Large multinational corporations, often acting through their industry lobbies, exert a powerful influence on the formulation of domestic rules and on their application - but their influence on supranational institutional design is even larger because it faces practically no opposition there.
Thomas PoggePoverty persists, essentially, because the people at the bottom - the bottom quarter and also the bottom half - see the gains from the rising global average income wiped out by severe declines in their relative share.
Thomas PoggeIncome inequality matters more on a day-to-day basis. Wealth matters more for political influence.
Thomas PoggePurchasing power parities are not a reasonable method for comparing households across countries or currencies. The reason for this is simply that PPPs are sensitive to the prices of all the commodities, goods and services, that households are consuming worldwide, with each commodity weighted in the calculations according to its share in international household consumption expenditure.
Thomas PoggeCompeting companies evolve toward efficiency as the more efficient ones profit and expand while those who fall behind fail. And companies being efficient and profiting under the Health Impact Fund, this is exactly what we want, because the company's profit is directly driven by the health impact its registered products achieve.
Thomas PoggeOur Supreme Court has lifted the practice of buying legislation to the level of a constitutional principle by repeatedly protecting corporate spending for and against political candidates, as well as promises and threats of such spending to bribe and blackmail such candidates, by appeal to the free-speech clause of the First Amendment.
Thomas Pogge