These 10 companies own nearly 400

[J.Apple902]

http://i.imgur.com/k0pv0.jpg

That's pretty good for the American consumer right? Absolutely not. These guys can lobby for whatever they want because not unlike the days of Teddy Roosevelt in the early 1900s, this agglomeration is really bad for America.

[Joan.of.the.Arch]

I don't understand what you are saying about the days of Teddy Roosevelt.

That graphic looks mostly like a list of junk food manufacturers. Seems to me almost everything on it has non brand name alternatives, or it is very easy to not consume the product at all.

There are some other who-owns-who lists out there that concern me more. Who owns the newspapers, radio, TV, new magazines, news services, and internet news sources, for example.

[autoxer]

this agglomeration is really bad for America.

Is capitalism bad for America?

[J.Apple902]

I look at this image and think there is a problem. Yes it is more alarming to find the collection of news entities, like here http://www.neatorama.com/2008/07/07/...vision/#!nR4T4 or maybe the power of a company like Google http://www.ovrdrv.com/goog/pdf/Googl...nfographic.pdf (who seems to participate in little to no poor business practices, as far as I know).

Capitalism is fine, but I think we're seeing more than capitalism today. We're seeing a US government that is massively influenced by corporate lobbying and financial power, along with widespread conflicts of interest in public and private sector positions. Also, it is not a democratic capitalistic power any longer. The US is a plutocracy with policies and practices which hugely favor those with money already - along with big business and the financial sector. It is impossible for the lower 50% to climb upwards, challenging for the next 30%, and easy for the upper quartile to steadily climb higher and higher.

There is no regulation on the financial sector, healthcare industry, food sector, and all petrochemical areas. Wall Street is allowed to bet the bank and when they mess up, the government bails with tax paper money. 15% capital gains tax is ridiculous. This means if you work your entire life you pay double or more than the guy who doesn't have to work a day in his life. That's imbalanced. The military sector is private (Haliburton), healthcare has been privatized, the prison system has been privatized, and there's an attempt to make social security privatized.

Examine the subsidies in this country. We subsidize the oil industry, and huge agribusiness operations which allow a double cheeseburger to be $0.99 whereas healthy foods are way more expensive. Sugar is subsidized, ensuring the US govt will pay triple the average world market price. The applications where tax payer money is needed most are ignored, but there are plenty of existing policies which inhibit the masses and benefit very few.

Allowing corporate agglomerations of this size just adds to the problem. In order to have true capitalism, you have enough competition that the consumer benefits. You have to made a damn good product at a damn good price in order to sell, and where there are consequences for poor business practices - we see none of this in America today.

[Snodog]

And did you know that almost the entire media is owned by only 5 or 6 corporations and you are being fed very different realities depending on which channels you watch. I guess there is a reason they call it programming.

[J.Apple902]

yeah totally. that's actually the biggest issue. I'm so impressed with this high quality graphic tho haha. I have the links to the media stuff above.

The other biggest problem in the US today is the private federal reserve with private undisclosed share holders.

[gogirlanime]

I am not saying anyone here is dumb or anything. I always thought this was common knowledge, I thought us as Americans knew this already. Look at Time Warner, omg they own everything!

[J.Apple902]

Why would "everyone know this"? It's not talked about in our public education system. It's not talked about via media. I went through 12 yrs of public US education, 4 undergrad and 2 graduate years and never knew about how bad some of this was. I think that few American's actually know about many of these issues. I have brought this to many peoples attention at my engineering firm and no one knows.