What happened to the jobs?

[Bfgrn]

We cannot reverse this trend but we can slow it down. The corporate tax rate is too high. It's encouraging businesses to leave the country. Further there are too many tax loopholes in corporate taxes that reward companies for sending jobs overseas. We need to eliminate these loopholes and cut corporate taxes in half, however we can't do that without major spending cuts or raising personal income tax. A bill that would cut corporate taxes, provide some spending cuttings and restructure corporate taxes would go along way toward bring jobs back to America.

Bullshit...There are so many loopholes in the corporate tax laws that corporations like Exxon Mobil and GE pay ZERO corporate tax.

Even at ZERO, there is no way Americans workers can compete with 3rd world wages...EVER.

Here's what we do...we tax the living shit out of corporations...for every America job they create, they get a tax reduction. If they create enough domestic jobs, they pay no taxes.

If they want to outsource jobs and pay wages that support squalor, then let the CEO's go live in that squalor.

 

[Brutus]

We need to eliminate these loopholes and cut corporate taxes in half, however we can't do that without major spending cuts or raising personal income tax.

wrong wrong wrong

corporate tax should be eliminated 100%. They are just another cost to business that is passed on to consumers. A business is a tax collector not a taxpayer. But, the tax is very destructive because it makes business do things for tax purposes and so distracts them from their real business which is being internationally competitive.

We only have the tax because politicians pander to liberal voters who are 100% ignorant and so think it means business is paying their share when really they are passing on 100% to their dumb blind liberal customers.

 

[Brutus]

Here's what we do...we tax the living shit out of corporations...for every America job they create, they get a tax reduction. If they create enough domestic jobs, they pay no taxes.

of course economists don't suppport that on either side becuase taxes are costs the merely raise prices and so make us all poorer. With international trade we all get richer becuase prices go down. That is why even BO supports free trade. Sorry!!

If they want to outsource jobs and pay wages that support squalor, then let the CEO's go live in that squalor.

squalor???? People take those jobs voluntarily in China for example, because they are 500% better than what they had!! Before trade 50 million slowly starved to death in China!! Squalor??? Today the Chinese buy more cars than we do, 30 years ago they bought almost none!!

 

[Brutus]

Reaganomics is what happened.

J:


Yes they often call them the "7 Fat Years"



The National Bureau of economic Research in 1999 declared the period 1982-99 ( the beginning of Reagonomics) one continuous macroeconomic expansion, " the longest sustained period of prosperity in the twentieth century."



J: and of course this is not to forget that Reagan ended the cold war, saved the world from nuclear annihilation, and set billions free from liberal communism.

J: When Reagan took office the misery index (unemployment + inflation was 20, when he left it was 10. In "The 7 Fat Years" Bartley aptly summarize Reagan's years by saying, "It was like we added another California to the US economy.

J: Kemp Roth was the largest tax cut in American History; enacted 8 months after Reagan too office. The Dow Jones average doubled during Reagan and real federal revenue grew by 24%.

NY Times: "One popular misconception is that the Republican tax cuts caused the crippling budget deficit now approaching 300 billion a year. The fact is the deficit resulted because the government vastly expanded what it spent each year." The new spending went to the military, but since it defeated communism it was worth every penny!!

Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke


The Great Moderation
One of the most striking features of the economic landscape over the past twenty years or so has been a substantial decline in macroeconomic volatility. In a recent article, Olivier Blanchard and John Simon (2001) documented that the variability of quarterly growth in real output (as measured by its standard deviation) has declined by half since the mid-1980's, while the variability of quarterly inflation has declined by about two thirds. Several writers on the topic have dubbed this remarkable decline in the variability of both output and inflation "the Great Moderation." Similar declines in the volatility of output and inflation occurred at about the same time in other major industrial countries, with the recent exception of Japan, a country that has faced a distinctive set of economic problems in the past decade.

