There are the Jobs

…82 percent of Walmart shoppers say they haven’t seen any improvement in their financial situation in the past year, and 70 percent don’t expect their finances to get better next year.

www.dispatch.com/content/stories/business/2011/08/21/decision-by-af-shore-caused-stir.html

Everyone knows that multi-national corporations are screwing US, the American people, by shifting their profit emphasis overseas. They have been outsourcing jobs since the 1960s. Multi-nationals know no allegiance to our flag because profits come before common sense — jobs for Americans first, second, third: win, place, show. Unemployment decreases the ability of American consumers to make purchases, which increases demand and expands the economy through growth. The resulting loss of tax revenue is a prime reason, along with spending, why the Federal government continues to operate with yearly deficits.

Cheap Debt for Corporations Fails to Spur Economy

By GRAHAM BOWLEY
Published: October 3, 2010

As many households and small businesses are being turned away by bank loan officers, large corporations are borrowing vast sums of money for next to nothing — simply because they can.

Companies like Microsoft are raising billions of dollars by issuing bonds at ultra-low interest rates, but few of them are actually spending the money on new factories, equipment or jobs. Instead, they are stockpiling the cash until the economy improves.

The development presents something of a chicken-and-egg situation: Corporations keep saving, waiting for the economy to perk up — but the economy is unlikely to perk up if corporations keep saving.

This situation underscores the limits of Washington policy makers’ power to stimulate the economy. The Federal Reserve has held official interest rates near zero for almost two years, which allows corporations to sell bonds with only slightly higher returns — even below 1 percent. But most companies are not doing what the easy monetary policy was intended to get them to do: invest and create jobs.

www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/04borrow.html

The real jobs machine: Entrepreneurs

By Robert J. Samuelson
Monday, October 4, 2010

If you’re interested in job creation — and who isn’t these days? — you should talk to someone like Morris Panner. In 1999, Panner and a few others started a small Boston software company called OpenAir . By 2008, they sold it for $31 million. The firm had then grown to about 50 workers. It turns out that entrepreneurship (essentially, the founding of new companies) is crucial to job creation. But as Panner’s experience suggests, success is often a slog.

www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/03/AR2010100302566.html

Corporations pushing for job-creation tax breaks shield U.S.-vs.-abroad hiring data

By Jia Lynn Yang, Published: August 21

Some of the country’s best-known multinational corporations closely Cguard a number they don’t want anyone to know: the breakdown between their jobs here and abroad.

So secretive are these companies that they hand the figure over to government statisticians on the condition that officials will release only an aggregate number. The latest data show that multinationals cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.

Some of the same companies that do not report their jobs breakdown, including Apple and Pfizer, are pushing lawmakers to cut their tax bills in the name of job creation in the United States.

But experts say that without details on which companies are contributing to job growth and which are not, policymakers risk flying blind as they try to jump-start the hiring of American workers.

“It’s an important piece of information that the American people should have,” said Ron Hira, an associate professor of public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. “Should you listen to the kind of advice these companies have about how to grow the economy when their record and their model indicates they’ve cut jobs?. .. Or should we talk to people who actually do create jobs in the United States?”

As the country faces an unemployment crisis, President Obama, lawmakers and business lobbyists have all touted the country’s biggest companies as critical to creating jobs.

The head of Obama’s jobs council, General Electric chief executive Jeff Immelt, said during a tour of a company plant in Greensboro, S.C., that firms should be ready to answer questions from the public.

“If you want to be an admired company, you better know, you better have accountability, and you better think through where the jobs are,” he said.

GE breaks out its employment numbers in company filings to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In 2010, about 46 percent of GE’s 287,000 employees worked in the United States, compared with 54 percent in 2000.

But many firms, including some whose executives have counseled Obama on the economy, do not put their number of U.S. workers in their annual reports.

IBM chief executive Sam Palmisano has met a number of times with the president, most recently in July at a lunch with other executives to talk about jobs and the economy. IBM stopped giving its U.S. head count in 2009.

“We just made a policy that we would only break out global head count,” said company spokesman Doug Shelton.

Data from before 2009 showed IBM rapidly shifting workers to India. Dave Finegold, dean of the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, estimates that 2009, when the company stopped sharing its U.S. employment figure, also marked the first time the company had more employees in India than the United States. Finegold based his number on reports from the media, third-party groups and former employees who have tried to track the number.

“IBM can do as it wishes, and the rest of us have to guess,” said Lee Conrad, national coordinator for Alliance@IBM, a group trying to unionize IBM workers.

