Corporations

These enormous entities have been gaining ground at breakneck speed. Consumerism has become ubiquitous in our society, and has subsequently seeped into every aspect of our lives. We babble on about our favorite brands as if they were some sort of personal coat of arms. However you slice it or dice it, the mission of these greedy gargantuan juggernauts all boils down to one thing, the bottom line. Making moolah! We’ll uncover the complex culture of corporations on this week’s episode of FYI!

Transcript

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these enormous entities have been gaining ground at Breakneck speed consumerism has become ubiquitous in our society and has subsequently seeped into every aspect of Our Lives we Babble on about our favorite Brands as if they were some sort of personal code of arms however you slice it or dice it the mission of these greedy gargantuan juggernauts all boils down to one thing the bottom line making Moola we'll uncover the complex culture of Corporations on this week's episode of FYI welcome to for your info English you got it you[Applause][Music][Applause][Music] got[Applause][Music] hello hello hello and welcome to this another exciting edition of FYI thanks for tuning in fyers and remember if you haven't heard a topic that you'd like to hear about just let me know I love learning about a new topic every week just as much as you do so with if you have ideas for upcoming episodes just let me know I'm really easy to find on social media I also have a website it's Alberto Alonso docomo community and if you're in my Curious Community you'll get access not only to one of the most amazing communities ever and it's not because of me it's because of the students but you'll also get tons of amazing content every week you'll get an extra episode with tons of tidbits of English information and tidbits are little pieces go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and take a look at all the options but as well as the bonus episode you can also get access to PDF documents so you can follow along with each episode and then you can put yourself to the test afterwards with our worksheets but remember it's not about memorizing every single word it's about exposing yourselves to English every single week and some of the same vocabulary comes up which is natural but also we get vocabulary associated with each topic as well and in every episode there are over 350 words expressions and collocations that's a lot of content but if you're in our higher levels our super duper students or our Interstellar students then you can also get a weekly class with me it's a group class where we have tons of fun playing and laughing and reviewing the key vocabulary from each episode and if you're in our Interstellar level you get all of that plus a monthly class with me where we can check your progress and we can work on what you need to work on specifically so if you want to find out more go over to patreon.com Alberto Alonso and join us and I'd like to send a shout out to all my patrons the ones who are learning and laughing with me every week the ones who make this podcast possible you guys freaking Rock a shout out to each and every one of you especially my super duper students Mara Lena Javier Paco Roberto Jose Maria and Mila and don't forget about my Interstellar students the ones who get a monthly private class with me Carmen Issa Paco David and Edgard keep up the great work guys I am extremely proud of you all right let's get this show on the road that's one of my favorite idiomatic expressions that means let's get going we'll start out by taking a look at the intro I always put tons of vocabulary in there on purpose so every week when I release the teaser you have at least 5 to 10 different vocabulary words and expressions let's take a look I started out by saying these enormous entities have been gaining ground and that means they've become bigger I think you say something similar in Spanish Tero ground and then I said at break neck speed so we already have an idiomatic expression and a super cool vocabulary word in the first sentence of the intro to gain ground and at Breakneck speed which I think you can tell from the context means it's going really fast think Fernando[Applause][Music][Applause] Alonso then I said consumer M has become ubiquitous I want to take a look at a couple pronunciation things here ubiquitous or ubiquitous I've heard it pronounced both ways by very intelligent people so I guess that's up to you either either neither nether hey these are words that have two pronunciations that are accepted everywhere another one the thing you put flowers in vay or vase and I also wanted to take a look at our isms say it with me ISM ISM cuz I've heard students say ism is you know make all kinds of weird sounds cuz there's no vowel there think of it like a little e over there a short e ISM so let's practice a few isms consumerism populism communism Catholicism nationalism tourism I hope you're repeating these aloud with me this this is a tough ending to pronounce for most of my students but once you've got it you've got it and as we say practice makes perfect so consumerism has become ubiquitous or ubiquitous in our society and has subsequently seeped into every aspect of our lives and to seep into something is to penetrate it we Babble on to babble on is to talk incessantly we Babble on about our fa favorite Brands as if they were some sort of personal coat of arms and all I have to say here is Apple Fanboys sometimes I think these people are getting a commission for promoting their products I don't even like wearing logos on my shirt because wait a second I'm paying Tommy Hilfiger to wear a billboard of him I don't think so not today not ever but some people like to be the poster child of a brand I get it if you're getting paid you're a brand ambassador or something there I get it but if you're paying them to promote them incessantly I don't get it I would at least buy some stock in the company and we'll talk a little bit about stocks later on so we Babble on and think about the word Babble the Tower of Babble we Babble on about our favorite Brands and a code of arms is UN escudo I think you say in Spanish something that your family has has your family name or in many cases royalty then I said however you slice it or dice it I'm going to send a shout out to my student hos Maria on this one I know he loves this idiomatic expression this means however you want to word it however you want to say it the mission of these greedy and greedy means I want more I'm never sad ASI greed is one of the seven deadly sins so I said the mission of these greed gargantuan juggernauts gargantuan means huge and I know we've looked at the word juggernauts before a juggernaut is like a force of Nature and I said the word Mission too I wanted to take a look at the word mission statement really quickly as well a mission statement is