Profits Are Booming. Why Aren’t Jobs?

New York Times ^ | January 8, 2011 | Michael Powell

[hedgetrimmer]

Alinsky is the free traitor’s friend.

[hedgetrimmer]

You don’t use expertise of others to make a bigger apple crop? Or produce containers so your apples can be shipped and therefore increase your sales? How about someone to stand at your apple stand while you go home and pick them so you have less down time for your sales?

Your comments make no sense.

[arrogantsob]

I must congratulate you on being the most demented poster I have encountered outside of some Civil War threads.

Can't respond to my comments about the similarity in your views and those of the far Left wrt to trade I see. Not unexpected since all you do is throw up a few initials which you don't even understand. Especially hysterical is your view of history which crackpot are you relying on? Is he out of the sanitarium yet.

[hedgetrimmer]

Why don’t you explain what the Doha round is and how it affects “free trade”.

Explain how an open border and illegal immigration is crucial to “free trade”

Then explain why and how our food import standards were ‘haromonized’ with countries of much lower sanitation standards and how it relates to “free trade”.

When you do that, I’ll believe you have some inkling about what “free trade” is.

[hedgetrimmer]

Free traitors support global communism. Is that leftist or something else? I personally don’t care if you are left or rightist, I care that you are promoting the economic destruction of our nation and empowering communism and slave labor.

[arrogantsob]

While I have never read anything that Ole Saul wrote about free trade it would be hard to see him supporting capitalism in any manner. Communist states never supported free trade policies.

[arrogantsob]

You don’t answer a question with other questions. What do you believe “free trade” to be?

[KC Burke]

My analogy was meant to point out the there is no such thing as “excess” profit that automatically turns into investment in labor and production. For that to occur, the profits have to be anticpatible and unfettered.

When you don’t know what inflation, taxes, healthcare and other benefit costs will be, you don’t hire on hope. When you don’t know if the government is going to play favorites in your industry next week, you can’t plan for growth, you pocket your profits and evaluate your upcomming opportunities.

I sold a lot of apples last week. If that happens for 12 weeks in a row, I may begin to expand, but there has to be some consistancy.

The article was proposing a direct, virtually cause-and-effect, relationship between net earnings and hiring. Hiring is related more to production and markets than to earnings.

That being said, the Marxist would say, well if there is no relationship why can’t the public steal the profits and use them for the “greater good?” The answer is that government is a poor source of jobs and if quick reacting business has its profits stolen preventing retained earnings and investment capital then the general business economy cannot respond to opportunity when it arises and does no hiring for such.

[arrogantsob]

Free trade has never been the policy of communist states. Your confusion prompts once again my question “What do you think free trade is?”

[hedgetrimmer]

Communist states never supported free trade policies.

Well that's just a gol darn lie.

COMMUNIST China is a "free trade" 'partner' with the US. Hu Jintao is a billionaire, because China embraces the dichotomy of communism and capitalism.China is a member of the WTO, the globlaist trash organization funded by the US tax payer to loot our economy through 'free trade'

COMMUNIST Viet Nam is another. And of course all the SOCIALIST European nations who are free traitors as well.

Nothing you say is true! How sad that the US taxpayer must fund an organization like the WTO that empowers China, who has clearly stated they are our enemy and are using OUR money to build up a military threat against us!

Free traitor, free traitor.

[arrogantsob]

What do you think “free trade” means?

[Eva]

Well, that all depends on what the meaning of “is” is.

Free trade is trade without government regulation, not government regulated trade. As was stated in the WSJ, yesterday, “The cor of conceit of this administration’s economic policy is that it can achieve better results if government allocates capital to FAVORED companies (like GE, BNSF, Goldman Sachs, etc)rather than letting private markets do the job.” “The results so far have been underwhelming.”

In other words, it ain’t workin’. The other companies which are not receiving the government subsidies have no obligation to spend more money than is profitable to simply create jobs.

[algernonpj]

...Maybe at least reading the article would be nice.

It's a typical NTY Marxist/anti-business hit piece -- only a Marxist would say it's bad when businesses make more profit with fewer employees. Increased productivity is a good thing. Furthermore the article came out last January --that ain't news it's history, and the update is that the latest quarterly changes show corp profits down 2%, corp. taxes up 7%, and employee comp. holding steady.

