Introduction
For generations, and especially since the days of the Robber Barons, most of us have believed that big businesses belong to rich people living in mansions up on a hill. And, for a time we were mostly right.
Of course, many still believe it's true, still believe that if corporations gain, then working people must lose. Just witness the demonstrations and riots that take place when world leaders meet.
But...
There's been a change, a profound change. A change that makes the anti-corporate credo as dated as the clothes the Robber Barons wore. Working and middle-class people - the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker (well, maybe a computer chip maker rather than candlestick maker) - have been rapidly buying up big businesses. These days, the corporate agenda has become the agenda of working people, too.
Their interests are converging. Or should that say, our interests are converging. This phenomenon now affects most of us in the developed world, and increasingly in the rest of the world as well.
Through our contributions to pension funds, mutual funds, and life insurance policies that pay a retirement income, we working people are investing as never before. And where do all those contributions go? Mostly into big companies, especially publicly-traded companies. Not only do these companies provide generally dependable profits, but being publicly traded allows the funds to buy and sell their shares easily and inexpensively.
"But, what about rich people?" you might ask, "Don't they still own a lot of companies?" Well, yes, they still own a lot, but there are very few of them, very few indeed when compared with the number of working people putting away a few dollars every month. After all, we're talking about literally hundreds of millions of working people (and soon to be billions of working people, as India, China and other developing countries grow large middle class populations).
All of which means working people now own big stakes in corporation after corporation, and will keep buying for the foreseeable future. We own everything from tobacco companies that make cigarettes to pharmaceutical companies that help us kick the smoking habit. We're landlords to much of the world, through stakes in huge multi-national corporations and through the local company that owns the mini-mall down the street.
Unexpectedly and unintentionally, we've come to own much of big business by simply putting away a few dollars at a time for retirement.
Next, read a draft of Chapter 1 by clicking here: Chapter 1: The Ownership Revolution