Unemployment by state tells the story. Having the stock market go up, while employment remains the worst it has been in 29 years should be setting off alarm bells, not celebrations.
The fact that Tata Tata enterprises is being wooed by Ohio but that of its 13000 workers in the USA only 1300 are American citizens should also be setting off warning bells. What this means is wages going down, not up.
At the same time, the self-dealing elite continues to pay itself bonuses – with those bonuses worth six times the total growth in the economy that same year! At the same time, 25 million families may face forceclosure and unemployment remains the highest in 29 years. Banker bonuses – the rest of the story
My focus remains jobs, jobs, jobs. I have NOT been distracted by the health care debate, or the Copenhagen conference, or a terrorist rich boy, who happened to be from Africa, who set his pants on fire.
…that the stock market is NOT the best indicator of our economic situation? To me it almost seems like phony capitalism which doesn’t really do what the Milton Friedmans of the world theorize that it should. Often stock value goes up from a shareholder’s perspective precisely because companies have figured out how to reap in more money while hiring fewer people. I’m not an expert on this matter, but something that I can’t quite put my finger on definitely stinks here.
Using the Stock Market to gauge the health of the economy is like using Foxwoods’ balance sheet. As long as I’ve been paying attention, Wall Street rewards companies that lay off workers. It got to the point that when Hatchet Jack Welch took over a company, its stock went up even before he started chopping workers. The market rewards the immediate bottom line, and ignores the long-term health of companies and of the economy.
it seems that as long as the stock market is doing OK, the headlines read that the economy is improving. The lousy employment rate and the poor quality of life for most Americans is a secondary and insignificant news story that gets brushed off as if it’s not important.
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p>I believe the stock market is creating another unsustainable bubble. It’s not all that far from the 14,000 it was at when it crashed. There have been dramatic rallies because somebody sneezed the right way. It’s driven by brokers who have to make money for their clients in order to make money for themselves. It is self propelling, and not related to anything that is really going on in the country. It is an entity all to itself. It’s going to crash…again.
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p>Paul Krugman’s NY Times Op-ed “That 1937 Feeling” gives an interesting take on what is happening, and how the good news we are supposedly getting is really just little blips that won’t last.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01…
excessive bonus money is being invested to create more money. Money making money. A gift to those with the most.
Those profits should be reinvested into the overall well being of the country by creating jobs and increasing wages.
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p>It wouldn’t be hard to put some incentives into our tax structure to reward companies who hire Americans and punish those who export jobs. My company has support centers in the US and India. We also have development teams in both countries. The cost of an Indian Developer is 1/3 the US costs. But, if we had some incentives we could drop the Indian program easily. Otherwise, it’s hard to ignore the productivity of that many coders getting projects completed quickly at a lower price. It is how we compete since our competitors do the same thing.
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p>Wonder why they don’t do something about this?
I partially agree with JohnD! I think that we should punish companies that export jobs-and that move their headquarters to places like Bermuda and the Cayman Islands. But do I really trust the companies to keep jobs here after those incentives are paid out? Using Raytheon as a local example, I really don’t. Raytheon got millions in tax breaks from Massachusetts, and then moved many jobs out of state.
As for Raytheon aren’t taxes calculated on an annual basis? If we give them a tax incentive one year for creating jobs here, we can just as easily penalize them next year for moving jobs out.
Penalize the state’s largest employer? Imagine the wailing – “hostile business climate,”etc. If I remember correctly, Raytheon got those incentives by threatening to move some operations out of the state. When they got their bribes to keep jobs here, they promptly began moving them anyway. It’s like an entitlement program for corporations.
I wasn’t necessarily talking politically easy, but then what’s the use of a friendly business climate if we get nothing from it. Just say that each year any company that does X will be rewarded and any that does not-X will be penalized. No need to revisit the law annually. If the company wants to continue to be rewarded it will continue to do X. If it does not-X it’s lose-lose as they are helping neither themselves nor the state.
Great post, Jobs remain the critical issue facing the country and too many people have lost focus on how we can work to create more private sector jobs.
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p>First off government incentives might help, but I believe that most employers want some certainty in the costs that they will face. Costs that will be affected by health care reform, cap and trade and whatever else comes up over the next year or so. Looking at the speed of proposals coming form Washington would give any employer pause when considering hiring decisions. Its far too hard to determine the total cost of a new employee to your business. Without some certainty they will just sit on the sidelines until there is either some level of certainty or they have no choice but to hire more. So, before we look provide incentives to employers to hire let’s start with firming up the framework in which the hiring will take place. Once that is done, we could then look at incentives but my fear would be that they would only further confuse rather than clarify the situation now.