By ARTHUR B. LAFFER
For 16 years prior to Ronald Reagan's presidency, the U.S. economy was in a tailspin—a result of bipartisan ignorance that resulted in tax increases, dollar devaluations, wage and price controls, minimum-wage hikes, misguided spending, pandering to unions, protectionist measures and other policy mistakes.

In the late 1970s and early '80s, 10-year bond yields and inflation both were in the low double digits. The "misery index"—the sum of consumer price inflation plus the unemployment rate—peaked at well over 20%. The real value of the S&P 500 stock price index had declined at an average annual rate of 6% from early 1966 to August 1982.

For anyone old enough today, memories of the Arab oil embargo and price shocks—followed by price controls and rationing and long lines at gas stations—are traumatic. The U.S. share of world output was on a steady course downward.

Then Reagan entered center stage. His first tax bill was enacted in August 1981. It included a sweeping cut in marginal income tax rates, reducing the top rate to 50% from 70% and the lowest rate to 11% from 14%. The House vote was 238 to 195, with 48 Democrats on the winning side and only one Republican with the losers. The Senate vote was 89 to 11, with 37 Democrats voting aye and only one Republican voting nay. Reaganomics had officially begun.

President Reagan was not alone in changing America's domestic economic agenda. Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker, first appointed by Jimmy Carter, deserves enormous credit for bringing inflation down to 3.2% in 1983 from 13.5% in 1981 with a tight-money policy. There were other heroes of the tax-cutting movement, such as Wisconsin Republican Rep. Bill Steiger and Wyoming Republican Sen. Clifford Hansen, the two main sponsors of an important capital gains tax cut in 1978.

 

[PLYMCO_PILGRIM]

Discuss? Hopefully by critiquing in a civil manner, without playing the blame game, how this problem can be solved and jobs brought back to America.

Not trying to be political but the reasons the private sector jobs aren't coming back have to do with the politics of the obama admin.

1) The govt give bailouts to some companies and not others creating unfair competition and propping up failing business models

2) The govt didn't spend money on creating private sector jobs, only public sector. Without revenues these jobs are not sustainable without massive borrowing

3) The new health care legislatoin has created a lot of long-term uncertainty in the minds of private business owners which promts them to hold onto their money and not hire people.

4) Even with the bush tax cuts, the federal income tax burden is too high for many small business owners which means they have less money to hire more people.

there are a few legitimate reasons that are not being partisan.

those are just the problems, if you want i have solutions for those 4 and have more problems i can list.

 

[Brutus]

By the time of the crash the government agencies backed half of all mortgages in the country.

yes and more importantly Fanny Freddie set the tone and policy for the entire industry becuase they were so huge. You had to do what they did to compete. They were primarily responsible, i.e., liberal interference in the free market. PLease read "Reckless Endangerousment" by NYTimes writer to get details.

Also, we can't forget that Fed printed all the money without which the bubble would have been 100% impossible. Again more liberal ignorance causing more destruction.

 

[Brutus]

Discuss? Hopefully by critiquing in a civil manner, without playing the blame game, how this problem can be solved and jobs brought back to America.

we could have 40 million new jobs if we made liberalism illegal as our Founders intended with the Constitution


1) Make unions illegal
2) make minimum wage illegal
3) end business taxation
4) make inflation illegal
5) make Federal debt illegal
6) close borders to illegals
7) Pass Balanced Budget Amendment to Constitution
8) cut pay of government workers in half
9) Make health insurance competition legal
10) end needless business regulations
11) restrict Federal spending to 15% of GNP
12) support unlimited free trade
13) reduced unemployment compensation, welfare, food stamps, medicaid.
14) privatize education, social security
15) end payroll taxes

 

[Bfgrn]

Here's what we do...we tax the living shit out of corporations...for every America job they create, they get a tax reduction. If they create enough domestic jobs, they pay no taxes.

of course economists don't suppport that on either side becuase taxes are costs the merely raise prices and so make us all poorer. With international trade we all get richer becuase prices go down. That is why even BO supports free trade. Sorry!!

