)
Samsung 163 bn (2015)
Amazon 107 bn
Microsoft 94 bn
Nestle 93 bn (2014)
Alphabet 75 bn (2015)
Uber 62 bn
Huawei Tech 60 bn
Vodaphone 60 bn
Anheuser- Busch 47 bn (2014)
Maersk 40 bn (2015)
Goldman Sachs 34 bn
Halliburton 33 bn (2014)
Accenture 31 bn (2015)
McDonalds 25 bn
Emirates Airlines 24 bn
Facebook 18 bn
Alibaba 12 bn
Blackrock 11 bn (2014)
McKinsey 8 bn
Twitter 2 bn (2015)
Best of the Week #12 Emmanuel Macron in perspective
Before the most recent French elections, I recommended that French people vote for Emmanuel Macron in what was my first ever post for this blog http://hanrott.com/blog/why-epicurean-frenchmen-should-vote-for-macron/. Having won the election by a greater than expected margin, I thought I would examine how his presidency has gone so far. I should start by saying that I do not regret endorsing him. Governing France, a divided country with a cynical and hypercritical electorate, is a thankless task. I view Macron’s recent declining approval ratings as inevitable, because any attempt at meaningful reform is bound to be opposed by someone.
This week’s article comes from Nabila Ramdani in the Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/emmanuel-macron-france-french-president-politics-first-100-days-scandal-2024-olympics-a7893926.html. She argues that Macron is fulfilling the promises he made during his campaign. For instance, he is pushing ahead with reforms to the labour market despite opposition from unions, and the increasingly likely prospect of mass strikes in September. This is because France’s unemployment rate remain stubbornly high, caused partly by strict regulations that keep people in their jobs, which makes employers less inclined to take on new staff. Macron wants to adopt the Nordic ‘flexicurity’ model, where employers have freedom to hire and fire who they want, but reasonable unemployment benefits prevent the temporarily jobless from falling into poverty. However, the French left view Macron’s reforms as free market fundamentalism; for the left, job security is a privilege that cannot be compensated for by the welfare state.
The French right is also becoming dissatisfied with Macron. He wants to cut France’s military budget, which as a proportion of GDP is amongst the highest in Europe. The fact is, spending on conventional weapons and vehicles does very little to keep a country secure in the modern age. For far less money, investment could be made in cybersecurity and intelligence, which would do far more to prevent terrorism. But many conservatives regard having a sizeable armed force as both a strategic advantage and a part of the country’s greatness as a key player in world affairs. The military aside, Macron is too pro-European for some conservatives. Unlike liberal politicians in Britain, Macron makes the positive emotional case for the EU, rather than simply talking about the adverse consequences of European disintegration. During a time of poor economic growth across Europe, making such a case is commendable. It’s important the nations of Europe don’t retreat into the parochial nationalism of the past. And despite Europe’s economy not doing especially well at the moment, EU disintegration would only make the continent even poorer than it already is. If companies who want to do business across the EU have to comply with 27 different regulatory codes instead of just 1, they will face a crippling amount of bureaucracy.
Overall Macron’s presidency has been far from perfect. Like Ramdani, I really didn’t appreciate his comments about Africa having civilisational problems, even though he’s right about some African countries’ high birth rates holding them back. Sometimes he comes across a bit too showy, and could take himself more seriously. I’m very Northern European- I like my politicians boring. Although I approve of Macron standing up to Putin and proposing a diplomatic solution in Syria, I wish he were more critical of Trump. His most controversial comments have been regarding the Euro: he wants a Eurozone budget. It’s understandable that he wants to help poorer Eurozone countries like Spain and Greece, while maintaining the benefits of currency union. But Germany and other rich Eurozone countries would lose out from such a proposal, so it’s hard to see it coming to fruition.
