 there's a reason that we had to bail out the auto industry. And that wasn't just because Obama has some affinity for GM. It's because that would have a ripple effect through the entire economy, and the thousands of smaller businesses that supply GM would go out of business as well. So, and looking at other large companies that they couldn't have a small auto industry, the aerospace, Boeing. I mean, Boeing has hundreds of thousands of employees on its own, but there are also thousands of smaller businesses across the nation that Boeing is the reason they're in business, including like my friend's father, who makes one part for a window, small business in New Jersey, and his biggest customer is Boeing and Airbus, and without them, he probably would not be in business. So, big business is actually supporting small businesses, and without it, they would not exist. And my last point here, and I wanna talk about that a bit, it's why I have Walmart up here. Funny enough, everyone hates Walmart, but Walmart is actually doing a lot of things. And you know, with big power, you know, that also gives them responsibility, and that's why we mentioned corporate responsibility. Well, I think Walmart realizes this, and they have a reputation given, and you know, their intentions can be questionable, but I'm looking more at the impact, and they're leading one of the biggest sustainability initiatives in the entire country for the environment. They're buying local produce. You know, they just decided to buy more than 9% of their produce here, including here in the Pioneer Valley, supporting local farms. They are, let's see, what else? They're the biggest promoter of fluorescent light bulbs, saving the economy, saving the society energy, and against global warming. They are, you know, revolution, revise their entire trucking fleet to extend their gas mileage four miles to the gallon. Now, because they're so giant, their changes actually make a big difference. And then that's another point here, is that, you know, with such big, massive companies, when they actually make a change, it has a large impact. And so, that also makes them a target for people that wanna make change. It's difficult to target and try to force thousands of small, or hundreds of small businesses to make a change, whether it's, you know, fuel mileage, or light bulbs, or buying local produce, or whatever it is, or human rights, you know, such as a company like Nike, you know, child labor, or something. It's easy to, it's a big target because they have a reputational cost, and it's one business. A whole variety, a cluster of businesses, is a lot more difficult to pressure to make change. And the last part about sustainability and why the environment is not an enemy of big business, and that they're actually not mutually exclusive sustainability in big businesses, because they have a lot at call. They have a lot at stake. And, you know, when they make a change, it saves them a lot of money. When Walmart, they're known as penny pinchers. Well, that's because when they save a penny, that penny turns into millions of dollars. And that could come in the form of new light bulbs. Or, you know, Ford Motor has opened a plant recently in Dearborn, Michigan, and it's, you know, cutting-edge technology, and there's basically no waste. And the waste that they use, they try to make it into energy, like a real sustainable principle, which, yes, saves them money, I agree. So it's benefiting them, but it's also benefiting the environment. And so, you know, sustainability and the environment, big business is a friend of environmentalists and should be looked at as an opportunity for them. So, if we're going on any longer, I would like to invite up Angela here, who's gonna talk about why big businesses are more productive with their profits. Big businesses, can you hear me? Yes, okay. Big businesses are more productive with their profits for three reasons. The first being, they like to invest their profits in long-term community development projects. And they do this, this long-term, and they are involved in the long run, because they know that involvement creates a more positive image for the companies. And also, they know that giving cash contributions just don't look as good. Yes, that's true. But if you think about it, when they go into this long-term community involvement, they're making a bigger impact. Take, for example, Microsoft. They created this program called Elevate America, which they sponsor, they gave $5 million in cash to this program, and then also $10 million in software. They do this, this program is used to train women and youth workers from 18 to 25 years old in using their software. They don't necessarily become end users, they don't necessarily end up working for Microsoft, but this program, Elevate America, plays them in jobs. They actually provide these people with jobs after they train them. And so, a huge company like Microsoft can do this with their profits because they know that in the long run, they'll benefit society as a whole, having an educated, skilled population filling these jobs. Large firms are also able to give more to charity and they have more ability to, even if it's just cash contributions, because unlike small businesses, large firms aren't afraid of running out of cash to fund their operations. They always have access to credit. They have cheaper access to credit than small firms do, even in tough economic times, because they are less risky to default. And small firms don't have the luxury of using their profits because they always have to make sure they have enough profits to flow back into their operations to make sure their company is growing and maintaining itself, whereas large firms can do so through their financial structures, their capital structures, that they have an easy access to. And large firms are actually not necessarily profitable, but with their profits, because they have greater profits, they can fund more charities. And an example of this would be Microsoft again. In response to the Japan earthquake, they gave $250 million in cash and also $1.75 million worth of software to rebuild the Japanese communications network. A small firm or a cluster of small firms would not be able to help a whole country build their communication network again. Finally, big businesses create a culture of giving and they raise a standard for their competitors. Take Microsoft, for example, if they give to this relief effort, their competitors will see it and will acknowledge it and realize that they have to either match or exceed these cash contributions or whatever efforts Microsoft might be putting in the long run in order to maintain their customer loyalty and their goodwill. Large firms are also able to, are better able to target a variety of causes and they bring diversity in contributions because small firms are more likely to just focus in their local community. They know that their impacts are better, have better return if they're focused in the local communities where customers will see it. Whereas large firms, because they are broad, because they are international, they can actually contribute to causes that or issues that need the most, where need is most rather than just to contribute to local areas and create themselves a better image. This woman right here is Kelly Edwards and she was part of the Elevate America program. She was quoted in a news article and she said that Elevate America gave her a competitive advantage. She was happy to find that employers knew that she was willing and able to learn new skills and that gave her this competitive advantage and gave her the job that she was looking for. So just one person here, but imagine the 12 nonprofit corporations that Microsoft actually gave money to you to fund this program. So big businesses are able to use their profits more productively and in that way they help create social welfare. Now I'm going to have Tom come up to talk about globalization and it's effects on social welfare. Hi everybody. So my project is on how big businesses can and often do promote social welfare around the world. So far we've focused largely from a domestic lens. But first I'd like to say that globalization is obviously not just the cause of big multinationals but they are a major player in it. So it seems like they bear some recognition for some of the good that they often actually end up doing. So one of the main ways that big firms can be good for social welfare is that they can invest in developing nations. Traditionally in economics we think about it when you've got a situation with a flatlining economy and low unemployment that high levels of government expenditure can come in to boost employment and get the economy back on its feet. But when you have a government with very little access to credit and no real money to their names, it might be beneficial for another person to come in and employ people in your area to help. One example of this would be Coca-Cola has currently a program to employ five million women by 2020 running as distributors not unlike say like Avon here in the United States like running their own businesses distributing their product. And they've assisted with various technical capital to make that happen. It should probably be noted that in a lot of these societies women have a very, very hard time finding a job and I'll actually return to that point shortly. But the other thing is that even if your business is not directly assisted by Coca-Cola there's a term that we use called the spillover effect to suggest that sometimes when a firm comes into an area that has extensive knowledge on how to successfully run a business other firms either competing with it or interacting with it in a cooperative way stands to actually gain a lot from that interaction. So when you have a restaurant for instance like this woman up here runs that Coca-Cola helps to renovate then other restaurants in the area can look at that and say that those are good practices on running a restaurant. So a lot of good can come from that. Beyond the personal level, globalization can help, global economic integration rather can lead to greater global stability. There's a theory called neo-functionalism which suggests that global supply chains can provide a disincentive for international conflict and a really good example of that would be the current situation in China and Taiwan where when I was a kid it was regularly spoken about at my house about the possibility of China and Taiwan going to war with one another. These days that's much less likely and one of the reasons for that is that both of them are very, very highly integrated into the global supply chain particularly for computer manufacturing. A conflict between the two would be disastrous for both economies as well as for ours. So big business in both those countries puts a lot of pressure on those leaders to behave themselves and to not start a conflict which would of course be disastrous for everybody. Finally, I'd like to turn my attention to globalization and how it affects human rights. The traditional neoliberal theory of how it could affect human rights is that higher incomes and education which could be created through the investment of large businesses, profits in an impoverished economy could lead to less exploitable populations and a lot of people around here would really disagree with that but I'd like to bring up an article, a study that I read by Indra Desoisa and Krishna Vadlamanadi who found a positive correlation between a country's level of globalization and the quality of human rights in that country based on figures from the State Department of Amnesty International from 1987 to 2005, up to a 1% level of significance and what surprised me the most about this is that these figures actually held after taking the world's most developed countries, all of the OECD countries out of the equation it still held. This is not of course to state that a lack of globalization could cause human rights abuses but they give a number of reasons why this correlation could be found and I'll share a couple of them which I think are interesting.