Greed, Stupidity, Decline: Eight Numbers Reveal America’s Plight

[marmar]

from In These Times:



Greed, Stupidity, Decline: Eight Numbers Reveal America’s Plight

Friday
August 6
4:34 pm
By Roger Bybee


Recent news provides a set of unusally illuminating numbers.

They drive home several critical messages about where America stands today: the value (and limits) of President Obam's stimulus efforts and the preposterousness of GOP tax cut plans as an economic cure for a very fragile economy, among others. The numbers truly tell much of the story:

16%: A crucial new report How the Great Recession Was Brought to an End was just released. Written by Princeton economist Alan Blinder and Moody's Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi, it estimates that without Obama's stimulus, TARP, and other emergency initatives, unemployment would have reached 16% and 8.5 million fewer people would have jobs.

2015: Reflecting the limits of Obama's stimulus, the Economic Policy Insitute noted,

Considering that even if the country were to sustain the strongest pace of job growth seen in the boom of the late 1990s (2.6% in 1998), it would still take until 2015 to return to pre-recession levels of unemployment. The much slower rate of growth seen in recent months suggests that without additional policy action, unemployment will remain high for years to come.

83%: "In 2007, of the 100 largest publicly traded U.S. corporations, 83 ran subsidiaries in offshore tax havens," as Too Much reported.

$572 BILLION (PROFITS) VS. -$122 BILLION (WAGES):

As previously reported here and here and here, Corporate America has learned to pull off a magical trick: cut workers, reduce hours of the remaining workers, live with reduced sales, and still massively increase profits. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/6297/greed_stupidity_cynicism_the_numbers_tell_the_story/

[midnight]

1. Corporations are grateful that we work as hard as we do.

[Lorien]

2. If so, they have a funny way of showing it. nt

[Cal33]

3. That's the way the average person thinks. But sociopaths

don't think this way. They have no sense of anything like gratitude. Sociopathy
is a personality disorder, a form of mental disease. A high percentage of corporate
executives are sociopaths. Nowadays, it seems that only sociopaths of the most
virulent degree can get to the top of the ladder, because they make most money for
their companies. They know how to make profits and make others pay. They are the
ones who deal with deceit and corruption, and are smart enough to get away with it.
And their consciences don't bother them, because their consciences are defective.

[Barack2theFuture]

4. yup