If they want to outsource jobs and pay wages that support squalor, then let the CEO's go live in that squalor.

squalor???? People take those jobs voluntarily in China for example, because they are 500% better than what they had!! Before trade 50 million slowly starved to death in China!! Squalor??? Today the Chinese buy more cars than we do, 30 years ago they bought almost none!!

YES...squalor...

I don't care about Chinese workers, I care about American workers.

The tax loopholes today allow corporations to pay ZERO taxes now. NOTHING we can do will make American workers competitive with China, India or 3rd world labor...EVER.

You know nothing about the market. If ANY corporation or business could raise their prices today, the WOULD. Taxes have nothing to do with prices...THE MARKET does.

 

[MaggieMae]

getting back to my question a few posts up, let me ask another which you'll see was my point in posting those charts and the script from the links ala CRA and what followed;

does gov. influence markets?

To an extent, yes. But it depends on whether Wall Street investors like what they hear out of "government" or not.

excellent, thank you, I agree all the way, now why do you suppose this happened;

in the 90's capitalization limits required were taken lower so as to drop the creditworthiness required for a mortgage to be considered "sub-prime".


and Q- do you think, that the gov. should be in the bus. of guaranteeing mortgage loans?

Are you talking about the CRA regulation of the 90's? If so, that allegation has been blown apart too.

CRA Thought Experiment | The Big Picture

Assume arguendo that CRA legislation forced banks into making high risk, ill advised loans. And, let’s further assume a huge percentage of these government mandated mortgages have gone bad. The buyers who could not legitimately afford these homes or otherwise qualify for other mortgages have defaulted, and these houses are either in default, foreclosure or REOs.

What would this alternative nation look like?

Given the giant US housing boom and bust, this thought experiment would have several obvious and inevitable outcomes from CRA forced lending:

1) Home sales in CRA communities would have led the national home market higher, with sales gains (as a percentage) increasing even more than the national median;

2) Prices of CRA funded properties should have risen even more than the rest of the nation as sales ramped up.

3) After the market peaked and reversed, Distressed Sales in CRA regions should lead the national market downwards. Foreclosures and REOS should be much higher in CRA neighborhoods than the national median.

4) We should have reams of evidence detailing how CRA mandated loans have defaulted in vastly disproportionate numbers versus the national default rates;

5) CRA Banks that were funding these mortgages should be failing in ever greater numbers, far more than the average bank;

6) Portfolios of large national TARP banks should be strewn with toxic CRA defaults; securitizers that purchased these mortgages should have compiled list of defaulted CRA properties;

7) Bank execs likely would have been complaining to the Bush White House from 2002-08 about these CRA mandates; The many finance executives who testified to Congress, would also have spelled out that CRA was a direct cause, with compelling evidence backing their claims.

So much for THAT thought experiment: None of these outcomes have occurred.

To your second question, the government shouldn't be in the business of guaranteeing mortgage loans. But the BA saw to it that it was with its edict in 2004 of requiring no money down for low-income people, and "helping" them get loans they otherwise would not be eligible for under conventional mortgage formulas.

USATODAY.com - Bush seeks to increase minority homeownership

There's a link to the actual bill, as enacted, but I can't put my fingers on it right now.

 

[MaggieMae]

Where did the jobs go?

Obama FINALLY contributed to our understanding of this last week. FINALLY he started to learn about markets and innovation and what role the govt should assume. He pointed out that there are too many people chasing jobs in the wrong sectors of the economy. THat we are losing American college graduates in the sciences and engineering. And that are graduate schools are overtaken by foreign students who may or may not decide to stay here.

