HughBeaumont
HughBeaumont's JournalThomas Friedman, shill for the 1% and Corporate America: Average is Over.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html?src=me&ref=generalYes, new technology has been eating jobs forever, and always will. As they say, if horses could have voted, there never would have been cars. But there’s been an acceleration. As Davidson notes, “In the 10 years ending in 2009, [U.S.] factories shed workers so fast that they erased almost all the gains of the previous 70 years; roughly one out of every three manufacturing jobs — about 6 million in total — disappeared.”
snip
What the iPad won’t do in an above average way a Chinese worker will. Consider this paragraph from Sunday’s terrific article in The Times by Charles Duhigg and Keith Bradsher about why Apple does so much of its manufacturing in China: “Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly-line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the [Chinese] plant near midnight. A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day. ‘The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,’ the executive said. ‘There’s no American plant that can match that.’ ”
Hear that? It's BREATHtaking!!!
He's cheerleading executives that liken militaristic gross servitude in the name of winner take everything capitalism as they would describing a Van Eyck painting.
Thomas Friedman. Just when you think the Life Lottery Winner couldn't get any more shameless . . .
Monster Worldwide cautious on 2012; to cut jobs
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/01/26/monsterworldwide-idUSL4E8CQ5EG20120126The staffing sector -- seen as a barometer of economic health -- has been hit by a slowdown in Europe and an uncertain recovery in the United States, where the unemployment rate currently stands at 8.5 percent.
Iannuzzi does not expect a material change to the job market for the time being.
The company will cut about 400 jobs and consolidate some office facilities, and expects to record a pre-tax charge of $30 million to $40 million mostly in the first quarter.
Oh, irony, where is thy sting?
Dumb Letters to the Plain Dealer, Volume II: "How can I be of service, Boss?"
http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2012/01/bain_capital_in_defense_of_ame.html
Obama has GM and UAW cronies? And why exactly does one have to be a CEO/businessman to be a president? This is one of those ridiculous things the right says a lot, but in hindsight make not a damned bit of sense. Theoretically, government is not a business, nor should it be run as such (see: 1981-2009). Are we justifying the "plutonomy" here?
Right. Sooooooooooooo, because it was a peaches-and-cream pillow-field landing for YOU, it's going to be that way for everyone. There's going to be no depression in wages, long job searches, loss of property, underemployment, stress, none of that? Gotcha.
George Gary Thomas Rocky River
Funny . . . during the whole airlines debacle, the company that DIDN'T lay off workers (Southwest) grew to be the largest airline in the country. Ask Costco and various co-ops how they're "coping" without laying off workers. Ask Germany, who subsidized their workers rather than fire them, how badly their businesses are doing as a result. Oh wait, they recovered faster than us and have a lower unemployment rate.
Chop, chop, peon. Bossman needs him some TPS reports.
Krugman - It's Hard to Justify Low Tax Rates on the Rich.
Didn't see this posted on DU in the search, so .. .
http://www.chron.com/opinion/outlook/article/Krugman-It-s-hard-to-justify-low-tax-rates-on-2652950.php
The PD printed this one and everyone should read it because it states the painfully obvious in ways that a Fox slobberer will get it:
(snip)
Defenders of low taxes on the rich mainly make two arguments: that low taxes on capital gains are a time-honored principle, and that they are needed to promote economic growth and job creation. Both claims are false.
When you hear about the low taxes of people like Romney, what you need to know is that it wasn't always thus - and the days when the superrich paid much higher taxes weren't that long ago. Back in 1986, Ronald Reagan - yes, Ronald Reagan - signed a tax reform equalizing top rates on earned income and capital gains at 28 percent. The rate rose further, to more than 29 percent, during Bill Clinton's first term.
Low capital gains taxes date only from 1997, when Clinton struck a deal with Republicans in Congress in which he cut taxes on the rich in return for creation of the Children's Health Insurance Program. And today's ultralow rates - the lowest since the days of Herbert Hoover - date only from 2003, when former President George W. Bush rammed both a tax cut on capital gains and a tax cut on dividends through Congress.
Sherrod Brown??? SHERROD BROWN???? ET TU???
Just WHY???? WHY would you sponsor/support these bills, which wouldn't even stop online piracy?
Do all politicians get bought? Does anyone NOT have a price????