Cool more deflecting, i.e. castigating me for comments I did not make!;)

[algernonpj]

... But Adam Smith showed that good intentions are irrelevant to the success of the economy. The only requirement is that a business legally provide a product for the lowest price possible. THAT is its job. ...

Talk about crank versions. You might want to re-read your 'Wealth of Nations' and the economic suppositions upon which Smith drew his conclusions. Wealth of Nations was written about a economic theory in a world in which we do not live, i.e. one in which small businesses were run locally by their owners; their customers and employees were also local. Smith was a big fan of producing and purchasing domestically.

“As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can, both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce maybe of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual revenue of the society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain; and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention”

I am not for free trade as it is defined today in 'Free Trade' Agreements that are administered by non elected international bureaucrats for the benefit of international corporations and finance and their representatives in our government.

[hedgetrimmer]

I’m waiting for you to explain to me the WTO and its relation to ‘free trade’, the Doha round and ‘free trade’ stance on illegal immigration and open borders.

While you’re at it, tell me what a ‘least developed nation’ is, free traitor, and how they figure int ‘free trade’ agreements.

Oh and one more thing, who makes ‘free trade’ agreements and who enforces them?

[hedgetrimmer]

Oh dear, you gave away one of the answers to arrogantsob for questions I asked for in the post following yours.

arrogantsob you got a freebie, but you still need to explain those other things too, if you’re as knowledgeable as you say on the topic of ‘free trade’.

[hedgetrimmer]

When you don’t know what inflation, taxes, healthcare and other benefit costs will be, you don’t hire on hope.

Sounds like you're talking about California.

[9YearLurker]

Hey, if they can force individuals (and companies) to buy health insurance, why can’t they force companies to hire people?

If A, I don’t see why not B.

[hedgetrimmer]

The cost (to the taxpayer) for the 'advantages' of 'free trade' include:

Bills to Reauthorize TAA and ATAA in the Senate S. 1848. Senator Max Baucus introduced the Trade and Globalization Adjustment Assistance Act of 2007 on July 23, 2007. Among other provisions, this bill would extend benefits to workers in service industries and the public sector, eliminate the requirement that shifts in production be to countries with which the United States has a free-trade agreement, expand eligibility to include workers within an entire industry or occupation, allow training funds to be used for higher education expenses, waive the training requirement for post-graduate degree holders, extend the deadline to enroll in training from the later of 8 weeks after the petition was certified or 16 weeks after the layoff to the later of 26 weeks after certification or layoff, increase the HCTC from 65% to 85% of workers’ health care premiums, increase the cap on training funds from $220 million to $440 million with a provision to increase funding by 10% if at least 90% of the prior year’s authorized funds are obligated, eliminate separate ATAA applications, lower the age requirement for ATAA from age 50 to age 40, raise the maximum ATAA benefit to $12,000 over two years, raise the limit on wages in remployment for the purposes of qualifying for ATAA from $50,000 to $60,000, and reauthorize the programs through FY2012.

Now remind me, arrogantsob, what's free about 'free trade'? Why does the American citizen have to suffer bureaucracy and cost of another expansion of the federal government to accommodate 'free trade'? Why does the American taxpayer have to pay for it, since the transnational globalist trash corporations are reaping the benefit?

9YearLurker, the same government that forces you to buy health insurance (at the behest of the insurance companies who have figured out a way to have a stable income stream and payment for illegal alien healthcare costs via forced healthcare plans), forces the taxpayer to subsidize the unemployment and training of people laid off when the transnational globalist trash companies move their operations offshoure. How is that 'free' as in 'free trade'? The transnational globalist trash corporations get profits, and the taxpayer subsidizes the losses. Its a win win for free traitors.

[9YearLurker]

You and I probably both know the theory—free trade enriches economies in the aggregate, but at a cost to specific employees who lost their jobs in the adjustment, so the aggregate economy can mitigate those isolated costs by subsidizing retraining, etc..

You’re right that the kind of free trade we’ve been pursuing hasn’t been free at all—and it has been subverting our sovereignty as well.