a company's stated objective you can usually find it on their website then I said it all boils down to you can also say it all comes down to one thing the bottom line and the bottom line is the most important thing this has also become a synonym for money which is why in the next line I say making Moola Moola is another way to say money if you didn't know that maybe it's because you haven't listened to our FYI episode on money then I said we'll uncover the complex culture of Corporations on this week's episode of FYI I imagine many of you listening right now work at a corporation I work at a corporation well what is a corporation let's start by defining it a corporation is an organization usually a group of people or a company authorized by the state to act as a single entity and recognized as such in law for certain purposes and we'll talk about this later on as well but a corporation is a legal person the only thing is it seems like they have more rights than a legal person which is something we'll look at in the bonus episode in the bonus episode we'll take a look at unions we'll also take a look at some of the biggest strikes we'll look at the robber barons these were the guys who built the United States but at what cost as we always ask ourselves in every episode we'll also take a look at some fun facts we'll look at the dark side monopolies CEO salaries the biggest bankruptcies and tons of vocab and idioms associated with corporations all that and much more in the bonus episode now here's a little technicality what's the difference between a company and a corporation a company is not necessarily a COR Corporation at least in the United States although all corporations can be classified as companies and a corporation is a type of business that is distinct from its owner but as we just said it's a legal person at the same time so companies have to file their taxes separately from the personal taxes of their owners so Elon Musk for example which was a pretty recent episode he has to do his tax tax return and then there's a separate one for the company but where did corporations start well they started here in Europe or at least the idea the predecessor of a corporation and this was when European monarchs gave companies a charter this was like a right to exist the monarchy would even Finance these companies but there was limited liability they could only lose lose the amount of money they invested no more that's a right that was not offered to individuals so as an investor which the monarchs are that's why they have tons of money this offered a safer investment so that's why Charters became really big but they didn't just give a charter to anyone you had to go in front of a court or a board and you had to present your case and what you were going to do and if they agreed with it well maybe they would give you that Charter does this sound familiar the Catholic Kings Isabella and Ferdinand Christopher Columbus he had to go in front of them and get that Charter as we call it to discover the new world and it was through these Charters that Europe became so big they were expanding their territories all over the world countries like Holland Spain France and England and as the companies expanded so did the government's wealth and land thus their empire would grow so it was a win-win for the monarchy or the ruling class and the adventurers the people who had ideas the entrepreneurs but this is also the government in bed with big business which as we know if they get too close to each other we could get near something I don't think anybody really likes Fascism and we'll talk a little bit about that later on too Laz Fair capitalism and other isms the good thing is you already know how to pronounce this ending one of the biggest companies was a British company called the East India Company they made England super wealthy and it originally started out as a charter called governor and company of merchants of London trading into the East Indies nowadays we know it as the East India Company a British company that accounted for half of the World's Trade during the mid 1700s and early 1800s they were running the show as far as trade was concerned and they were trading Commodities Commodities such as cotton silk Indigo dye sugar salt spices tea and even opium and the company also ruled the beginnings of what would be the British Empire in India so technically it wasn't Britain that own those places in India it was the East India Company but this company came to rule large areas of India they even exercised military power and a assumed administrative functions this was also the first company in the world to issue stock stock is aonis it's to have a piece of the company so just to give you an idea of how important these companies were or how powerful they were I should say another such company was the Massachusetts Bay Company it was chartered by King Charles and it was this Charter that was partly responsible for colon ing what would be the United States they colonized the Massachusetts Bay Area I guess they had an appropriate name and that was a charter that was granted by Charles I of England so these companies were not just making money hand over fist but they were also expanding Empire there's also something called the Embargo Act of 1807 and an embargo is like a restriction a trade restriction if I'm not mistaken the word in Spanish is aranel and this was proposed by Thomas Jefferson and this basically made it so that there was an embargo on France and England we couldn't buy products from them now you're thinking what does this have to do with corporations well we still needed these products our country was you know sprouting it was in its infancy so this triggered a boom in the United States new corporations were sprouting up every everywhere because we couldn't buy British or French products anymore and we started to manufacture a lot of things domestically particularly the textile industry and this was also the beginning of the manufacturing system in the United States and obviously it reduced this budding nation's dependence on imported manufactured goods they could make them at home but now as you guys know we don't do it that way we'll look at that that in the darkg side let's take a look at a couple kinds of companies here you've got public versus private a public company issues Equity to what are called shareholders or stockholders those Shares are traded on the stock market and the day that that company goes public they call it an IPO initial public offering I don't know very much about this area but I know this much that's the original stock price when a company goes public a private company on the other hand is as its name implies privately owned and it's not regulated a public company you have to show your figures year after year trimester after trimester I mean you are under harsh scrutiny also many of the decisions are made by shareholders or the executive