When the global markets started to flatten, the free traders TRIED to tell you that America needed to move forward in the hi-tech, more difficult professions. EVEN Al Gore had his capitalist moments with the "information super-hiway" crap. We need to make cheap labor less relevent. You do that by encouraging the development of new paradigms for manufacturing based on automation, materials science, and quality management. Yes even a leadership in automation can CREATE jobs if we export enough of it. Nanotech gives us unbelievable advantage in the very materials that go into the manufacturing stream. BioTech does the same thing for energy development, medicine, and food production.. GUESS -- just GUESS which political faction HATES both of these ideas? (hope I don't have to answer that one myself). It's called frankinfood and frankinslime materials by the folks who CLAIM that anyone not annointed as a leftist is a technical Luddite..

Can't do these things when the kiddies are choosing soft sciences and business school over nanotechnology, robotics, and bio sciences.

And in the OP, the whining goes back to the 70's. Well folks -- what the heck happened in the 80's when Mao was still sending Bejing professionals to the rice fields. COMPUTERS. The 1st major displacement of labor that started the jobs decline. Supposedly -- we are all now just fantastic productivity engines. Those of us who spend ALL day (and right now) performing feats of communications and organization that would have been pure magic to Adam Smith. Well that revolution never ended. In FACT --- employers make that labor decision every day between people and machines. Look at the supermarket clerks. The fossilized union bosses have no CLUE how to stop those "self-check-out" lanes at the market. IT's a check on the entire careers of anyone who relies SOLELY on a union to protect their livlyhood. So don't blame the Chinese entirely for this new era of "labor".

We CAN make most cheap labor irrelevent if we work at it. We've had 25 years to prepare for it. And we were warned.

BTW: As far as the political ramifications and contributions.....

What happens when govt spending as %GDP goes from 18% to 24%? How does THAT affect the "job creation" market? How does THAT affect the type of market sectors that are Darwinian candidates for extinction? And nobody seems interested in the thread I put into the economy section on how GE recieved all those GREENIE tax breaks that contributed to them "not paying any taxes". I guess BOTH the left and right still have their favorite subsidies and don't see the energy extracted from innovation and job development that those inefficient subsidies create...

And as China surpasses the US at lightening speed in all those areas, we still sit on our duffs while even our own infrastructure supporting only ourselves crumbles all around and beneath us.

 

[Brutus]

If they want to outsource jobs and pay wages that support squalor, then let the CEO's go live in that squalor.

squalor???? People take those jobs voluntarily in China for example, because they are 500% better than what they had!! Before trade 50 million slowly starved to death in China!! Squalor??? Today the Chinese buy more cars than we do, 30 years ago they bought almost none!!

YES...squalor...

as I said 10 milion now buy cars, whereas before 10 million slowly starved to death. Thats Republican capitalism for you?

I don't care about Chinese workers, I care about American workers.

I care about all Americans who are getting rich off the low prices

The tax loopholes today allow corporations to pay ZERO taxes now.

corporate taxes are costs like raw material costs that are passed on to customers. we only have them becuase of the pure ignorance of liberals who think they are screwing business with them.

You're 100% typical of a lib. You want top corporate tax and also want them to provide more jobs. Its perfect ignorance

NOTHING we can do will make American workers competitive with China, India or 3rd world labor...EVER

and they can never compete with our level of education so we win. Every country has advantages, some have natural resources like oil coal banannas etc etc. Trade allows each to benefit from what they have. That is why even BO supports it. You lack the IQ to understand it.

You know nothing about the market. If ANY corporation or business could raise their prices today, the WOULD.

the beauty of Republican capitalism is that competition forces you to have the lowest prices in the world. Think!!!!

Taxes have nothing to do with prices...THE MARKET does.

so if business taxes go up 100%, prices will stay the same??? Think!!!

 

[MaggieMae]

...the employers of those 3 out of 4 Americans haven't figured out yet how to send their jobs overseas. Give them time, they will.

This hatred for employers has become so widespread over the past couple years, and my take is that it's a major reason for the lack of hiring. Like, I got a number of employees and anytime I find one of them with an attitude like yours I have to chuck him and look for someone else.

