Message-ID: <alpine.NEB.2.00.1007282314420.12917@panix1.panix.com>
From: Alan Sondheim <sondheim@panix.com>
To: Cyb <cybermind@listserv.aol.com>, Wryting-L <WRYTING-L@listserv.wvu.edu>,
Cyberculture <cyberculture@zacha.org>
Subject: The Job Machine Grinds to a Halt (fwd)
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 23:14:49 -0400 (EDT)
---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:25:22 From: moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG To: PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG Subject: The Job Machine Grinds to a Halt The Job Machine Grinds to a Halt By Harold Meyerson Washington Post July 28, 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/27/ST2010072705270.html?sid=ST2010072705270 Ain't no hiring. And ain't likely to be any for a good long time. The problem isn't merely the greatest downturn since the Great Depression. It's also that big business has found a way to make big money without restoring the jobs it cut the past two years, or increasing its investments or even its sales, at least domestically. In the mildly halcyon days before the 2008 crash, the one economic outlier was wages. Profit, revenue and GDP all increased; only ordinary Americans' incomes lagged behind. Today, wages are still down, employment remains low and sales revenue isn't up much, either. But profits are the outlier. They're positively soaring. Among the 175 companies in the Standard & Poor's 500- stock index that have released their second-quarter reports, the New York Times reported Sunday, revenue rose by a tidy 6.9 percent, but profits soared by a stunning 42.3 percent. Profits, that is, are increasing seven times faster than revenue. The mind, as it should, boggles. How can America's corporations so defy gravity? Ever adaptive, they have evolved a business model that enables them to make money even while the strapped American consumer has cut back on purchasing. For one thing, they are increasingly selling and producing overseas. General Motors is going like gangbusters in China, where it now sells more cars than it does in the United States. In China, GM employs 32,000 assembly- line workers; that's just 20,000 fewer than the number of such workers it has in the States. And those American workers aren't making what they used to; new hires get $14 an hour, roughly half of what veterans pull down. [To continue reading this story, please follow the link below: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2010/07/27/ST2010072705270.html?sid=ST2010072705270 _____________________________________________ Portside aims to provide material of interest to people on the left that will help them to interpret the world and to change it. Submit via email: moderator@portside.org Submit via the Web: portside.org/submit Frequently asked questions: portside.org/faq Subscribe: portside.org/subscribe Unsubscribe: portside.org/unsubscribe Account assistance: portside.org/contact Search the archives: portside.org/archive