I am sorry, but Exxon does not nearly share as much as they could. their dividends are nothing to brag about. I am all for making money, and I have to admit I own some Exxon stock, it is a good stock to hold as the company conssistently pays dividends -dividend payments could be better though.

Why pay dividends in a tax sheltered investment (e.g. 401k). They are intended to pay at retirement. If profit is reinvested, that means more long-term growth and capital appreciation for the portfolio.

For assets used to live off of, dividend paying stocks are more appropriate.

There's something you need to understand here. The reason countries can make, ship then sell stuff cheaper here than we can is largely due to the vast amount of cheap labor they depend on to undercut everyone else. Plus in many of these countries, they get huge subsidies from their government to stay in business. One of the dirty little secrets to all those free trade agreements is we cannot put a tariff on their goods they ship to us. Reagan tried a few times to get congress to stipulate in all trade bills that they had to meet accepted pay and work environment standards with no government subsidies or they would be slapped with a tariff to offset it. In other words he tried to level the playing field. Congress went bonkers, especially those with a large number of foreign companies with offices in their districts. Needless to say it never passed.

He was the last one with the cajones to even try. None since even bother. You see even with the higher labor costs here, the main reason many companies seek offices overseas is because of the taxes here. One of the secrets why the tax breaks work so well and held down inflation so long is because the corporate taxes were reduced. When they go up, so do prices. You're not cutting profits, you're only giving them ammo to raise prices they may have left alone. They also tend to cut jobs in a high tax environment. In many countries that are doing the best right now, most companies have a lifetime exemption from taxes because they know when the companies stay in business, people have jobs and they pay taxes.

And don't forget. The Apartheid government in South Africa instituted a minimum wage law for one reason, to keep blacks out of the job market. They have it on record and it's been proven by Nobel Prize winning economists. When you have a minimum wage, you keep the poor out of work, raise prices and increase the cost of doing business. Companies fold every time it goes up. Jobs go with them. You help no one.

    The US is not so innocent whn it comes to free trade. The sugar, tomato and sheep markets all have protection, due to the strength of their lobbying efforts. Every country wants to protects its agricultural industry. Note that if you believe in buying fod locally, you are free to. But I don't think our domestic food producers have our health in mind. They just want to protect their markets from compettition.

      On the minimum wage, I think in most markets it is now nonbinding (i.e. irrelevant, because employers are paying more than $5.15/hr. to attract workers). Thus, minimum wage caused unemployment is not happening to any degree today. The cause of unemployment is a cyclical downturn (read: the mortgage crisis and high energy prices). Of course, a Democratic president my push for a substantial raise in the minimum wage, and this could lead to more unemployment.

I don't believe Dr. Mercola is "defending" a profit margin.  He is just relaying information to people so that they can see the numbers and compare them with other companies whose profit margins are a lot higher. It's called the art of conversation through computer technology. :)  Dr. Mercola is sharing information somebody else shared with him.  WalMart has a more impressive profit margin than Exxon and I don't see the media or anybody else beating on  them.  They sell food, forgoodnesssake.  And the foods sold there are questionable at best and the quality of their other goods is absolutely bottom drawer.  Many articles of clothing I have bought there comes apart or the fabric pills up. And employees in many Walmart stores are treated so bad but they have to keep their jobs.  They have families and jobs are at a premium. We should ride public transportation and car pool when ever possible.  We should stop throwing out trash from vehicles or while walking littering up the planet.  I'll walk my little dogs and find trash all around the property where somebody had tossed a beer/soda pop bottle/can or candy wrapper or even the bag their purchase was in.  We live a block away for a convenience store and the trash from their customers winds up in my yard.  I live close to a lake and there is a ring of litter all around that lake. I went there once to be baptized and it was so sad to see all that trash.  Global warming is bad science and a false religion. It is a marketing stradegy and those behind is are profiting beyond belief. They are like big pharma who laughs all the way to the bank at our expense.  God is not pleased. Littering up our planet is a serious wrong and God is not pleased.