You won’t find Procter & Gamble’s U.S. head count in its filings, either. When initially asked for the number, company spokesman Paul Fox wrote in an e-mail: “We do not track nor report U.S.-specific jobs numbers vs. jobs overseas.” After it was pointed out that P&G’s chief executive, Bob McDonald, had cited such figures in a Cincinnati Enquirer op-ed piece, Fox acknowledged the company did track that data. The number of U.S. employees is 35,000 out of 127,000 total, or 28 percent.

Other companies that do not reveal their job breakdowns include AT&T, Apple and Pfizer, which stopped reporting the number in its SEC filings in 200.

The latter two are part of a coalition of companies pushing for Congress to give them a tax break on money they have parked overseas, saying that any money brought back to this country would spur hiring.]

There is no law requiring companies to reveal publicly where their employees are based. Companies can choose to include the breakdown of jobs here and abroad in their SEC filings for the benefit of shareholders. But they are required by law to report the numbers to the Commerce Department, which compiles a yearly report on total employment by U.S. Multinationals.

Ray Mataloni, a staff researcher at the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, said the government gets the numbers only with the agreement that it will not disclose firm-level data. “I don’t think it’s a question of companies feeling like they’re hiding dirty laundry by not giving this information out,” Mataloni said. “I don’t think they really have anything to hide, but I don’t really know the logic of why that’s something they don’t just put in their annual report.”

A few companies expressed worry about their competitors knowing too much about their operations.

Scott N. Paul, executive director of the Alliance for American Manufacturing, said it’s because of the politics. “Outsourcing has become a lightning rod, and the media coverage they’re likely to get is unfavorable,” Paul said.

For chief executives of multinational companies who are used to answering only to their shareholders, the country’s jobs crisis has uncomfortably switched the political spotlight onto their decisions about who they employ and where. It has also thrown into relief the fact that when U.S. multinationals chase profits and hire workers anywhere in the world, they become less tied to any one country, including this one.

Immelt acknowledged last month that the health of a company such as GE is now less connected to the U.S. economy, but he added that companies including GE “got carried away” with outsourcing. “I’m a GE leader first and foremost,” he said. “At the same time . . . I work for an American company.”

www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/corporations-pushing-for-job-creation-tax-breaks-shield-us-vs-abroad-hiring-data/2011/08/12/gIQAZwhqUJ_story.html

SonOfMaddogg
The rich will give jobs to the poor. -Herbert C Hoover 1932
Today 8/22/2011 7:54:12 AM EDT

cfeher
Conservative economic theory is a total and complete con job and a fraud. It’s just the media won’t admit it or say so publicly.
Today 8/22/2011 7:53:38 AM EDT

dem4life1
This is a classic example of the republican jobs program……they could care less where the jobs go as long as their fat cat buddies get richer and richer while middle and lower class americans suffer. The country wont change until we take out que from the Libyan people and FORCE THE CHANGE.
Today 8/22/2011 7:52:03 AM EDT

christy42
In 1776 when taxes were created they were ONLY supposed to be no more than 10% of income for police, jails, mail, and keeping towns tidy. Now we are paying almost 50% of our salaries for things like people’s healthcare, daycare, afterschool programs, college educations for illegal aliens, illegal aliens hospitilization.
US forgets that many Americans give 10% TOO to their churches, synagogues and mosques. STOP WITH THE TAXES and entitlement programs.  
 
Make SUDAN pay back the state of Maryland 1.5 million in hospital fees paid by taxpayers for the Sudanese Illegal alien who snuck into the USA to have her quintuplet anchor babies and is now getting a free house in Laurel, free child care, free welfare for 6 people, free food, free healthcare and free transportation voucers.
Today 8/22/2011 8:02:58 AM EDT

grognard66
In 1776, only land-owning white m
ales could vote – should we go back to that too? Welcome to 2011…
Today 8/22/2011 8:12:22 AM ED

billisnice
Forget Tax Cuts for the Wealthy: Now Republicans Want to increase Tax on the Poor
Only in America!
Today 8/22/2011 7:44:51 AM EDT

christy42
Cut off their welfare if they are on it more than 5 years and if they have more than 3 kids and are unmarried. Do you know how much money the poor are costing govt. for free housing, healthcare, food, transportation voucers, daycare FOR LIFE???? 
I sit in traffic for hours to schlep to work while those deadbeats live off my taxes and get to play video games all day and eat potato chips and drink grape soda. NOT FAIR!
Today 8/22/2011 7:56:14 AM EDT

grognard66
Christy42 – are you even responding to billisnice’s post? He’s referring to an article yesterday that Republicans (who claimed they were against all tax increases) are now pushing to rescind Obama’s payroll tax break for the middle class (lowering from 6% to 4.2% our share of SSI taxes). This just exposes Republican hypocricy and demonstrates that they’re not against tax increases – just tax increases for the rich.
Today 8/22/2011 8:03:06 AM EDT

SonOfMaddogg
Job creation in the US today will have to be done by force.
Today 8/22/2011 7:39:52 AM EDT

grognard66
We should also have a reciprocal trade policy. I believe in free trade as long as it’s fair trade. 