Are there REALLY NO good people anymore? Is there really NO true progressive representation in America (note; I almost said "anymore" . .. I don't believe there ever was to begin with)??
I got corporate sellouts in the Democratic party and Old Testament fascist shitbags in the Republican party. Economically, THERE IS NO OPTION (and yes, that includes Ron Paul, too).
You're a TeaHadist Republican? You got representatives. You're a moderate Democrat slightly to the left of center who likes them some Laissez-fail? Hell, you got plenty of those. Milquetoast sensible centrists? Come join us, it's beige in here! You love guns? NRA Republicans, baby. Hate taxes? You got your men by the hundreds. Likes you some Jesus? Come to the US Capital. Free Trade? Over half the House and Senate LUUUUURVES it!!! Want to see corporations rule the world, Friedmanites? DC's THE GATEWAY DRUG TO THAT!!!
WHERE DO I GO???
WHOSE IS MY VOICE????
I'm more or less voting not to be ruled by Bible.
"GET EXCITED!! I SUCK LESS THAN HE DOES!!!"
Get me the hell out of here . . .
So, apparently, the Plain Dealer is now the judge and jury of what we can and can't read.
I get to the comics section and find this:
Editor’s Note: Today’s “Non Sequitur” was withheld because it was deemed objectionable by Plain Dealer editors. A replacement strip was unavailable by press time.
Translation: “The Dumbest Columnist on the Planet and Right Wing Assclown Kevin O’Brien wet his diaper and threw his binkie at Brent Larkin and Terrence Eggers in disgust upon reading today’s ‘Non Sequitur’. After changing him, we decided that it would be in YOUR (the paying customer, that is) best interest to not read this comic strip that WE find objectionable. I mean, why should it be up to YOU to decide that? Really . . .”
This is 2012, assholes. I thought we were past this sort of Nixon-era nonsense?
So, does anyone have today's Non Sequitur . . . and it's kind of moot until I get home, since work's firewall blocks pretty much everything "entertaining"?
I’m insulted that any of these idiots are playing innocent regarding their economic Darwinism.
I’m thoroughly insulted, especially when it comes to Mitt Romney.
When this bastard won the NH primary, he proceeded to go into his usual talking point-a-palooza about how, because of Obama, “The middle class has been crushed ... our debt is too high and our opportunities too few."
Soooooooo, Mitt. Mitt. Fella. Pally. Are ya shittin’ us? The type of capitalistic practices you and your cronies have been pulling off for the past three decades had NOTHING to do with it? The Bewsh Borrow-n-Waste-O-Rama had NO part in this? Job offshoring/serial firing/cost cutting like there's no tomorrow while the Honey One Percenters got theirs in yearly lotteries . . . nothing to do with our current situation? REALLY?
Newt Gingrinch and Rick Perry did their best OWS impersonations this week . .. I guess Newt put out a PAC video highlighting R-Money’s Bain Capital adventures or something along those lines in a supremely hilarious attempt to make people think he doesn’t believe in the same vampiric capitalism Mittster believes.
Take a look at this chart, if you will:
Waaaallll, lookit that!!
Seems they ALL support predatory business-as-mutual vampire capitalism, including Doctor “anti-crony capitalism” Ron Paul himself!!
I’m insulted that you assholes even pretend to be on our side.
I’m insulted that you even say “I feel your pain”. Dude, just DON’T.
You know what I’d rather hear you say? I’d rather hear you say “Success is the ONLY thing. Poor people are lazy bastards and that’s why they’re poor. Equality is stupid, as is fairness. I love the lowest-possible-costing labor and I will scorch payrolls to get it. Firing? Really, I think of firing like I think of urinating . . . that is, I just don’t care one way or another because I’m a bloodthirsty sociopath. And, well, fuck you.”
This is what I would rather hear ALL of you say. Listening to your lying is getting grating, because then the lie spreads and gets regurgitated (see: all of Ron Paul’s followers who can’t see past “Legalize Teh Weed!!”).
No Longer the Land of Opportunity; Mitt gets it wrong yet again.
This was in the PD today . . . I used to find it hilarious that Romney continues to try and brand our moderate Republican president as a Euro Leftist (snicker). Now it's just starting to get tiresome to the point of pissing me off.
