The Wall Street Journal reports today that the top 500 U.S. companies have the highest earnings in four years, but there is no indication that this has been good for American jobs or the American economy. As Paul Huck, chief financial officer of Air Products and Chemicals Inc., told the Journal, "We aren't creating jobs." The source of profits has been growth in foreign markets. Thus it is not surprising that U.S. multinational corporations cut U.S. jobs by 2.9 million during the 2000s while increasing jobs overseas by 2.4 million. One of the exceptions to this trend is Caterpillar which is expanding in the United States. But Caterpillar warns about the absence of a long term plan to improve the country's infrastructure which undermines business confidence.
What is surprising are not these statistics, but that our public discourse has come to the point that it is within the realm of acceptable politics for the Republicans to openly lie about their motivation for protecting the wealthy from taxation.
Indeed, I recall reading about how many jobs of late are created by comparatively small businesses, which was one reason for being particularly sensitive to their total tax burden.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | 07/25/2011 at 06:01 AM