But overall, like Ramdani, I think he’s done a pretty decent job considering the circumstances. So far, he’s successfully struck a balance between support for the free market while protecting social insurance. He’s stood up for gay people, refugees and asylum seekers- even promising to ease immigration restrictions for American scientists who feel disillusioned with Trump. On the world stage, he’s far more respectable than Sarkozy, and certainly more charismatic than Hollande. He isn’t belligerent, rash or petty. He is far better than any of his rivals would have been. I would recommend that whatever personal reservations they have about him, the French should give him the benefit of the doubt until the end of his term. If by then he has been an absolute failure and there is an obvious replacement candidate, then he should go. But given the generally sleazy and corrupt nature of French politics, it’s hard to see that happening. Macron has been both a safe pair of hands and a committed reformer. We can only hope he continues to be.
Are cellphones damaging our collective posture?
The next time you reach for your phone, remember that it induces slouching, and slouching changes your mood, your memory and even your behaviour.
The average head weighs about 10 to 12 pounds. When we bend our necks forward 60 degrees, as we do to use our cellphones, the effective stress on our neck increases to 60 pounds — the weight of about five gallons of paint. What appears to be happening is that young people are developing postures similar to little old ladies with osteoporosis – all bent over.
Studies have shown that depressed patients were more likely to stand with their necks bent forward, shoulders collapsed and arms drawn in toward the body. Further research suggest that posture doesn’t just reflect our emotional states; it can also cause them. Compared with upright sitters, slouchers reported significantly lower self-esteem and mood, and much greater fear.
Slouching can also affect our memory and our productivity. In a 2009 study of Japanese schoolchildren, those who were trained to sit with upright posture were more productive than their classmates in writing assignments. Some people think that the slouchy, collapsed position we take when using our phones actually makes us less assertive, and that there appears to be a linear relationship between the size of your i- phone, i- pad, laptop or desktop, and the extent to which it affects you: the smaller the device, the more you must contract your body to use it, and the more shrunken and inward your posture, the more submissive you are likely to become.
.Here are some tips to counter the problem: Keep your head up and shoulders back when looking at your phone, even if that means holding it at eye level. You can also try stretching and massaging the two muscle groups that are involved in hunching – those between the shoulder blades and the ones along the sides of the neck. This helps reduce scarring and restores elasticity. (based on a review of a book by Amy Cuddy is a professor at Harvard Business School, “Presence: Bringing Your Boldest Self to Your Biggest Challenges.”)
My wife and I were dining in a restaurant recently. Next to us was a table with six young Arab women. Every single one of them had her head down looking at a cellphone during the whole meal. They hardly spoke a word to one another, just what I took to be the odd comment on what was on their screens. I don’t have a cellphone myself and have nothing against them – except if they monopolise her time and damage her health.
The price of religion?
The spectre of civil war is looming over India. Over recent months there has been a “steady stream of lynchings” of Muslims by Hindu nationalists. These attacks are not just individual tragedies; they’re an assault on the whole notion of India as a democratic nation where people of all faiths and ethnicities mix in harmony. The Hindu chauvinists, who are stirring up resentment against Muslims and calling for them to migrate to Pakistan, should bear in mind the cautionary example of Sri Lanka. The Tamils are a small minority there, making up about the same proportion of the population as Muslims do in India. Their persecution at the hands of chauvinist Sinhalese politicians led to a civil war that drained the country of economic energy for decades. Fighting the politics that spawns lynch mobs is “a battle for India’s soul, for its gathering coherence as a national ideal for an interdependent, multicultural world, and for India’s future prosperity”. (T.K. Arun, The Economic Times, Mumbai)
India is becoming an international power to be reckoned with. It manages to offer a good technical education to those with a digital bent, and its engineering graduates are in demand everywhere. The country has huge potential, but it seems there are everywhere in the world disgruntled, hate-filled people who display for all to see the ugly side of humanity (a good example is the support offered by right-wing ” christians” and Trump supporters to the violent alt-right and neo-nazi thugs in the Charlottesville horror). All too often tribal/religious groups are a violent, backward-looking crowd, led by preachers or gurus who usually live very comforably (thank-you) on the donations of their flocks.
I’m sure there are decent, educated hindus who deplore the attacks upon moslems, and it isn’t clear whether, if one magically eliminated religion from every corner of the planet, things would change that much. There is simply a very nasty minority of Hindus, just as there are intolerant “christians” in the West. Hatred is not confined to any single country. It makes the gentle thoughtfulness and consideration associated with Epicureanism a stark contrast and all the more important.