Corporation

Overview

A corporation is a legal entity that exists separately from the person(s) who work for it. This separation gives corporations particular legal capabilities unavailable to individuals and other types of organizations.

This page is a seed article. You can help Issuepedia water it: make a request to expand a given page and/or donate to help give us more writing-hours!

• In the United States, corporations have the legal status of people in many regards (corporate personhood), including:
  • the ability to own property
  • the ability to sign binding contracts
  • the requirement to pay taxes
  • certain constitutional rights

There is a significant sentiment that allowing this "personhood" may have been a bad idea, and perhaps it should be done away with.

These abilities apparently do not include the right to vote or become a citizen, despite common usage of the phrase "corporate citizen" when describing the corporate role in society.

Reference

• Wikipedia

Notes

• Most business (by dollar volume, at least) is presumably conducted by corporations, but business can be conducted by individuals or other types of legal entities.
• Large corporations tend to spawn a particular kind of thinking which discourages innovation and long-term planning, among other flaws.