A Vagabonding life

Haiti and Corporate Greed

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Photo by AP/Gerald Herbert

It isn’t too often that I produce a rant but after recently coming across some startling data I was too appalled to sit here and do nothing.

Anyone familiar with my website knows that there is no love lost between me and cubicles, or giant corporations for that matter. After working in one for 8 years before I began vagabonding, I know first hand the cold, soulless drive they all possess to make more money at the expense of humanity.

Even being a former victim, I still threw up a little in my mouth after researching the following numbers. Have I become too jaded or has the world lost its mind?

You read and I welcome your opinion:

The Research

I recently came across an article detailing how my local University of Kentucky had raised US 1 million dollars for Haiti relief - not bad for a small university in a relatively broke state.

This prompted me to go out and see what other universities and companies had donated….but what I found was an article on the Huffington Post disclosing how much money big companies had donated to the relief effort.

Banks

Fifth Third Bancorp - $100,000
US Bank - $100,000 + match employee donations
Visa - $200,000
Wells Fargo - $100,000

Yes, you are reading those zeros correctly. All the other banks such as Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Goldman Sachs donated just $1 million dollars - the same as my university.

These are the same tyrants that despite Obama’s best sword rattling still continue to give bonuses much larger than any of the donations you see above.

But wait, it gets even better!

Other Giant Corporations

Coca-Cola - $1 million

Sprint - $50,000 ($1.5 Billion spent on advertising last year)

Wal-mart - $600,000

Google - $1 million (the same Google with a revenue of $23.65 Billion, stock price of $531 a share, and profit margin of 27%)

McDonalds - $1 million (the CEO earns $12.32 million / year)

Microsoft - $1.25 million (once the richest company in the world based on cash reserves)

Walt Disney - $100,000 (the CEO earns $21.34 million / year)

Cigna - $50,000 (health insurance provider)

The list goes on with very little improvement. I am not naive enough to believe that corporations in America have the ability or own the responsibility to fix every disaster that happens to every developing country.

But to think that a company with the sizes and resources of Walt Disney or Wal-mart could only muster enough interest to give a portion of what one university’s basketball team could raise is frightening.

For a comparison, here are the salaries of the CEOs for some of the companies above:

Coca Cola - Muhtar Kent - $6.35 million
Sprint - Daniel Hesse - $5.39 million
McDonalds - James Skinner - $12.32 million
Robert Iger - $21.34 million

Simply fascinating. Haiti is the poorest country in the Western hemisphere and a dollar there goes quite a long way for relief effort. Just a wild guess, but the kids in Haiti would probably notice that dollar a lot more than someone making $20 million a year plus stock compensation.

People wonder why I now preach not to give the best years of your life to corporations.

If these guys can throw the equivalent of spare change at one of the largest humanitarian disasters of our time, how long do you think it would take them to help you out the door with a boot when cheaper overseas labor comes along?

In Closing:

If you found these numbers to be as disgusting as I did, share this with friends - this is public domain knowledge and helping educate others might bring some awareness to just how deadly the cubicle can be.

Go check out www.thecorporation.com for a chilling documentary about just why and how these guys can think like that.

You can read about how to help Haiti yourself here.

Sources:

Advertising budgets

CEO Salaries on Forbes

Huffington Post article

Posted in Ramblings |

4 Years Out of the Cubicle

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Get out of the Matrix and escape!

Today marks the 4 year anniversary of the start of my world travel.

Hard to believe, but it feels like just last week that I shook my manager’s hand as she walked me to the door at IBM and relieved me of my ID badge.

I walked down those steps toward my car like I had done every day for the last 7 years with a torrent of mixed emotions. I turned around at the bottom and stood for a minute in the cold December sunshine just wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life.

Mistake or not, good or bad, I knew that whatever was going on in that instant was truly life changing and my legs were wobbly with adrenaline.

(Read more…)

Posted in Ramblings |

Earthquakes in Yellowstone

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Earthquakes in Yellowstone - are these buffalo screwed?

The end of the world as we know it? I feel fine.

Since this past Sunday, there have been 469 earthquakes in Yellowstone National Park!

Yikes. After I decided in 2008 that I needed to see a little bit of my own country, I drove out to Yellowstone to see what all the fuss was about.

What I found, and wrote about back (Yellowstone National Park) then was a ticking geological time bomb. The entire park is actually the caldera of the world’s largest plugged volcano and there is an immense amount of activity going on underneath the tourists’ feet.

The land has actually been pushed upward by 8 inches in the last 4 years due to the building pressure. That same pressure makes new geysers and hot pools pop up all over the park daily.

Now with 469 little earthquakes in Yellowstone being a sure indicator that something out of sight is brewing, it makes me wonder if I should be bailing out early for that Thai island….and all this time I thought I had until 2012 to have fun.