Have respect for your employees just as you respect your management team, and they will return respect with unquestioned loyalty and productivity. Works every time. But when an employer starts cutting existing benefits, laying off one full-time worker to be replaced with two part-timers in order to save money, and does things like that with no explanation to the employee staff, grousing and rumbling will begin among them. Lots of companies had to explain their cutbacks, and most employees got it. But others just cut, cut, cut with no explanation. That pisses people off.

 

[MaggieMae]

We need to eliminate these loopholes and cut corporate taxes in half, however we can't do that without major spending cuts or raising personal income tax.

wrong wrong wrong

corporate tax should be eliminated 100%. They are just another cost to business that is passed on to consumers. A business is a tax collector not a taxpayer. But, the tax is very destructive because it makes business do things for tax purposes and so distracts them from their real business which is being internationally competitive.

We only have the tax because politicians pander to liberal voters who are 100% ignorant and so think it means business is paying their share when really they are passing on 100% to their dumb blind liberal customers.

Gee, I wonder what that kind of solution would do to the USSC's decision that corporations are people, assuming by your logic that taxes should only be paid by people.

 

[MaggieMae]

Discuss? Hopefully by critiquing in a civil manner, without playing the blame game, how this problem can be solved and jobs brought back to America.

Not trying to be political but the reasons the private sector jobs aren't coming back have to do with the politics of the obama admin.

1) The govt give bailouts to some companies and not others creating unfair competition and propping up failing business models
Like what? Which other businesses should a bailout have been provided for? Good grief, the screaming would have been heard on Mars if businesses other than GM and Chrysler had been bailed out.

2) The govt didn't spend money on creating private sector jobs, only public sector. Without revenues these jobs are not sustainable without massive borrowing
Again, both GM and Chrysler have shown fantastic quarterly results, and both are hiring right and left again (from the private sector). And I never understood why people didn't get it that it wasn't just Detroit automakers that were effected by the bailout. It also saved thousands of small businesses (and their employees) who support the auto industry across the country.

3) The new health care legislatoin has created a lot of long-term uncertainty in the minds of private business owners which promts them to hold onto their money and not hire people.
By now, most businesses have a good handle on what it will cost them, so that excuse is getting old. Plus, depending on the size of the business, they can get subsidies, a waiver, or it just may cost them less. But to wait and hold onto profits which could otherwise be reinvested in a company for another two full years until the health care law kicks in is not being "uncertain," it's just an indication that companies doing that are operating on a shoe string to begin with, or have no intention of offering their employees health care benefits at all. (Employers who offer health insurance even now have the advantage of writing off that cost, as they will when Obamacare kicks in.)

4) Even with the bush tax cuts, the federal income tax burden is too high for many small business owners which means they have less money to hire more people.
Well some businesses will never make it. Fact of life. So are taxes, which, by the way, were much higher during the Clinton years when the economy was booming.

there are a few legitimate reasons that are not being partisan.

those are just the problems, if you want i have solutions for those 4 and have more problems i can list.

Sure there are problems. But whatever happened to good old-fashioned American pride and ingenuity? Whatever happened to company CEOs and managers who knew instinctively that without good employee morale, their end products would eventually suffer? Whatever happened to the, now apparently novel idea, that everyone willingly paid their fair share in taxes?

 

[MaggieMae]

Discuss? Hopefully by critiquing in a civil manner, without playing the blame game, how this problem can be solved and jobs brought back to America.

we could have 40 million new jobs if we made liberalism illegal as our Founders intended with the Constitution


1) Make unions illegal
2) make minimum wage illegal
3) end business taxation
4) make inflation illegal
5) make Federal debt illegal
6) close borders to illegals
7) Pass Balanced Budget Amendment to Constitution
8) cut pay of government workers in half
9) Make health insurance competition legal
10) end needless business regulations
11) restrict Federal spending to 15% of GNP
12) support unlimited free trade
13) reduced unemployment compensation, welfare, food stamps, medicaid.
14) privatize education, social security
15) end payroll taxes

All that's in The Constitution? Wow. As many times as I've referred to it, I've missed those points.

