I have a better idea: how about a corporate tax holiday! Yeah, let's do that! I hear a lot of corporations have billions of dollars in overseas profits that they are keeping out of the country because they don't want to pay US taxes on them. Why don't we let them bring all that money back home under a really low tax rate! That would be great. And then they can spend the money on a dividend to their shareholders, almost all of which will go to the richest 1% of Americans. And they get to keep the money tax free! Hooray! But we can issue press releases about how this will help create jobs in America! And we don't even need to require that the companies do anything like that with the money, after all they know best.

Oops, Congress thought of it first, didn't they.

Excess cash can also mean that corporations are exhausting fixed assets. Corporations and individuals put off replacing assets as they wear out when the future looks less certain.

Excess cash that is not a function of delaying the purchase of operating assets is also indicative of a company that is overcapitalized. Microsoft has been in that position for years which is one reason why its stock hasn't performed well over that period of time.

Check Angry Bear on excessive liquidity world-wide.

What are the historical parallels to the current situation? So much cash, and no worthwhile investments to be found.

Some interesting parallels can probably be seen in the global financial situations of the 1920s. Great Britain had exhausted itself financially from WW1 and was trying to repay the US for all of the loans the US had made during the war. Ditto for France, who also labored under the defaulted Tsarist bonds the French had purchased during the turn of the century (little did they know that 'fin de siecle' would be real). The Germans were defaulting on every obligation under the sun but were keeping their economy afloat with loans from the US, until the crash. Everybody had overinvested in everything during the war and then the great first electriacal and electronics boom. The global economy went into an inverted flat spin in 1929 and nobody could regain control. Just think what happens if China and the Pacific Rim economies catch the buck flu because the US economy begins to go south and the stop buying US paper? The US economy begins to unwind very quickly, dragging everyone else down with it.

Ah, the flaw in your argument is that corporations ARE creating jobs in the US. Check the unemployment rate, Esteban.

Remember, we're in the economic sweet spot. Not too hot. Not too cold. Moderate wage growth. Enough new jobs to absorb new workers.

If you're looking for the late 90's boom, you must've not been paying attention for the bust that followed. Booms are followed by busts. Who wants a boom?

Think about it! Have a great weekend, all.

Do I not recall from Bu$hCo promises that it wasn't the big corporations, but small business that was going to be creating all of these new jobs we've been hearing about for the last four years?

I suspect that the solution to this problem will take the form many nations now impose: the requirement that 'local' partners be involved in the business, and that local citizens must be hired if the company is to do any business in that country. As I understand it, that's how it is in Mexico. One way or another, the corporation will pay something locally!

Sure, Mexico is hardly the best example of a worker's paradise, but it's the only foreign country I have any knowledge about.

In the Eisenhower administration the thinking was because big business is inefficient and small businesses create jobs and grow the economy, they should impose a progressive tax on corporations. This would incentivise them to split into smaller units, and provide an incentive to start small businesses.

Muckdog - every single person here knows that the unemployment rate is down because of the large number of people who have given up looking for work. You even know that. So what's the point of your comment? You know that the country not only didn't keep up with the need for NEW jobs, it LOST jobs during Bush's first term.

I always come back to this, but one of the very most disgusting things I've ever heard come out of a politician's pie hole was when Bill Frist said that capital gains taxation was "immoral."

Kick these guys' asses and I'll try to follow along. But remember that our wealth keeps us free.

Ah, the flaw in your argument is that corporations ARE creating jobs in the US. Check the unemployment rate, Esteban. Posted by muckdog

The flaw in this statement is that the employment rate doesn't reflect the number of unemployed in the country. The employment participation, after peaking during the last year of the Clinton administration, has fallen to its lowest level since 1988. The share of the working-age population working or actively seeking a job -- known as the participation rate -- fell to 65.8 percent in January, the lowest reading in 17 years, according to numbers collected by the Labor Department.
If you look at the employment figures, you will see that the number of employed recently grew to equal the number when Bush took office. That is heralded as a triumph by this government, but it ignores the fact that every month approximately 150,000 people enter the work pool. Five years is 60 months times 150,000, or roughly 9,000,000 jobs short. That is a lot of people needing jobs and not a number that any Republican wishes to see disseminated.

