MNC's

In today's political climate, the multi-national corporation, or MNC, is an extremely controversial topic throughout the world. In the West, MNC's are regularly derided for moving their jobs outside of their country of origin or their main corporate base in order to pay fewer taxes. If one is to take the side of the MNC's, that is due to their belief in Milton Friedman's statement that corporations owe nothing to anyone besides their shareholders. However, proponents of holding corporations to account often focus on two main issues: taxation and workers rights. Corporations will often register their businesses in nations which offer extremely low corporate taxes in order to pay less. Senator Carl Levin wrote an op-ed recently that took Apple to task for moving their corporate headquarters to Ireland from the U.S. While Levin believes that Apple is only looking to avoid taxes, they would see it as making more profits to please their investors. Also, even though Apple is a company founded in the United States, as an international company with a global reach, it does not have an absolute obligation to stay in America. However, workers rights are much more controversial, since many U.S.  companies will move their manufacturing centers to places with limited workers rights and safety precautions in order to cut down on costs, Apple and Nike being two good examples. So the question about MNC's must be asked, if they are only in it for the profits, then what is the overall cost of that to both developed and developing nations?