Reply #23: I'd say "sometimes" is hardly good enough -

[rman]

most of the jobs they create are lousy - in some cheap labor country run by a dictatorship that has "US interests at heart", as the State Department puts it.

Regulations for international trade are created by the large transnational corporations - with hardly any government oversight. In effect part of the legislative process has been outsourced to commercial interests.

Their idea of "encouragement" is to lower wages, environmental protection, labor safety etc - anything to cut costs in order to "increase profits, which is good for the economy, which will benefit everyone" - you know the sales pitch.

I agree that there's nothing wrong with corporations per se, but there's a lot wrong with way most of them conduct business these days. Most of what's going wrong is due to corporate self-regulation. A lot needs to be done to right these wrongs.