Muckdog knows this guys; he's just having fun with me.

But remember that our wealth keeps us free.

"Their wealth keeps us poor," is more apropos.

Check the unemployment rate, Esteban.

Do you mean Esteban should check those BLS numbers? Bwaa Haaa Haaa! How droll!

We have 5 million part-time workers who want full time employment and can't get it. What about the 8 million who make less than the job they previously had? What about the ex-prisoners who can't get a job (the BLS doesn't count them). And the BLS says 9.9% of black males are unemployed, but it seems half of black males in New York don't have a job. And what about that job shrinkage thing the BLS is doing? You know, there fewer jobs so real unemployment figures are understated? And what about the millions of people who gave up looking for a job? And why would people have any difficulty finding jobs when corporate profits are higher than they have ever been?

Ahhh, the BLS numbers. Flawed, cooked and cranked out for the chimporer.

I just concluded a harrowing 40 week job search after getting laid off due to a downturn in the commercial real estate market (I am a high-rise property manager). The last time I was out hunting I reached out to about 150 potential employers, went on 7 interviews, and got 3 offers. This time I reached out to well over twice that amount, went on 36 interviews and got 1 offer. I took a substantial cut in pay.

There seems to be great pressure on wages presently. Many of the firms I spoke with are having a good year, but the drumbeat to cut costs is still being sounded from on high. The mood seemed to be that hiring is some sort of necessary evil and a drain on resources. Absent is the notion that employees create wealth and earn their keep.

For one position, I interviewed SIX times with higher levels of non-decision makers. No one could make a decision. Many interviewers were unskilled in asking questions. Only a few actually knew what they wanted and were able to try to dial it in. I learned to be vary wary of certain words like "entreprenurial", which means you don't get paid, and "fast-paced office" which means you are expected to work 80 hour weeks or get laid off again.

In the chop shop world of today's business, we are all waiting to be replaced by the next machine or the next $2.00 per hour contract worker in Bangladesh. "Help the Wealthy" is the creed of the times.

What are they teaching these MBAs lately? It seems that the prevailing business wisdom is to find cheap labor, exploit it, and reduce any liability. I have had to sign countless authorizations for credit checks, provide personal data, drug screens, psychological profiles,sign disclosure waivers, etc. all in advance of any offer. Then the offer wouldn't materialize. There should be nothing humiliating about looking for a job, but there is. I am grateful there were no rectal exams, I suppose.

Good management often finds intelligent use of resources and applies them. In my opinion, our economy is very ill-managed.

France and Germany together have an equal amount of unemployment with half the population. Germany had been paying their unemployed $3400.00 a month! I say had because Schroder got Hartz IV passed last year and it went into effect in January and reduced that amount to $1200.00 a month. Job hunting isn't the most pleasant thing to do. Many of these HR people aren't very nice.

Our employment number is at an all time high, besting December, 2000. Go to any states Dept of Labor site and read their take on employment. Obviously y'all don't trust the fed numbers. Go look at NJ, or MI, or WI, or NC,(sounding like Dean here) they all have Dem. Guvs. The very same day, 5 minutes apart, in NC, Kerry was talking about what needed to be done to get better employment and 5 minutes later, the Guv was saying we've done it and been sucessful. Both stories covered by the same station WRAL less than 5 minutes apart. What a confussion that created in NC? You wonder why Kerry didn't have a chance there? The story in NJ over the summer was other states were outsourcing their jobs to NJ.

Wal-mart has 1 and a half million workers. By calling corporate Wal-mart evil, you're calling each of those coworkers evil. Those people are 'us'. How about Southwest Airlines, those workers are 'us'. Corporations get tax breaks to relocate or to stay where they are. They are still paying their workers. Their workers consume in the local economy and pay taxes. As technology marches on there will be some shrinkage in employment the technology replaces, but there will be new opportunities to service this new technology, new jobs. You've got to grow with the technology. Do the retraining to get the new technology job.

there are good reasons to tax corps (we need the money and they have it) and good reasons not to (they have accountants who will just move the profits somewhere else. But there is no good reason not to tax individuals when the corps pay them obscene amounts of compensation. Raising our top tax rate should be a no brainer - anyone who thinks that the corporate ceo types will work less if we tax them at 45% on their last million instead of 38% is living in dreamland. Besides, would we really be worse off if they worked 7% less?