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p>Second, the government, at all levels, needs to focus on where and from whom they buy their products and services. When you deal with the government they are looking for the best service at a given price point and while lowest bid does not always win, it certainly helps to be lowest. This encourages firms that do business with the government to seek to lower their costs as much as possible. Look at the firms working on the TARP pieces. You have PIMCO with operations in India. State Street with operations in India and elsewhere. And the list goes on and on. How meaningful would it be if the government required providers to have employees actually in the U.S.?
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p>Finally, we have ourselves to blame. Much as the government seeks the lowest price possible, so do we. You see examples of it in everyday life. The local store closes do to Walmart or Home Depot opening up nearby. People shop at large chain grocers rather than local grocery stores. This past Christmas more people shopped on line than ever before. Not only does on line shopping take business from local stores it deprives the local government of sales tax revenue in many cases (a topic for another post maybe). So we can all do our part by shopping locally with people that live and work in our neighborhoods. It may cost a little more in terms of money, but when you factor in other “benefits” (environmental, locally owned businesses, local jobs, etc.) you have a strong reason to shop local.
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p>Jobs are THE ISSUE facing our state and country and it starts with each of ourselves focusing our own actions locally and encouraging our government at all levels to take actions to make it easier for people to be put to work here and not overseas.
I would add that government, both fed and state, should take a closer look at the H1-B and other work visa situations. I know of a situation in MA where a crackerjack (experienced Princeton grad) engineer was forced to train his foreign replacement. Stories like this abound. The H1-B program was originally intended to bring in people with outstanding skills/knowledge, such that they would be catalysts for job creation here. There are lots of H1-Bs whose pay is quite low for the job listed. It is an impossible stretch to say that the low-paid ones were brought in because their skills are so special that no citizen possessing them could be found. They offer two things to employers: lower cost and a captive status, in that they cannot easily change jobs if the employer imposes abusive working conditions.
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p>Abuses in other work-visa programs should be investigated as well. The low pay and fraud committed against “guest workers” makes the job situation more precarious for citizens at the low end of the economic scale.
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p>I do not mean to be bashing immigrants and non-citizens. My criticism is reserved for the abusive employers, the laws that allow the abuse, and law enforcement that often looks the other way.
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p>I wish an investigative reporter would look into how many jobs are lost to citizens due to these programs.
Several former India-based employees of mine took positions with an agency in NYC (against my advice). They’re now living in what amounts to a group home in New Jersey since it’s all they can afford.
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p>$30k/year sounds like a lot when you’re in India. Once you get here, not so much, but by then, you’re stuck.
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p>There’s a similar issue with oversees operations. Everyone starts them because they’re “cheap” but neglects to factor in infrastructure, training, and time-shift issues.
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p>There’s a recent trend of east and west coast companies outsourcing to firms in cheaper parts of the country, e.g. the midwest. It makes much more sense to me.
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as a “jobless recovery.” If people are out of work, or just as bad, underemployed, then the economy has NOT recovered.
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p>So where are the Democrats on this? They control the White House and both branches of the Legislature. Has any one of them said the “J” word in months?
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p>This new generation of job seekers will be taking to the streets if things don’t improve….and maybe then, we’ll get some action. Right now, our elected officials are still giving champagne and caviar legislation and bail out for the banks and corporations….while our citizens are still waiting for crumbs. My son is already talking about moving to North Carolina, because it’s too difficult to get started up here.
Not that I’m necessarily complaining too loudly because that is important too, and if done correctly it will alleviate one of the biggest specific fears about being unemployed. However, with hundreds of members and dozens of committees it seems that Congress as an institution should be able to multitask a little better.
That they aren’t paying health insurance premiums? I don’t think they’ll be very alleviated when they get the mandate to fork over 300 bucks a month.
Most people’s insurance is courtesy of their employment. Losing coverage would be a big scare to me upon losing a job. I’m pretty sure there is assistance to pay the mandate up to full exemption if you’re unemployed.
We really need to disentangle health insurance from employers, it is a really inefficient and unfair system. Losing coverage when losing a job is only the most obvious downside. I can’t think of any upsides to it, unless you are one of the people enjoying an unfair advantage by working for a plum employer. Insurance should be disentangled from marriage also. Universal coverage would disentangle them and free people to make marriage and employment choices based on the person and the job, not their health insurance.
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p>I am not sure there would be assistance, and even if there is, I bet it would be a pain in the butt to apply and make the payments. McCain’s plan is simple, the government would pay the premiums directly for everyone.
Your description of McCain’s plan sounds like single-payer, which I’m pretty sure he doesn’t and wouldn’t support.
under McCain’s plan, but there would be a refundable tax credit paid directly to the company that would cover the premiums of a basic plan. Single payer eliminates the insurers and just pays the hospitals and doctors and there is no choice of plans, because there are no plans, everything is covered. I favor a combination of single-payer for all basic medicine, and supplemental private plans for controversial or advanced procedures.