"Corporations aren’t people"

"...Where does this corporations-are-people business start and stop?

Under the law, corporations and humans have long had different standards of responsibility.

If corporations are treated as people, so that they are free to spend money in election campaigns and to invoke their religious beliefs to deny a kind of health coverage to their workers, are they to be treated as people in other regards? Corporations are legal entities whose owners are not personally liable for the company’s debts, whereas actual people are liable for their own. Both people and corporations can discharge their debts through bankruptcy, but there are several kinds of bankruptcy, and the conditions placed on people are generally far more onerous than those placed on corporations. If corporations are people, why aren’t they subject to the same bankruptcy laws that people are? Why aren’t the owners liable for corporate debts as people are for their own?

If corporations are going to be given the freedoms that people enjoy, they should be subjected to people’s obligations and restrictions too. I’m not sure how many corporations would think that’s such a good deal."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/harold-meyerson-if-corporations-have-rights-they-also-should-have-duties/2013/11/26/ae9b94b6-56cf-11e3-835d-e7173847c7cc_story.html