16 Responses to The Captains of Industry Hate Americans

1. iremember54 November 1st, 2009 at 6:38 pm «

   They just love money more, you see people and the Country are things to be used. If they need people they hire and use them, then when they no longer need them they cast them aside like an emty candy rapper.

   You also see that those guys are of the Republican establishment, that also uses the Country, so they are spouting the party line.

   We haven’t figured out yet the Industry, Wall Street, the Banks, and most businesses are of the republican persuation.

   The Republican party has never been for the people and never will.
• Grumpy November 1st, 2009 at 7:09 pm «

  “If they need people they hire and use them, then when they no longer need them they cast them aside”

  Would you prefer they keep people working at unnecessary jobs? Seriously, when a company hires someone is that supposed to be a lifetime commitment?
• wigwam November 1st, 2009 at 8:37 pm «

  Teachers get tenure after six or so years.
• tejanarusa November 1st, 2009 at 9:04 pm «

  It isn’t really that they “no longer need them.” It’s that they decide they aren’t making enough profit. Like the newspaper owners a few years ago – 20% profit wasn’t enough, layoffs (especially of the older, experienced, best reporters, who “cost” more) were absolutely necessary.

  Also, of course, they “must” be able to acquire more companies, especially competitors, and to do that, they ‘must” borrow heavily (leverage) in order to do the acquisitions, and then, they “must” lay off employees to make the payments on the loans, AND, of course, keep making profits as always, or even better than before.

  One of the biggest reasons, in the last couple decades, for these huge layoffs, including those laid off in order to outsource their work, is the constant chasing of more and more profit. No more “adequate” profit, it has to be more and more and more, and that is always justified as the duty to the shareholders.
  I’m not sure when this idea took hold, but it’s the basic assumption these days, and nothing will change without fundamentally changing this assumption among businesspeople.
• MarkH November 2nd, 2009 at 6:37 pm «

  They have it cushy with bonuses even when they bankrupt a company.

  What’s missing is some kind of cost to them personally when they fail. There’s too much “heads I win, tails you lose” in the incentive structure.

  If risking everything could make you a lot of money if it goes right, but doesn’t cost you anything when it goes wrong, then why hold back?

  That’s got to change or they’ll keeping risking everything and blowing up the economy…then quietly retiring. It’ll be like Alan Greenspan after the 2008 crash. He came to Congress and said, “I was incorrect”.

  Yeah, that makes it all better. /s
• iremember54 November 1st, 2009 at 9:13 pm «

  No no one expects a life time job.

  You don’t get the point that they need the people to make their money, but have no respect that they couldn’t have made it with out those people.

  I know a guy that worked for a company as the plant super for thirty seven years, two days before he was to retire, they fired Him, and closed the plant with no warning. He got nothing. They didn’t do it because the plant wasn’t making money, or that he had not done a great job for them, but to move operations overseas, so they could make even more money.

  What all of us fail to see is that the rich make their money off the backs of the people. True from the smallest shop, to the mega firms on Wall Street. They use the people the Governments and all they provide, but hate to pay taxes and give anything back. They are like that giant sucking sound Ross Parrow used to talk about, sucking the lifes blood out of everything they touch. They even have sucked the lifes blood out of this nation, and don’t give a shit about it, because if they no longer can make money off of it they will just move somewhere else.
• onitgoes November 1st, 2009 at 9:18 pm «

  Fair enough if the company no longer needs certain positions, or they are seriously out of money, or businss is dropping, or whatever. Then there are lay-offs. And some smaller companies only let employees go when there are no other options.

  But, please, corporate apologists need to check their facts. These giant corporations have become blood suckering blights on our country with CEOs and other corp. big-wigs raking in giant bucks. Workers are another expendable commodity, and if jobs can be shipped off-shore where someone poorer, with less protections and worse working conditions can do the job under inhumane conditions for pennies a day, then: hooray.

  The corporate fat-cats simply cannot make enough money to ever satisfy them and their overconsuming lifestyles. Back in the 1950s and the 1960s, there was an ethos that corporate executives owed something back to this country and to their workers. Now: forget it. The robber barons are touted as working ever so haaaaarrddd, and they are ever so “deserving” to rip off as much as possible.

