Robert Reich: 'The Year Washington Became "Business Friendly"' - HuffPo

[WillyT]

The Year Washington Became "Business Friendly"
Robert Reich - Fmr. Secretary of Labor; Professor at Berkeley; Author, Aftershock: 'The Next Economy and America's Future'
Posted: December 21, 2010 07:26 AM

<snip>

History will record 2010 as the year Washington became "business friendly."

Not that it was all that unfriendly before. Some would say the bailouts of Wall Street, AIG, GM, and Chrysler were about as friendly as it can get. In addition, Washington gave windfalls to drug companies and health insurers in the new health bill, subsidies to energy companies in the stimulus package, and billions to domestic and military contractors.

But for corporate America it still wasn't friendly enough. Before the midterm elections, Verizon CEO and Business Roundtable chair Ivan Seidenberg accused the president of creating a hostile environment for investment and job-creation. In the midterms, business leaders overwhelmingly threw their support to Republicans.

So the White House caved in on the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, and is telling CEOs it will be on their side from now on. As the president recently told a group of CEOs, the choice "is not between Democrats and Republicans. It's between America and our competitors around the world. We can win the competition."

There's only one problem. America's big businesses are less and less American. They're going abroad for sales and employees. That's one reason they've showed record-breaking profits in 2010 while creating almost no American jobs.

<snip>

More: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/post_1462_b_799539.html

:kick:

[moondust]

1. Globalization.

~snip~

Consider one of most popular Christmas products of all time -- Apple's iPhone. Researchers from the Asian Development Bank Institute have dissected an iPhone whose wholesale price is around $179.00 to determine where the money actually goes.

Some shows up in Apple's profits, which are soaring.

About $61 of the $179 price goes to Japanese workers who make key iPhone components, $30 to German workers who supply other pieces, and $23 to South Korean workers who provide still others. Around $6 goes to the Chinese workers who assemble it. Most of the rest goes to workers elsewhere around the globe who make other bits.

Only about $11 of that iPhone goes to American workers, mostly researchers and designers.

~more~

K/R

[ladjf]

2. I still believe that Dr. Reich is one of our smartest political scientist.

He should be in the WH administration.