[Sixstrings]

Corporate Profits Hit New Record, U.S. Workers Still Struggling

Happy days are back! During the summer months, corporations logged their biggest profits since the government started counting way back in the age of Elvis, and the economy expanded at a slightly faster pace than previously thought. Surely, when Caterpillar and Morgan Stanley are swimming in lucre, life must be getting more wonderful for everyone.

Alas, no. Word that American businesses sucked in profits at an annualized pace of $1.66 trillion between July and September is certainly better than the alternative.

(snip)

But none of this has translated into the sort of job growth that will be required to cut into an unemployment rate stuck at 9.6 percent. Worse, there is little reason to suspect it will anytime soon.

We have been hearing for so long now that, once companies start making real money, they will feel the urge to expand. Then, they will hire lots of people, and we can stop worrying and resume shopping. Yet so far--this most recent quarter included--all we have gotten is an extended lesson in the modern workings of a stubbornly lean job market and a display of what now stands as American management's core competency: How to rack up profits and reward shareholders while keeping the cubicles empty.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/23/corporate-profits-q3-2010-_n_787573.html

Our future is really starting to look like "Blade Runner" -- a society with widespread poverty and yet massively profitable mega corporations. Corporations owning the government. Loss of nationalism and borders in a new globalist hypercapitalist world.

Another "Blade Runner" similarity -- the phenomenon of technopoverty, wherein the poor have cell phones and iPods maybe even a wifi iPad and yet they cannot afford to feed themselves or put a roof over their head.

Anyhow don't want to get too far with thread drift, but you get my point.. corporations own us, and first world employees are the enemy. Those of us not replaceable by Indians or Chinese or Central / South Americans will be replaced by automation.

[Pops]

The efficiencies of the paperless office finally paying off since the corps pruned the dead wood?

[Ludi]

Now we need to cut their taxes some more so they will create more jobs!

[Sixstrings]

The efficiencies of the paperless office finally paying off since the corps pruned the dead wood?

Well I've said it before that the jobs crisis is due to not just offshoring, but also exponentially increasing levels of automation and efficiency.

So how do you look at this, Pops.. ok let's say for the sake of argument that millions of Americans are now permanent dead wood and not needed in the global workforce. So what to do with them? Should they start wetbacking it to Canada maybe?

Smart conservatives will admit we have a peak jobs problem (due to a combination of offshoring, automation, and efficiency). And yet, they don't want to pay out any more unemployment comp, or enact a comprehensive social safety net.

So what are the 99ers supposed to do then, just eat cake and die?

[Ludi]

So what are the 99ers supposed to do then, just eat cake and die?

They should have planned ahead and become rich.

[Plantagenet]

The "biggest profits in history" claim is illusory because the numbers weren't adjusted for inflation.

[Sixstrings]

The "biggest profits in history" claim is illusory because the numbers weren't adjusted for inflation.

So what's your point, that because of inflation these profits aren't big enough and the corps should get even more bailouts and tax cuts?

This little fact that rich corporations are refusing to hire any more Americans is a real short-circuit for the conservative brain. "Trickle-down" is their Gospel -- they refuse to admit that at this point tax cuts and giveaways to the elite fuel growth OFFSHORE, not here.

[Pops]

What should the 99ers to do, just eat cake and die?

I don't have any good sound bite solutions, like I said the other day; this is the world of robot produced leisure the cornucopians of yesteryear promised. They just forgot about the paying for it part, and as the secretarial pool for the world we just can't afford it.

I think about years back when we bought stuff made in the US and it cost much more than the stuff we buy from china today. There was a smaller variety of stuff - actually quite a few fewer categories of stuff in fact. I think everything is much cheaper now - a drip coffee maker with a Digital Clock! is $15 at Dollar General - probably about $5 in 1970 dollars.

So business has provided exactly what consumers wanted with always lower prices and one stop shopping. We now have zero options with no local retail to speak of and all profits being sent to a bank account in the Caymans somewhere. I think we mistook Henry Ford's idea, Wall-Mart Associates earn so little they MUST buy what they sell since they can't afford anything better.


Basically I don't know how to put that genie back in the bottle until we decide as a country to pay ourselves first and you can reference the line now forming to be the first through the door at Best Buy on Friday to calculate the likelihood of that occurring.

[Pops]

The "biggest profits in history" claim is illusory because the numbers weren't adjusted for inflation.

Considering wages haven't done much adjusting for inflation I'd say that makes things even worse.

[Plantagenet]

The "biggest profits in history" claim is illusory because the numbers weren't adjusted for inflation.

