Its always baffled me how corporations managed to bribe politicians but its legal because they use the term "lobbying" instead.
Imagining murdering someone then saying nope thats not a crime, simply because you won't call it a homicide, instead you keep labeling it something else.
Or another example, i'm not allowed to "lobby" a police officer out of giving me a ticket, but a mining corporation can lobby away their environmental regulations.
Term limits are needed, but that alone won't solve the problem since corporations have an army of flunkies ready to do their bidding in the political arena. Different name, same effect
Youre forgetting they get to decide what the excel looks like. Even if it costs them 5$ per person to get 1$ from them, all they need to show is the excel with employee costs going down to call it profit. The expenses paid out to friends and politicians "need to be spent anyway" so it's not reallt "a loss".
You should see the P&L of these companies and how they twist themselves into knots making the line go up