From the article: "The best way to measure a nation’s merit-based status is to look at its intergenerational economic mobility: Do children move up and down the ec...onomic ladder based on their own abilities, or does their economic standing simply replicate their parents’?" Or, to my point, get worse than their parents'?
Ask yourself honestly what class (and yes, Rick Santorum, America firmly has them) America favors and caters to. Ask yourself honestly what a CEO making 300 times the salary of their average worker has accomplished for American progress in three decades.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/no-longer-the-land-of-opportunity/2012/01/02/gIQAOJVDZP_story.html
(snip)
The secrets of social democracy’s successes are in plain view. In Scandinavia, government commitment to worker retraining and job relocation mean that there is no major political pressure to keep failing firms in business; it’s a policy that favors innovative start-ups. In Germany, management and unions cooperate to upgrade their products and their processes — partly because corporate boards consist of equal numbers of management and worker representatives. Germany’s surge in exports may be partly attributable to its union workers agreeing to hold their wages flat (at levels still well above those of their U.S. counterparts). But their workers’ willingness to sacrifice in order to stay competitive is surely increased by the fact that their CEOs on average make just 11 times as much as their workers. In the United States, chief executives make roughly 200 to 300 times (choose your survey) as much as their average employees’ salary.
Which brings us back to Romney’s characterization of our country as a merit-based society and his failure to notice the huge changes in economic rewards over the past three decades. During the 30 years after World War II, the average American family’s income doubled, while chief executives’ income was restrained, increasing by less than 1 percent annually, according to a 2010 paper by economists Carola Frydman and Raven Saks. Beginning around 1980, however, as unions were smashed, industry moved offshore and executive pay skyrocketed, the incomes of most Americans began to flatten or decline, while financiers and corporate leaders were able to claim more and more of the nation’s income for themselves.
Romney is the "Four F" candidate:
"Find 'em, Fleece 'em, Fire 'em, Foreclose 'em".
"If the future of America's in their hands, watch it roll over Niagara Falls".
Cinch.
Oh QUELLE SURPRISE, America! Published in my RW Rag today: "What's so Awful about the One Percent?"
. . . and it was written a month ago.
Get excited!!! THEY'RE NOT ALL BAD!!!
http://articles.latimes.com/2011/dec/04/opinion/la-oe-schiller-who-is-the-one-percent-20111204
Oh bullshit. Jobs was no liberal. Apple makes their crap in Chinese sweatshops that work their slaves in punishing hours and conditions; some even killed themselves due to their intolerable plights. He also fired workers just for unintentionally rubbing him the wrong way.
Let's see, does he worry about where his next meal is going to come from? Does Howard Schultz pay the mortgage OR the electric bill this month? Does he go into work every day with a 500 pound figurative anvil strapped to his back that says "YOU could be NEXT, peon, so work harder!!!"?? Does Howard Schultz have to worry about paying a five-digit student loan debt or worry about getting thrown out of his house for the crime of getting sick??? Really? Are you that effing stupid, Bradley?
Uh, most of the people on that list enriched China, Indonesia, Malaysia and India in significant ways moreso than they have American workers. Especially Phil Knight. Some of the Forbes 400 are figureheads that had nothing to do with the origination of their product/service. And damn it, no one is entirely self made.
Oh, but let's not forget, folks . . . if THEY could do it with a little hard work and elbow grease. . . why . . . any of us can!!
These storied rises from "rags to riches" are what make America the unique and prosperous nation it is. Some critics would have us believe that the American dream is dead. But that's a view purveyed by those without the vision, the grit, the energy or the single-mined determination to build a better mousetrap. Starry-eyed inventors and entrepreneurs have no doubts about that dream. They know it exists and that they are going to achieve it. Maybe not on the first try, but eventually. That's the entrepreneurial spirit that drives competitive markets, that not only makes the American dream come true for some (the 1%) but also improves life for the many (the 99%).
Oh just SHUT it with the class warfare card, slappy. Horatio Alger is a lottery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horatio_Alger_myth
What can you say about hackneyed, deluded articles like this? What can you say about the state of education in this country where a person like this; one who cannot even look out of his own window but would rather form an opinion based on the teachings of the likes of Friedman (Milton AND Thomas) and Hayek, becomes a professor and author?? There needs to be more widespread progressive voices to counter this sort of idiocy.
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Member since: Fri Aug 13, 2004, 03:12 PMNumber of posts: 24,461