So what's your point, that because of inflation these profits aren't big enough and the corps should get even more bailouts and tax cuts?

The Obama administration has been boasting about "record" corporate profits but the numbers they are using aren't adjusted to correct for inflation. Ignoring inflation is just boneheaded when making multi-year comparisons of monetary data.

If the folks in the Obama administration are too incompetent or too ignorant to adjust their economic data to take account of inflation, that may help explain why Obama's economic policies have failed so badly at creating jobs.

[vision-master]

CPI or COL Planted.......

[Novus]

Before the great recession started a large bank or insurance company would have a staff of 20k to 30k or more. Now they do the same work with only a few hundreds to a thousand people. What wasn't outmoded by computers and automation such as call centers and back office work was all outsourced to India and Philippines. Saving from job cuts go directly into the profit line and ultimately into the pockets of Wall St billionaires.


Maybe it is time for some true socialism. Nationalize the corps and then bring the jobs back home by decree because the free market surely is not going to to do it for us.

[Sixstrings]

Before the great recession started a large bank or insurance company would have a staff of 20k to 30k or more. Now they do the same work with only a few hundreds to a thousand people. What wasn't outmoded by computers and automation such as call centers and back office work was all outsourced to India and Philippines. Saving from job cuts go directly into the profit line and ultimately into the pockets of Wall St billionaires.

Well said. And meanwhile, a gargantuan student loan debt bubble is forming as even fifty year olds go back to school to train for jobs that don't exist.

[Plantagenet]

Maybe it is time for some true socialism. Nationalize the corps...

We just did nationalize huge corporations like GM and Chrysler and AIG and Fannie and Freddie and some major banks.

They've all got fewer jobs now then before before they were nationalized.

[Kristen]

Why not enact some radical form of wealth distribution or something akin to an income cap?

[Pops]

We just did nationalize huge corporations like GM and Chrysler and AIG and Fannie and Freddie and some major banks.

They've all got fewer jobs now then before before they were nationalized.

True. The newest anomaly in the whole screwed up system is protecting private profits by nationalizing risk. Lots of people go on and on about food stamps and immigrant-welfare-mothers-on-drugs while big bucks go to backstop institutions run into the ground by management looking for the quick, personal buck.

And how many people in management of the bailed out companies have received anything but a golden parachute as a result of their malfeasance?

Corporate shareholders and management are protected from liability by law and if they are big enough, protected from loss by the taxpayer.


I think it's time to make them liable.

[mos6507]

So what are the 99ers supposed to do then, just eat cake and die?

Maybe if they weren't buried in debt and high monthly expenses they'd be able to start their own business, that is, if they stopped waiting around for corporate america to bang down their door and give them their white-collar job back.

[Lore]

True. The newest anomaly in the whole screwed up system is protecting private profits by nationalizing risk. Lots of people go on and on about food stamps and immigrant-welfare-mothers-on-drugs while big bucks go to backstop institutions run into the ground by management looking for the quick, personal buck.

And how many people in management of the bailed out companies have received anything but a golden parachute as a result of their malfeasance?

Corporate shareholders and management are protected from liability by law and if they are big enough, protected from loss by the taxpayer.


I think it's time to make them liable.

The problem lies in trying to save what middle class jobs are left, which means today, leaving more cash on the table for corporate heads. The gap continues to grow.

[Ludi]

The problem lies in trying to save what middle class jobs are left, which means today, leaving more cash on the table for corporate heads. The gap continues to grow.

Yep, apparently we have to keep protecting the rich bastards because we are helpless without them. How the United States got to this point is astonishing to me. The most "patriotic" of our citizens are fighting tooth and nail to protect the moneyed class.

Bizarre.

[Sixstrings]

Maybe if they weren't buried in debt and high monthly expenses they'd be able to start their own business, that is, if they stopped waiting around for corporate america to bang down their door and give them their white-collar job back.

I agree that we have too much regulation of small and micro businesses -- you can't even sell freaking hot dogs on the street without a permit. Even little kids are getting their lemonade and cupcake stands shut down for not having all their permits and taxes sorted out.

And over the past year or two, government's been cracking down on food co-ops and farmers markets. We have a bad situation here -- small business is a competitor to global corporations, and they don't want small business to have a chance.

As for your old "it's their own fault they got into debt" argument, that's in the past Mos. We've gone around on this before, I've tried to explain the Federal Reserve manipulated folks into taking on so much did -- look at other countries from Ireland to the UK, their central banks did the same darn thing.

But that was then, this is now, and something has to be done about the jobs crisis. You can't just blame average workin' folks without coming up with any solutions.