I don’t think your comparison between corporations and governments is quite fair. Governments can influence a larger amount of revenue than just their own through regulation of companies. So some people have compared the GDP of countries to the revenue of corporations. But then the problem is that GDP is calculated by value add, and the value add of a corporation is significantly lower than their revenue (because they are paying for other companies’ products and services).
However, I think given that there’s a lot of regulatory capture going on, it is increasingly hard for governments to influence large amounts of corporate revenue, and corporations should work actively against this. This is evidenced by states being increasingly unable to collect corporate taxes.
Also, even if there’s some truth to it and states control some corporate revenue, then this might be offset to an extent by state power being curtailed by mandatory and entitlement spending taking up an increasing share of their budgets (e.g. >70% in the US).
I’ve seen countries’ GDP being compared colloquially to corporate revenue, but have never seen a paper on this. Do you know of one?
In terms of value added vs. revenue as a measure of corporate power—I think value added doesn’t quite capture it, because a high revenue, low value add company (think: Walmart) might still have substantial influence due to economies of scale of their lobbying (even if they just spend a small percentage of their overall revenue on this, it will be quite high).
I don’t think your comparison between corporations and governments is quite fair. Governments can influence a larger amount of revenue than just their own through regulation of companies. So some people have compared the GDP of countries to the revenue of corporations. But then the problem is that GDP is calculated by value add, and the value add of a corporation is significantly lower than their revenue (because they are paying for other companies’ products and services).
Yes, that’s a interesting point.
However, I think given that there’s a lot of regulatory capture going on, it is increasingly hard for governments to influence large amounts of corporate revenue, and corporations should work actively against this. This is evidenced by states being increasingly unable to collect corporate taxes.
Also, even if there’s some truth to it and states control some corporate revenue, then this might be offset to an extent by state power being curtailed by mandatory and entitlement spending taking up an increasing share of their budgets (e.g. >70% in the US).
I’ve seen countries’ GDP being compared colloquially to corporate revenue, but have never seen a paper on this. Do you know of one?
In terms of value added vs. revenue as a measure of corporate power—I think value added doesn’t quite capture it, because a high revenue, low value add company (think: Walmart) might still have substantial influence due to economies of scale of their lobbying (even if they just spend a small percentage of their overall revenue on this, it will be quite high).