  Somehow the right thinks this is just fine: no taxes, no regulations, allegedly Ayn Rand’s fantasy market will just take care of everything as if by magic… except when, uh-oh, everyone’s overleveraged and the same corporate fat cats have their hands out wanting payola from me, you and the rest of the taxpayers to rescue them from their excesses, stupidty, cupitidy and aggessive materialism.

  Please: small businesses tend to be somewhat different, as I indicated in the beginning. But big corporations are out to rob and steal and take what they can. Spare me the ersatz boo hoo hoo for them. Under Bushco these fat cats got a giant tax cut, and now where are we? Trickle-down economics doesn’t work, and giving these business barons all kinds of tax cuts just results in them off-shoring jobs to the third world, so that they can grow ever more wealthy.

  Yes, I blame them. I think that they should make an effort to keep more jobs in the USA, and I don’t buy it that they are so downtrodden here. They’re not. Wake up! Because those fat cats ain’t gonna pay you no never mind, no matter how much you suck up to them.
• Russ November 2nd, 2009 at 1:15 am «

  Would you prefer they keep people working at unnecessary jobs?

  No, which is why I’d like to purge all the racketeering dead weight in this “economy”, including most “CEOs”.

  Speaking more generally, what does the term “unnecessary job” even mean? The purpose of capitalism is to create enough good jobs for everyone. That’s what’s “necessary”. That’s what it promised it would do. That’s the reason we’re supposed to tolerate the existence of the rich. That’s the only social function they were supposed to serve.

  Now we know that was all a lie. We know every concept and promise of finance capitalism was a fraud. The rackets serve no purpose. The rentiers serve no purpose. They are purely parasitic. They are purely destructive. They are purely criminal.

  So now we know that the truly necessary job is to rid ourselves of them.
2. Hugh November 1st, 2009 at 9:32 pm «

   Well at least they are consistent. CEOs in the real economy are about as stupid, blind, and destructive as their counterparts in the financial industry.
3. wigwam November 1st, 2009 at 9:33 pm «

   IMHO, it is way to easy to dump workers in the U.S. I’m told that when European companies acquire or merge with U.S. companies and some time later there are cut backs, the U.S. workers are the first to go, because the have much less legal protection.
• montanamaven November 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 am «

  I hear Bosch might come into Michigan and build windmills. That’s because we have a highly skilled industrial workforce that they can get really really cheap. Welcome to the U.S. as a place for cheap labor aka third world.
4. montanamaven November 2nd, 2009 at 9:47 am «

   In Europe countries like France and Germany decided to keep people in their jobs. They cut down their work hours, but paid the workers the same amount. The governments subsidized the companies to keep workers working. Then, of course, the workers spent their paychecks on stuff. So Europe (not Britain who fell for the old Friedman Shock Doctrine free market flim flam like us) is moving out of the recession really. Their unemployment is nowhere near ours. That’s because they get it. Stimulate from the bottom up. Not bail out banks and expect some trickle down.

   We are hopeless.
5. iremember54 November 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm «

   A quick story. I owned a multimillion dollar Corporation it was in existance for 3.5 years. An act of Congress forced it and four other Corporations into Bankruptcy, killing not only the businesses but around three hundred jobs.

   The point is that the Corporation never paid a penny of tax in it’s whole existance, because of tax advantages.

   I paid tax, my employee’s paid tax, but the Corporation neve paid a cent.

   We fail to see that Corps. don’t live under the same rules we do. They make millions even billions, and hardly pay taxes.
• Grumpy November 2nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm «

  “We fail to see that Corps. don’t live under the same rules we do. They make millions even billions, and hardly pay taxes.”

  And where does the blame for that lie: with the Corps., or with the Congress that writes the Tax Laws?
• iremember54 November 2nd, 2009 at 5:06 pm «

  I have been saying that our congress has caused every problem this country has and not fixed one of them.

  Both parties and the people in them are responsible, but we keep electing and re-electing the same people, or people from the same parties, and expecting a different result. Sounds like insanity to me.
6. wigwam November 2nd, 2009 at 4:23 pm «

   In response to montanamaven @ 10

   Stimulate from the bottom up. Not bail out banks and expect some trickle down.

   Per Ian Welsh: “In 1980 there was a class war and only the rich showed up, and they been trickling on us ever since.”