Re: (Oil Price Regulation) or we know how to push each others "hot" buttons

I'm trying to refrain from using the phrase..."begs the question" throughout this post. We'll see how I do.

I'm reading the posts from yesterday and I see the corporate mantra..."The companies’ duties are to their families...the shareholders". I swear that if I read this/hear this again, I'm going to make a bee-line to Houston to go through my father's VAST arsenal of weapons and go postal. The ONLY shareholders companies care about are the board of directors and upper management - that's it. Why do most shareholder proposals never pass at corporate meetings? Management would have you believe that it's because they are whacked-out ideas from whacked-out shareholders and all of us little guys go along with the "recommendations" of the board on how to vote. Maybe, it's because the board and upper management own a majority of the stock and it doesn't matter how any of us little guys vote.

Let's not forget that I was a part of a major "shareholder family" and I was told that my 20+ years as a part of the "family" was no longer needed or wanted, just so the "family" could make even MORE money. Not a performance issue, not an age issue, not a race issue, not a gender issue, a more $$ issue. And, I should remember that losing my job, my retirement, my pension, my insurance was a GOOD thing for the shareholders. And since I was a shareholder, they were doing this FOR me, not TO me.

I know that intellectually the arguments that most of the pro-corporate folks, economists and the like make on this subject are factual and right. But I am, like most Americans, a simple person and has a difficult time understanding why corporations, of any industry, never seem to make enough money and why these huge profits never seem to make it down to the worker, at the time when the salary gap between the worker and upper management has never been greater. I know that the corporate mantra of always doing what's best for the shareholders will never go away - I'd just like to hear that that also includes the average employee shareholder, the one that is doing the real work FOR the shareholder; the one making the sacrifices FOR the shareholder.