Five companies stockpiled nearly $60 billion while cutting 64,000 jobs worldwide from 2007 to 2011
SAT APR 21, 2012 AT 12:30 PM PDT
Five companies stockpiled nearly $60 billion while cutting 64,000 jobs worldwide from 2007 to 2011
byLaura Clawson
Reposted from Daily Kos Labor by Laura Clawson
One frequently cited rationale for corporate tax breaks is that companies will use the extra money to create jobs. They'd love to create jobs, we're told, if only they could afford to do so, and one more tax break will make that possible. Instead, we see that many companies are sitting on giant piles of cash and cutting jobs anyway. The AFL-CIO's Paywatch includes some data on major corporate cash hoarders—five companies that added $57.8 billion to their cash stockpiles between 2007 and 2011 while cutting more than 64,000 jobs worldwide. (We can't know how many of those jobs were in the United States, because companies aren't required to tell us that.)
Verizon, which leads the pack, having cut 41,100 jobs while its "cash holdings and short-term investments grew 311 percent to $14 billion at the end of 2011, from $3.4 billion at the end of 2007," is also a major corporate tax avoider. Verizon paid a negative effective federal income tax rate from 2008 to 2011 while chasing after more and more tax breaks and trying to force its unionized workers into taking cuts to health care and benefits and job security.
Verizon may be the worst, cutting jobs, trying to make jobs worse, and accumulating a Scrooge McDuck-style cash hoard, but it's not just Verizon. Nonfinancial corporate businesses had $2.2 trillion in liquid assets at the end of 2011, and the fact that they're just sitting on that is hurting the American economy:
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It all started with Reagan's "Trickle Down," some 30 years ago.
Cut taxes on the rich and they'll use them to "reinvest" in America! 
Bush's tax cuts 10 years ago were supposed to do the same. They didn't.
It was all a lie and it's amazing they're still using the "tax cuts will create jobs" horseshit today!
exactly true, all of it and it just burns me
Corporations never had any intentions of raising wages to match the cost of living. That'd mean "less money at the top". So "tax cuts" was the substitute and the drooling idiot public bought it, not knowing their dollar's buying power (along with the job market) went south.
Everyone should read "The Great Risk Shift" by Jacob S. Hacker. The Reaganite GOP's minions/handlers KILLED this country's prosperity.
Apparently they discontinued anything that might have ever resembled customer service.
"Got a problem. Tough shit. Try to find someone who cares."
just a couple of days ago you reminded us of your political positions when you complained about families' getting tax refunds when you had to pay.
see the thing is, most of us are fairly liberal on most (not all issues), so when people *frequently* post conservative ideas, it really stands out, because most of us take conservative positions only rarely, if at all.
if you were just a run of the mill liberal like most of us, you wouldn't get noticed, because you wouldn't stand out.
almost.
Profit before people, always the capitalist way.
hem. without us there is no them. also am rather mad that the buffet rule was fillabustered . meh if we did that , the repugs would be screaming the nuke option. 
more money for their contributers buh
