Corporations want fewer workers, but they still need everyone to be consumers

[rainy]

The Economic Crunch We're in: Corporations Want Fewer Workers, But They Still Need Everyone to Be Consumers
By Robert Parry, Consortium News
Posted on July 15, 2010, Printed on July 16, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/147573/

A hard truth about the U.S. economy is that corporations don’t need as many of us as workers but still need us as consumers. That dilemma helps explain why unemployment is stuck near 10 percent and why the economic recovery is stumbling toward a double dip.

The Washington Post reported Thursday that nonfinancial companies are sitting on $1.8 trillion - about one-fourth more than at the start of the recession - but won't add personnel in part because they're waiting for consumer demand to pick up, which isn't happening because many Americans don't have jobs or are afraid of losing theirs.

Yet, even if that vicious cycle could be broken, there's another reason for the lack of hiring: companies have found they can make do with a lot fewer American workers. The recession has been a way to cull payrolls - and to discover that many jobs don't have to be filled again, either because of new technologies or because the jobs have been shifted overseas.

Both these trends predated the recession but the rapid shedding of jobs since the Wall Street financial crash in 2008 - some eight million jobs lost - has spotlighted this structural change. Further, corporate determination to remain "lean" has turned the worker-surplus issue from a personal crisis for many American families into a systemic one for the country's economy.

Read the rest here:

http://www.alternet.org/economy/147573/the_economic_crunch_we%27re_in%3A_corporations_want_fewer_workers%2C_but_they_still_need_everyone_to_be_consumers/?page=entire

[Dogmudgeon]

1. "I want to sleep around, but I need my wife to be monogamously faithful"

Yeah ... that always works out ...

--d!

[Uncle Joe]

2. That's an excellent column by Robert Parry.

Thanks for the thread, rainy.

[Populist_Prole]

3. Everyone but me need s a paycut, so that my money will go farther

Seems to be mindset of too many "consumers". The typical "I am an island" Libertarians ( capital "L" )

[patrice]

4. And they'll take what you create, boot you out the door, and hire someone cheaper to do your work,

usually someone's friend.

[ceveritt]

5. What Parry doesn't mention ...

... and what seems far more widespread than job elimination through new tech or overseas outsourcing, is that far too many companies and government agencies simply spread the existing workload over fewer and fewer employees.

Those that survive each new round of layoffs or budget cuts are given more and more and more to do.

Then, when they inevitably fail because of the impossibility of expecting one person to do the job(s) of two to six others, then they are culled from the herd as well.

Until the corporations and their brought-to-heel Republicans finally realize there has to be *someone* left to buy their goods and services, the slaughter of the middle class will continue.

No, I don't have an answer. Except, maybe, Eat the Rich. The fine marbling from their fat will make for exceptionally tasty meat.