Posted on 05/31/2011 7:05:20 PM PDT by khnyny
To gaze upon the world of American corporations is to see a sunny place of terrific profits and princely bonuses. American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed.
Staring at such balance sheets, you might almost forget that much of the nation lives under slate-gray fiscal skies, a place of 9.4 percent unemployment and record levels of foreclosures and indebtedness.
And therein lies the enduring mystery of this Great Recession and Not So Great Recovery: Why have corporate profits (and that market thermometer, the Dow) spiked even as 15 million Americans remain mired in unemployment, a number without precedent since the Great Depression? Employment tends to lag a touch behind profit growth, but history offers few parallels to what is happening today.
“Usually the business cycle is a rising-and-falling, all-boats-together phenomenon,” noted J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Clinton Treasury Department. “It’s quite a puzzle when you have this disjunction between profits on the one hand and unemployment.”
A search for answers leads in several directions. The bulls’ explanation, heard with more frequency these days, has the virtue of being straightforward: corporate profits are the economy’s pressure cooker, building and building toward an explosive burst that will lead to much hiring next year.
The December jobs numbers suggest that that moment has yet to arrive, as the nation added just 103,000 jobs, or less than the number needed to keep pace with population growth. The leisure industry and hospitals accounted for 83,000 jobs; large corporations added a tiny fraction.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ok, the EPA adds maybe a small fraction of the total cost of steel, steel can be made cleanly. I would prefer no EPA but that is a long term goal. No reason to spike a strategic industry because of it?
There are non-union steel mills in the south(a few are left) I would say the 22 right-to-work states could put unions out of business. BTW, union membership is ONLY 6% of the working population.
You are going to find it hard to find someone that feels sorry for executives and CEOs that make 500K to 1M bucks per year. I am sure if their feelings are hurt, they can move to CHINA THEN!
Free trade has never been involved with the EPA in any way.
Once again you try and claim free trade, which you don’t even understand, is to blame for everything you don’t like. This is hysterically funny.
Free trading (unlike your boogie man) can only profit from comparative advantage when it is allowed to develop. It has never depended upon government involvement. The last thing a free trader would advocate is “hobbling” the economy. It is so silly as to suggest mental illness.
Chinese are not slaves, either. And also you seem to be attacking direct investment not free trade with your mistaken remarks about China.
The collapse of the American economy was because Andrew Jackson DEMOCRAT refused to allow the Second Bank of the United States to be rechartered. This destroyed credit and plunged the nation into the worst depression of the 19th century. John Logan DEMOCRAT could not say that but tried to deflect the blame elsewhere naturally you would fall for it.
Free trade had NOTHING to do with the Civil War. The Slavers seceded because of their fears for slavery. Nor did the Slaver State ever have free trade.
Steel mills are subject to large costs because the EPA controls the levels of air and water discharge and the old mills sit on highly contaminated sites which they must clean up.
Investors have determined that it is not sufficiently profitable to invest in steel in this country. Why do you think that this conclusion is false?
Almost all of our steel making was in states which did not have right to work laws: Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania. So profits were reduced by union wages and investment through retained earnings was reduced by them.
The reason union membership has dropped is because the unionized companies gradually reduced operations where unions had too much a hand.
Historically steel production became centralized around the Great Lakes and rivers because they facilitated transport of the huge shipments of coal and oar into and finished product out of the mills. They cannot be transferred just anywhere because of transportation requirements.
Class warfare has always worked in the US and it always works against the lower classes but hate can blind most to their best interests. Hollywood’s propaganda war against business and wealth has been extremely costly and is a major reason the people have been socialized as successfully as they have.
You can’t refute the fact that as a nation we are diminished and weaker by off-shoring STRATEGIC production of things as vital as steel for the pursuit of “sufficient profits”. Steel can be made cleanly and safely by non union employees for a profit-IN THIS COUNTRY. So, as an American, any company that gives up, even though there was still profit to be made, are simply traitors. There is no other way to look at it. Since you support this situation I consider you a traitor. So if you want to continue the discussion go ahead. But know how I view you position, and how it disgusts me.
You don’t seem to grasp the fact that market forces dictate most moves in the economic world. Products are made where comparative advantage dictates maximum profit. Older industries are and have been driven out of the nation by environmental laws and regulations on industry.
Production which remains within our nation will be concentrated upon new products which American industry has traditionally created for the world. We create the New then teach the world how to make it cheaper than we can and we move on to the next innovation. This is called the “Export Cycle”. Free trade fosters that innovative spirit which has driven America to the height of wealth and power.
