DAVID SIROTA: Anger Sowing Seeds of a New Consumer Movement

As we all know, America is angry. Really angry. To put it in pop culture terms, we've moved from the vaguely inspiring agita of Peter Finch in "Network" to the wild-eyed, primal-scream rage of Sam Kinison in "Back to School."

When we pay attention to politics, we get peeved at Congress and the presidential candidates. When we tune into sports, we're annoyed with squabbling players and owners. When we turn on the news, we fume at the smug pundits. And when it comes to the economy, we're in a tizzy at big corporations.

Most of this indignation is nothing new; it is atavistic fury expressed in the modern vernacular. Yet, one strand of our anger — the kind directed at big business — may be truly novel, as our chagrin is no longer just that ancient animosity toward excessive corporate power. Instead, it has also become a personal disdain toward firms we deal with on a daily basis.

This is the key finding of the latest report from the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University. Its findings show that after years of rising anger, consumer rage has reached an all-time high.

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for companies?

You know, ONE site, universally accepted where people can go and post reviews of different corporations--what it's like to work there, and what the companies are like to do business with. Which companies' CEO's are grossly overpaid, and which are pretty reasonable.

And it would serve not just to bash companies. If you have a great experience with a company, post the review and rate them high.

That way, the PUBLIC has the say, and the PUBLIC can benefit from everyone else's experiences.

I think the power of people acting on information and then voting with their dollars--that's the only way that businesses will turn around and stop behaving badly.

If some tech-savvy group created such a site and then used viral marketing/social media to promote it, it could catch on like wildfire and be huge.

I wish I were a techie, but all I can do is turn on the box and type.

This is an idea I've had for a few years, but don't know how to get someone to build it. And you're right, I think the timing is better now than it was even a few years ago.

(rate your experience with the business, their service, etc.) and I've seen sites where you could complain about specific companies, but not seen the mix you're describing.

I'd bookmark it.

angieslist has a membership fee.

Rating products and services seems more useful than rating large corporations, since the corporations may have thousands of products under numerous brand names with widely differing quality, etc.

For example, rating models of GM cars is more informative than rating GM brands or the company as a whole.

Same thing for Kraft, Pepsi, etc.

I want a site that review the company itself--what is corporate management like, what are the company's culture and ethics like, how do they treat workers, how do they treat the environment, how many jobs have they shipped overseas, etc.

Show me it's a good, decent company FIRST, and only THEN will I take a look at their products.

I'm always consulting Yelp for business reviews.