Corporate power
From this source:
Small firms [less than 500 employees]:
• Represent 99.7 percent of all employer firms.
• Employ half of all private sector employees.
• Pay 45 percent of total U.S. private payroll.
• Have generated 60 to 80 percent of net new jobs annually
over the last decade.
• Create more than 50 percent of nonfarm private gross
domestic product (GDP).
• Supplied more than 23 percent of the total value of federal
prime contracts in FY 2004.
• Produce 13 to 14 times more patents per employee than
large patenting firms. These patents are twice as likely as
large firm patents to be among the one percent most cited.
• Are employers of 41 percent of high tech workers (such as
scientists, engineers, and computer workers).
• Are 53 percent home-based and 3 percent franchises.
• Made up 97 percent of all identified exporters and produced
26 percent of the known export value in FY 2002.
Are there a lot of large corporations? Sure there are. That 0.3 percent has a lot of weight. But the idea that we are constantly threatened by monstrous megacorporations that are only held off by the brave warriors in Washington is also a view that "depends a lot on what lenses you filter your world through." This view also, not entirely by coincidence, serves to encourage growth in government power to "balance" this "threat."