Oh wait, you're just trying to channel what the founders might have wanted. I can do that too.

 

[Mr.L2U]

I feel your gripe about the lack of jobs, but we as a United country need to go back to basic facts of life and stop murmuring like the people that were stuck in the desert for 40 years and were only miles away from the promised land. We complain to much because we had it easy. Let's get up off our rears and create the jobs that the generation before managed. We need to stop crying the blues and dig down deep. Let's create new ways to do old things. Let's find a way to avoid this economic failure again. Let's force the companies that we spend money with, but will not hire us because they fear another crisis coming on, to feel our pain,slow down your spending. Back in the late 1800's to the 1900's people sold their goods in the streets. We complain about China and Mexico stealing jobs because they make the goods we buy cheaper. Well, darn-it make your own and create a made in America attitude again. The more we murmur the less we get. Let's take the Bull by his horns and lead on to victory. It takes a Village to raise everything, not just a child.

 

[Bfgrn]

If they want to outsource jobs and pay wages that support squalor, then let the CEO's go live in that squalor.

squalor???? People take those jobs voluntarily in China for example, because they are 500% better than what they had!! Before trade 50 million slowly starved to death in China!! Squalor??? Today the Chinese buy more cars than we do, 30 years ago they bought almost none!!

YES...squalor...

as I said 10 milion now buy cars, whereas before 10 million slowly starved to death. Thats Republican capitalism for you?




I care about all Americans who are getting rich off the low prices



corporate taxes are costs like raw material costs that are passed on to customers. we only have them becuase of the pure ignorance of liberals who think they are screwing business with them.

You're 100% typical of a lib. You want top corporate tax and also want them to provide more jobs. Its perfect ignorance


and they can never compete with our level of education so we win. Every country has advantages, some have natural resources like oil coal banannas etc etc. Trade allows each to benefit from what they have. That is why even BO supports it. You lack the IQ to understand it.

You know nothing about the market. If ANY corporation or business could raise their prices today, the WOULD.

the beauty of Republican capitalism is that competition forces you to have the lowest prices in the world. Think!!!!

Taxes have nothing to do with prices...THE MARKET does.

so if business taxes go up 100%, prices will stay the same??? Think!!!

Why do you right wing pinheads have to chop up people's posts? Is it to delete what you don't what to hear, or is it an attention deficit?

I know a hell of a lot more about markets then right wing pinhead corporate ass lickers. Here are your terms for the day:

* Regulatory capture
* Cost externalization
* Stakeholder vs. shareholder

I am not young enough to know everything.
Oscar Wilde

 

[oreo]

There is one thing that Americans can do that will have a tremendous effect.
In fact, it would not only increase employment but increase wages as well.
There is absolutely NOTHING that you can do that would even scratch the surface of what this will do.

Don't buy cheap foreign items from Wal-Mart, Cosco, KMart, Target etc. etc. etc.
Buy American when you can.
You will feel better about your purchase, it will likely be of better quality and last longer - and you can walk around with the knowledge that you help your fellow Americans rather than hurt them.

You can't/won't do this?
Then you have no right to complain about the economy.

--Good luck with that one.

But Hey--Obama doesn't have a plan--so maybe you could send your idea to him--and at least we'll get another perfectly pronounced speech out of it--from our greatest-- most intellectual President ever.

 

[WillowTree]

Where should Boeing go?


South Carolina?



or





China?

















Which?

 

[expat_panama]

...hatred for employers has become so widespread over the past couple years, and my take is that it's a major reason for the lack of hiring...

Have respect for your employees just as you respect your management team, and they will return respect with unquestioned loyalty and productivity...

If that works with your employees then fine. My crew and I like each other and enjoy common goals. Buying people's labor is like buying stuff at the store. We don't do business when we run into snarling hatred because they see us as a bunch of "fat-cats".