Bigger and badder corporations

—By Vince Beiser

| Fri Dec. 8, 2000 1:00 AM PST

Globe-spanning corporations may have taken a big public-relations hit in the streets of Seattle and other cities over the past year, but it sure doesn't seem to have slowed them down any.

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According to a new report from THE INSTITUTE FOR POLICY STUDIES, 51 of the world's 100 largest economic entities are now corporations, not countries. Moreover, the world's top 200 corporations account for over a quarter of the planet's economic activity -- but employ less than one percent of its workforce.

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Where does all that money go? Not back to the rest of us, anyway. Forty-four of the US corporations on the list paid less than the full standard 35 percent federal corporate tax rate between 1996 and 1998 -- and seven of them paid no federal taxes at all.

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