Six agricultural giants on the verge of merging into three companies (2016) | Hacker News Reader

Six agricultural giants on the verge of merging into three companies (2016)

qz.com

88 pointswalterbell12 comments

It is disheartening to see how a company like Dow can not just survive but flourish after the Bhopal Gas Tragedy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2014/12/bhopal-the-worlds-...

Well they keep claiming that they didn't do it but the company they acquired did so it's not their responsibility...

Same shit will happen once Bayer buys Monsanto and the Monsanto turds come to the surface. Not that Bayer hasn't done horrible things itself in the past. [1]

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/may/23/aids.suzannego...

That's just the tip of the iceberg of their crimes against humanity and animals. They've sickened a lot more people than that.

This is from September 2016. Most of these mergers have already occurred. DowDuPont is already diversifying some of its assets to FMC as part of the merger deal, just as an example.

Monopoly continues to rear its ugly head.. Reminds me of the banking chart: https://www.visualnews.com/2016/01/25/37-banks-became-4-bank...

No idea how to quote, but from the original story: The nation’s 10 largest financial institutions hold 54 percent of our total financial assets; in 1990, they held 20 percent. In the meantime, the number of banks has dropped from more than 12,500 to about 8,000.

Number One: In 1945, corporations paid 50% of federal taxes; now they pay about 5%.

Number Two: In 1900, 90% of Americans were self employed; now it's about 2%... It's called consolidation; strengthen governments and corporations, weaken individuals. With taxes, this can be done imperceptibly over time.

This is quote from the video game Deus Ex for those not familiar. Here's a good followup to this quote: https://youtu.be/rxOKEsBx4NU?t=1418

> In 1900, 90% of Americans were self employed; now it's about 2%

Citation, please? That 1900 percentage seems way off. Just looking at child labor, which was 6% of the workforce in 1900 [0], they weren't all self-employed shoeshines or paperboys. Think about agriculture, which was already less than 50% of employment by 1900 but much bigger than today, do you think 90% of those people were working their own farms rather than farm hands, ranch hands working for someone else? The US Census didn't collect this kind of data until decades later so it's hard to find good numbers. This blog post [1] references a much older column that said 50% were self-employed in 1900.

Regarding the 2% today, in 2015 Rick Santorum said 10% of American's own their own business which PolitiFact rated as Mostly True [2].

[0] https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/cwc/american-labor-in-the-20th-...

[1] https://www.huffingtonpost.com/don-mcnay/are-you-ready-to-ju...

[2] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/apr/...

Worth noting that this is a quote from the game Deus Ex and the 2% is relevant to the game's fictional universe set in 2052. It's meant to be more of a vision of a dark future at the given trend not necessarily a number to be used in the year 2000 when the game released.

Thanks, I didn't get from your previous comment that you were explaining that 'nether' was simply quoting a video game set in the future.

As for the historical figures, I guess Deus Ex is a failure for truth and accuracy in game journalism, that is, journalism performed by games ;)

Regarding the proportion of federal taxes paid by corporations, this table [0] says in 1945, corporations paid 16 billion out of 45 billion, ~36%. But that includes tax revenue sources other than individual income taxes, in 1945 those were 18.3 billion so if you only only count income taxes and corporation taxes, corporations were 47%, pretty close to 50%.

For 2015 (most recent non-estimated year), 344 billion out of 3.2 trillion, about 11%, more than twice the 5% figure. If you again only count income taxes and corporation taxes, income taxes were 1.5 trillion so corporations were 19% of that total.

[0] http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/amount-revenue-sou...

This story seems pretty light on everything. There is no reason why it needs to be considering how many parties there are that would love to get a sound bite in.

Edit: typo

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