You should also be aware that the US constitution defines “treason” and nothing you complain about meets that definition. Private resources are not entirely under the control of the federal government and are not allocated to suit your personal preferences or mine.
Nor should you confuse an analysis of how things develop with approval of them. One of my political goals is to develop a society wherein individuals can maximize their potential to create wealth. This will also maximize the nation’s.
Trying to protect the past should not lead to destroying the future. Capitalist development is a process of creative destruction wherein the old is destroyed in creating the new. That destruction is unavoidable.
Steel mills were shut down using the tool EPA so that free traitor Dianne Feinstein’s steel mills in Shanghai China could pick up the slack and the profits.
You are the one urging government intrusion into the economy so you should not complain about that.
Ok, your way leads to weakness and death of the republic. Since you have no allegiance other than to profit margin this makes you and me are very different people. You are more primitive, seeing things in simplistic cost/benefit to you or your company; your country be damned. Not everyone does everything for profit, thank God. Thank God out founders were 180 degrees different than you. God help us. There really is no point, we are too far apart, I am a throw back to the patriots of the founders tradition and you are more of a pure profit motivated, history ignoring cretin.
YOU NEVER ADDRESS ANY POINT THAT I MAKE, EVER. WHY? BECAUSE THERE IS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR YOUR POSITION.
I am sure none of that Communist steel ever ends up in the hulls of their tanks. /sarc
You are the one urging ChiCom government intrusion into the US economy so you should not complain.
The time for tariffs is now! While there are still a few industries to save.
You are pushing an agenda that transnational globalist trash corporations with no loyalty to the US constitution, or country, should be able to do what they want, when they want in our country.
Well, transnational globalist trash corporations are not American corporations, this isn’t their country, and the citizens are the one’s with the rights, not the trash globalists.
You have very clearly shown you have NO loyalty to America.
You ignore that constitutional government is government by the citizen, in support of individual rights and equal justice.
The trash globalist corporations go to any foreign dictatorship, hold their meetings, and decide that America needs a national id, must have open borders for ‘trade’,should allow in their word the ‘free movement of persons,’ including slaves’ , that we can’t inspect goods coming into the country on our own, we should shut down competing industries to ‘float the boats’ of the ‘least developed countries’ and they corrupt our Congress and white house to make it happen.
No representative government now, just communism in the form of corporate rights and corporatist fascism in the government. Thanks for nothing free traitor.
You babble endlessly on throwing out a half-baked idea here, a piece of crackpottery there. None has any coherent relevance to anything significant yet you believe you have discovered the Holy Grail.
You want to empower the government MORE and give it far greater power over our economic life. Bigger government is not the answer to anything. What is so hard to grasp about that simple idea?
It is constitutional government which has produced the plethora of programs you have been howling about. YET you want to empower the government MORE and give it far greater power over our economic life.
The only thing I have “ignored” is some of your impossibly ridiculous conclusions pulled entirely outta your ass.
We both know the Stonecutters rule the world so just bow down and kiss Homer’s butt.
If you discuss economics it should be dispassionately rather than like a sensitive teenage girl.
Morality is a separate subject also to be discussed with objectivity and a cool head.
Politics the same.
Providing the people with the opportunity by keeping the government out of their pockets and hair as much as possible is the highest morality. A morality which understands that free trade is of a higher nature than government controls. And is the preference of free men.
I early on indicated that the exception to free trade allowed for protection of national security if necessary by protecting and/or subsidizing national security related industry.
Businesses that do not do legal things for profit are not long in business and has created more misery through misguided altruism. Nothing has been said by me outside the context of economic decision-making so I never said that “...everyone does everything for profit....” Refuting that absurd strawman might have been fun for you but it never was an idea of mine.
And don’t tell me about patriotism, if I am not confused you are a firm supporter of those who tried their damnedest to destroy our Union through a treasonous insurrection and thus, rejected everything our Founders stood for.
Incorrect. The problems co-existed. Nobody goes there.
I have no idea what you are saying to me, if it is to me.
Would you care to elaborate on this? What exception would you be in favor off? I don't recall that. Please repeat.
And don’t tell me about patriotism, if I am not confused you are a firm supporter of those who tried their damnedest to destroy our Union through a treasonous insurrection and thus, rejected everything our Founders stood for.
Ok, so go on record here. Union membership(non-govt) is decreasing every year. It is at 6%. When it reaches 0% then what excuse for backstabbing the USA will the free traitors use? Funny, you can't say you support the USA and be in favor of destroying our manufacturing base at the same time.
You are dead on, Amen brother.
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