Agit Prop News (put out by the Labor Art and Mural Project)carried these facts about the global economy in its latest edition. Maybe you could use them in our/your work building M1? Dave Riley * The 200 richest people in the world have more assets than the poorest 2 billion -- World Bank * Globally an average of US$3 trillion a day is spent on speculation - - more than the total Third World debt. * Of the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations; only 49 are countries (based on a comparison of corporate sales and country GDPs). *. The top 200 global corporations' combined sales are bigger than the combined economies of all countries minus the biggest 10. *. The top 200 corporations' combined sales are 18 times the size of the combined annual income of the 1.2 billion people (24 percent of the total world population) living in "severe" poverty. *. While the sales of the top 200 corporations are the equivalent of 27.5 percent of world economic activity, they employ only 0.78 percent of the world's workforce. * Of the 82 U.S. corporations on the top 200 list, 44 did not pay the full standard 35 percent federal corpo-rate tax rate during the period 1996-1998. Seven of the firms actually paid less than zero in federal income taxes in 1998 (because of rebates). These include: Texaco, Chevron, PepsiCo, Enron, Worldcom, McKesson and the world's biggest corporation - General Motors. [Further facts can be culled from the archive pages of Green Left Weekly http://www.greenleft.org.au ] +++++++++++++++++++++++ Carnival of The Oppressed The anti-globalisation theatre project [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.ozemail.com.au/~dhell/nwot2.htm PO Box 103 Northgate,QLD, AUSTRALIA 4013 -- Leftlink - Australia's Broad Left Mailing List mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Archived at http://www.cat.org.au/lists/leftlink/ Sponsored by Melbourne's New International Bookshop Subscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=subscribe%20leftlink Unsubscribe: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20leftlink