committee the board of directors but they represent the share shareholders and as we said before what is their objective it doesn't matter what industry they're in their objective their aim is the bottom line money there's also something called a holding company and this is a kind of company that does not perform any actual business operations so they don't create a product or service what they do is they control other companies by owning the majority of shares they don't necessarily run those companies on paper but if you own most of the stock well you have a lot of oversight on major decisions and you could be considered the primary owner even though obviously it's owned by many people it's public as the name says there are three companies I urge you to look into these three companies own almost everything and if you haven't heard of these companies it's shocking because they own own a little piece and sometimes a big piece of every major company in every major industry we'll talk more about them in the dark side in the bonus episode but I'll tell you their names now so you can do some research Black Rock Vanguard and State Street they own everything look up Larry thinkink the CEO of Black Rock he's like some kind of diabolical figure or at least it seems that way then you've got your nonprofit organizations your NOS these are more common everyday a lot of them are great because they're helping children but as we know too there are many people who set up nonprofits in order to dodge taxes I once heard somebody say I don't remember where if you have a nonprofit you're laundering money I'm not saying that's true in every case by any means but it is a good way to move money around without it being taxed then you've got your small and medium-sized businesses which you call I think beis and my favorite ones mom and pop shops those are those ones that we have to support because no matter how convenient Amazon is we don't want the local Fruit Stand to close down either so we have to support these smaller businesses as well we talked about this in the Amazon episode and I'm sure some of you I said before some of you work for a corporation and some of you are business owners you run your own business shout out to Edgar and there are pros and cons to this edot I'm sure you can add a few extras in our class but the first thing is you're following your dreams your passions you're leaving a legacy if that business goes well so starting your own company I mean that's a wonderful thing thing you are your own boss now I know in my case it means you have to be very disciplined thankfully I am I don't know if I could have started my own business 10 15 years ago so it takes a certain responsibility you have to have work ethic as we call it but if you're following your dreams there's nothing better there are disadvantages or cons as we said you're risking a lot you have to put down some money to start a business you can't just start a business out of a so you take a Financial Risk there's legal liability long hours well whatever hours it takes if you're the boss the buck stops here this means you don't pass the responsibility on to anybody else the buck stops here and if you work for a company well it's the company's problem if their stock is down if you're losing money in your small business that's your problem and that could cause a lot of stress and what happens when we stress stress we get sick so there are even health risks then you have a certain responsibility towards your employees and your staff and don't forget about taxes that's a pain in the ass you need to hire a bookkeeper or an accountant and you can fail be prepared to fail but that doesn't mean you're a failure it means you've got to try again maybe not in that business but you don't stay down as we say you pick yourself up you dust yourself off and you start again and as you guys have known every time we've taken a look at an entrepreneur here on the show none of them made it on their first go you have to be extremely lucky if you do it the first time perfectly let's take a look at the most successful companies by market capitalization in 2023 in order you've got Apple Microsoft aramco alphabet and Amazon that's four American compan companies and one Saudi Arabia company and the four American companies are tech companies what we call Big Tech and we're going to look at that in the bonus episode too big Tech big food big Pharma we'll wrap up this episode with some stats the estimated number of companies currently at the time of this recording is approximately 333 million companies worldwide of the 100 largest economies in the world 51 are corporations the top 200 Corporation sales are growing at a faster rate than overall global economic activity so they are making money more than ever as I said before at break neck speed but as we'll look at in the bonus episode of the US corporations on that top 200 list 44 of them did not pay the full standard 3 5% Federal corporate tax this was during the period of 1996 to 1998 seven of those companies actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes they're able to do this because of rebates rebates is when the government gives you back some money and those companies the ones who paid less than zero in income tax this was in 1998 were Texico Chevron PepsiCo Enron which we'll talk about in the bonus episode in the bankruptcies part Worldcom and General Motors so that's the textbook definition of greed making more money than ever and not paying any taxes whereas if I don't pay €60 I'll get 75 letters in the mail we'll talk about all that in the bonus episode but it reminds me of the movie Wall Street with Michael Douglas the original one and and he says in the movie Greed for lack of a better word is a good thing I disagree with him I say if you can make a buck without screwing people over well then you can go to sleep every night with a smile on your face and I'm going to play that scene for you because this is a really famous scene it's from the movie Wall Street and this is Michael Douglas talking about greed the new law of evolution in Corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest well in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated in the last seven deals that I've been involved with there were 2.5 million stockholders who have made a pre-tax profit of $12 billion thank you I am not a destroy ER of companies I am a liberator of them the point is ladies and gentlemen that Greed for lack of a better word is good greed is Right greed Works greed clarifies cuts through and captures the essence of The evolutionary Spirit greed in all of its forms Greed for life for money for love knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind and greed you mark my words will not only save tar paper but that other malfunctioning Corporation Called the USA thank you very much I sure hope you guys will join us in the bonus episode of[Applause] FYI[Music] a