China could not compete with the US if they didn’t peg their currency under the dollar. All this talk about environmental policy, worker safety protections, etc is just obfuscation and an excuse to take advantage of China’s currency policy. We should put tariffs on ALL Chinese products until they let their currency float naturally just like every other leading country in the world.
Today 8/22/2011 7:46:23 AM EDT

billisnice
We give wall street stimulus and they used it to retool and move jobs and plants overseas. 
80% of you stimulus $ went overseas.
Today 8/22/2011 7:38:28 AM EDT

FairNBalance
Create a tax credits for companies only on their NET JOB GAINS IN THE US starting when the job incentive program is in effect; so that jobs created oversea do not counr, and companies can’t game the systems by laying off people and then hiring them back shortly later to get the tax credits! But then again the crony law makers will not allow that to happen; they’re in deep pockets of corporation!
Today 8/22/2011 7:34:03 AM EDT

npete1
This trend of “hiding” money and employees overseas is not good. We need to reverse both. More employees in the US increases demand for goods here and keeps America strong at home. The tax base increases because more employees pay taxes at home. And who is supporting America? Not companies “hiding” their overseas employees. But who is called when help is needed? Americans at home are paying a bigger share of costs for infrastructure and defense while companies overseas are avoiding contribution to America. Their priorities need adjustment to the greater good of the country instead of just to their own bottom line (as can be witnessed by the many grossly overpaid executives). 
Today 8/22/2011 7:28:48 AM EDT

hammeresq
It’s called the free global market and the ONLY way we compete is to reduce corporate taxes, reduce government regulation and reduce the influence of unions aided by the government.
Today 8/22/2011 7:30:41 AM EDT

grognard66
Keep drinking the Kool-Aid, hammeresq. Instead of creating a race to the bottom where we all work for $1 an hour with no benefits why doesn’t the government work for it’s citizens instead of corporations? Give us the tax breaks so we have more money to spend, creating additional demand which then benefits the corporations. Why give it to corporations who just take those tax breaks to create jobs overseas? You might want to brush up on your reading skills…
Today 8/22/2011 7:34:39 AM ED

lonquest
There’s nothing “free” about the global market. The poverty that’s being driven into the US by the so-called “free global market” is putting an end to the “free global market,” as we debate here, because the destruction of the American middle class, which hammersq recommends, destroys the prosperity he purports to be interested in.
Are we to infer that he’s interested primarily in the destruction of the American middle class, and that he doesn’t really care about the adverse impact that would have on the world economy?
Today 8/22/2011 7:40:15 AM ED

ahengst
This is a funny article. 
Section 179 deductions are a spur to corporate and small business investment. The government says how much and how long and bang, you stimulate.That will create jobs because it improves demand. 
I have seen very little public discussion on the need for job training and retraining of displaced workers and I for one cannot believe that we cannot retrain the rust belt and need the H1B visa program continue for lack of US worker with proper qualifications. 
Instead we extend unemployment benefits. 
The article is most precious in that it avoids references to presidential adviser Jeff Immelt, you know, the the Presdient of GE, one of the biggest outsourcers of all, right?
Today 8/22/2011 8:06:53 AM EDT

twm1
The article points out that the government has the data, but corporate executives have manipulated the law so the data cannot be released to the public without their permission. An informed public is not what coroporate executives want.
Today 8/22/2011 7:11:28 AM EDT

uglybuttrue
Our schools suck because we teach to the lowest common denominator…. i.e. “No Child Left Behind.” 
We fail to admit that most children are incapable of becoming scientists and we force those children that are willing to learn into classrooms with disruptive individuals, who in turn, would benefit more from a curriculum that would teach them a trade, how to show up for work (respond to a bell) and keep a household budget.
As a result, we fail to create both skilled laborers and scientists in favor of a bunch of people who at best just learned how to obey a bell.
Other nations do not live under similar illusions. If we freed our teachers to teach–our labor force would be quite different.
Today 8/22/2011 7:09:11 AM EDT

www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/corporations-pushing-for-job-creation-tax-breaks-shield-us-vs-abroad-hiring-data/2011/08/12/gIQAZwhqUJ_allComments.html

There are the Jobs