Big Business Is Even More Unpopular Than You Think

The U.S. public holds Big Business in shockingly low regard.

A November 2007 Harris poll found that less than 15 percent of the population believes each of the following industries to be "generally honest and trustworthy:" tobacco companies (3 percent); oil companies (3 percent); managed care companies such as HMOs (5 percent); health insurance companies (7 percent); telephone companies (10 percent); life insurance companies (10 percent); online retailers (10 percent); pharmaceutical and drug companies (11 percent); car manufacturers (11 percent); airlines (11 percent); packaged food companies (12 percent); electric and gas utilities (15 percent). Only 32 percent of adults said they trusted the best-rated industry about which Harris surveyed, supermarkets.

These are remarkable numbers. It is very hard to get this degree of agreement about anything. By way of comparison, 79 percent of adults believe the earth revolves around the sun; 18 percent say it is the other way around.

The Harris results are not an aberration. The results have not varied considerably over the past five years -- although overall trust levels have actually declined from the already very low threshold in 2003.

The Harris results are also in line with an array of polling data showing deep concern about concentrated corporate power.

An amazing 84 percent told Harris in a poll earlier in 2007 that big companies have too much power in Washington. By contrast, only 47 percent said that labor unions have too much power in Washington (as against 42 percent who said labor has too little power), and 18 percent who said nonprofit organizations have too much power in Washington.

These results have proven durable. At least 80 percent of the public has ranked big companies as having too much power in Washington since 1994. In 2000, Business Week and Harris asked a broader question: Has business gained too much power over too many aspects of American life? Seventy-four percent agreed.

The November 2007 poll also asked about support for measures to control corporations. These results are eye-opening as well, though perhaps not in the expected way.

Harris asked which industries "should be more regulated by government -- for example for health, safety or environmental reasons -- than they are now?" Only oil companies (53 percent), pharmaceutical companies (53 percent) and health insurance companies (52 percent) crossed the 50 percent threshold. Even the tobacco industry managed to escape in the survey with only 41 percent favoring greater regulation. These data trend significantly negative -- against greater regulation -- over the last five years.

Does this show that while people distrust Big Business, they equally distrust the government to constrain corporate power?

No.

The U.S. skepticism to regulation is only skin deep. When polls present specific regulatory proposals for consideration, U.S. public support is typically strong and often overwhelming -- even when arguments against government action are presented.

For example:

* After hearing arguments for and against, 76 percent favor granting the Food and Drug Administration regulatory authority over tobacco, with 22 percent opposed.

* After hearing arguments for and against, 75 percent favor legislation that would significantly increase energy efficiency, including auto fuel efficiency standards, and the use of renewable energy.

* Eighty-five percent favor country-of-origin labeling for meat, seafood, produce and grocery products, and three quarters favor a legislative mandate.

* Seventy-one percent say it is important that drugs remain under close review by the FDA and drug companies after they have been placed on the market.

* And, from a Harris finding a week after the poll showing skepticism about industry regulation in general, the polling agency found that those who think there is too little government regulation in the area of environmental protection outpaced those who think there is too much by a more than 2-to-1 margin (53 to 21 percent).

What the Harris findings on attitudes to regulation do show is that the business campaign against regulation as an abstract concept has been very successful.

It highlights the need for consumer, environmental, labor and other corporate accountability advocates to defend the concept of regulation, and to connect the rampant corporate abuses in society with the deregulation and non-regulatory failures of the last three decades. There's little doubt that the general public attitude toward regulation significantly affects the willingness of politicians -- none to eager to offend business patrons in the first place -- to take on corporate power.

Comments

[TheMiddleman]

Corporations are no longer about providing a fair product at a fair price. They now care only about extracting as much money as possible from their "customers," using any means they can get away with, fair or foul.

We are swamped with shoddy products at inflated prices, bogus charges, forced "arbitration," one way contracts, and then required to present yet another plastic ID card in order not to be charged an even higher price.

I have yet to hear a single candidate from any party actually address the issue, possibly excepting Nader, who seemed to be on his own private mind trip.

Just once, I would like to hear a reporter ask one of these clowns running for president exactly what he or she plans to do about the rampant ripping off of consumers by big business.

Just once!

[mmckinl]

Great article ...

Now, get the Dems to read it and vote against their Wall Street financiers.

[mommadona]

It's common sense and a common ground to come together on as
U.S.- we, the people.

[Ides]

The anti-corporate message is a strong and important one, unfortunately the Republicans have based their campaign on the idea of unrestrained Big Business. Instead of couching it in terms of freedom versus restriction, we need voices who explain it in terms of concrete proposals that people would identify with.

[joebaggadonuts]

Thank you Robert for pointing this important data out and putting it into an easy to understand format.

IMHO, it is a toxic mind dump from Ayn Rand, combined with a proclivity to see things in terms which would make Thomas Hobbes proud that contributes to the mindset which can suck up the anti-regulation, anti-tort lawyer, anti-anything that is good for social cooperative development and make it their own.

The only countervailing bright lights I see are John Clippinger and David Brin. Clippinger is too dense for public consumption and Brin is a Sci-Fi writer. It will take a collapse of the system to get people to recognize the failure of their sick mental projection of reality onto the real world. With the corporate media in place through the collapse, even that may not work.

That Jefferson began the Declaration of Independence with the idea of the social contract taken from Hobbes may be true, but the reason he did so was to enable government to exist which could reign in power FOR the citizenry to control. By abdicating control to corporations of everything they do, we let them control us. Thus the contract is broken, not by government directly, but by its handmaidens, the corporations. This is supposed to be OK because corporations are just fulfilling their manifest destiny (sorry for the pun) to enable the swift movement of Adam Smith's invisible hand (again, sorry for the mixed metaphor). That the corporate hand is strangling us is reason enough for government imposed regulation to be instituted by the citizenry.

Wake up. Take control. They won't just give it to you. It will cost them that biggest yacht, fastest car, costliest watch cache they have been pining for.

[rabun666]

The only solution is to quit being the narcissistic-consumerist-gluttonous[NCG] drones that the corporations have molded the American public into. Boycott, becoming predatory consumers to the extent possible. This NCG lifestyle that has been perpetrated on us is fostered by business, government[be a patriot go shopping]and the pretend christian-churchianty-churchianity-religionists with their "family values" rhetoric which is the false pride of the bible, it is narcissism, pride of pedigree which creates racism, and nepotism. These are the "family values", narcissism and its ramifications.

[GoCards1978]

Do any Reagan Democrats feel remorse for their decision? Reagan started the deregulation/union busting mess and still fail to see why anyone holds him in high esteem anymore.

[montemalone]

I clicked through to the poll results.
That explains a lot.
I'll bet that if the 18% of Americans that think the Sun revolves around Earth were asked for whom they voted in the last presidential election, 100% would respond Bush/Cheney.

[dissolvethecorporation]

We created the Frankenstein's monster. Only supreme effort and sacrifice to wean ourselves from the pills, pump and processed food will get us back to democracy.

[Clinton]

If the public were aware of the real extent to which they have become serfs to the so called 'rugged individuals' who collectively run this country (so often misleadingly celebrated by the press)and collect corporate welfare checks they'd begin to change their votes.

[Merlin7]

And yet Americans routinely elect Republicans to local, state and federal positions, empowering the very people who are most likely to screw them over.

No wonder America is quickly becoming a Third World country with a super-rich ruling class and an impoverished working class.

[sonofloud]

And they still get billions of dollars in corporate welfare from Bush and the Republicans!!