"Corporations are People"

There is a trend on both sides that annoys me - if a candidate on the other side says something that sounds bad out of context, or sounds the least bit stupid, they latch onto it like a hungry snake. One that the left really latched onto is the, "corporations are people, my friend." Out of context, it sounds like a dumb out of touch rich guy (fair description of Romney, perhaps) saying quite literally that corporations as a whole deserve all the same rights as people.

That's not quite what he was saying, though. Let's put in the rest of what he said for context (thanks to Washington Post for the text):

“Of course they are,” Romney said. “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

That much is true. I won't argue that point. But, contrary to what Romney said, corporations indeed are not people. They are made of people, but in themselves are not people. What the businessmen built were not people, but businesses. Made of people, from the lowly customer service type people who will likely side with the ones who say they're underpaid (liberals) to the execs and business owners who will side with whoever will let them keep the larger portion of their wealth (conservatives) and everyone in-between.

What Romney was saying here was that giving tax cuts to a corporation is the same as giving tax cuts to people as a whole. I'm guessing that he figures it will trickle down. But, remember what I keep saying: the rich really like to just keep their money. Why trickle it down when they could just keep it instead? It's not like there's any limit on how much money they can have.

Yeah, they'll spend some money, and that will help keep other businesses in business... but in general, they will not hire more workers than they really have to, and they will not pay said workers much more than they have to. Raise the legal wages? Fine, they'll raise prices and lay off workers, then keep even more profits to themselves. That's the way it works. Trickle Down is a rotten lie. But, in general, the rich like it. It moves their responsibilities to a "good faith" footing.

Hey, Republicans - don't look at me like that. I said I was putting the quote in context, not that I was defending Romney.