Well Peter, you make Wal-Mart sound like a populist movement; perhaps Sam Walton was Spartacus. Does the second month of training on how to hold an optical scanner prove more enlightening than the first?

Here in Chicago, CNA Insurance (a global casualty powerhouse) threatened to move jobs out of the city if it didn't get $11 million dollars of taxpayer money. I don't know if CNA is "us", but there grant money used to be. Corporations are not only earning record profits, but they are routinely performing classic shakedowns to get The People's money. It is only a matter of time until Wal-Mart starts shaking down local governments.

Listen to Obelus. The rate of long-term unemployed matches the 1930s. I know from grim, personal experience. Two masters degrees and jobless after 28 months.

Melanie congrats on the two masters. They maybe whats hurting your chances. Maybe you are overqualified for some or many of the employment opportunities you've aplied for. My son was searching for a new profession and was able to go from job to job fairly easy, and has finally found the job he needed.

Boeing shopped around and chose Chicago over Dallas, leaving the Seattle area after MANY years. I don't see it as 'The Peoples' money, they are not taking anything, just not paying. It seams your local government wants them to stay and are willing to do without. Get new local government that's not willing and change that. Local government seems to be where your problems lie. See what happens when you play hardball with companies, just be willing to accept any consequences if they bolt.

Hang in there Melanie. Two masters is no problem.

There seems to be great pressure on wages presently.

And that pressure is downward. It's pretty telling when 80% of Americans live worse than their European counterparts. Although we are a pretty good place to be rich in, unless you mind losing 25% of your worth due to the drop of the dollar.

But, if we could get the dollar down to the level of the Mexican peso we would solve that darned immigration problem.

mike doesn't understand booms and busts. you think 3% unemployment is sustainable? lol. 5% is considered full employment. that's where we are.

yes, bush lost jobs in term one. but we know this was due to the 2000-2002 bear market, which was due to the fed busting the late 90's boom. since the end of the bear market, we've had a stable and moderately growing economy. we are now adding enough jobs to absorb new workers.

if things overheat like in 1999 and we see 250k jobs then the fed will create another bust.

sorry 4 lower case. my pc blew up and i'm on my pda.

peter wrote: Wal-mart has 1 and a half million workers. By calling corporate Wal-mart evil, you're calling each of those coworkers evil. Those people are 'us'.

Of those Wal-mart workers, they also collect about $4billion in government benefits because they are paid such low wages by Wal-mart, which is itself massively profitable. In fact for many Wal-mart workers the wages are so low (below the government poverty level) for their full-time jobs that they qualify for government assistance. I sure don't want to be one those people - do you?

But you've mixed the message. Calling Wal-mart evil because of its policies toward its workers and the communities it operates in is not the same as calling the workers evil. They are two separate and entirely different things. The workers are not the corporation - despite the "associate" agitprop Wal-mart would have you believe.

What makes this corporation evil is the fact that it is massively profitable, while being abusively stingy to its workers. This forces many of the workers onto government assistance programs, which comes out of taxes you and I pay. (This is covert government assistance to WMT.) Simultaneously Wal-mart demands tax breaks of communities where it plans to build. (More tax breaks for the wealthy corporation.) And when it is finally successful in eliminating the local competition, those displaced workers leave the area or work for Wal-mart itself (reducing the tax income to the local community) and the closed local businesses reduce the local tax base even further. All these various tax benefits are accruing to a corporation that is already massively wealthy, but pays very little (if any) corporate income taxes. This is a business strategy known as "socialize the costs, privatize the profits", and ipso facto it is this implementation of that strategy that makes Wal-mart an evil corporation.

Are those people us? They may be some of us, but they are not me and I can tell by your words that they are not you either. So what does that mean to you and to me? To you apparently it means success - that literally millions of your fellow citizens are living at or below the poverty level - and that is part of your definition of success. More of your definition of success is that your taxes are higher so that Wal-mart's executives and shareholders can make more profit. What does it mean to me? I find it revolting and I vote with my feet and my wallet. I will not visit or buy from Wal-mart. You may retort that I therefore pay more money in purchases than I ought to, because I don't get to take advantage of the low low prices at Wal-mart. And I would argue that "taking advantage" is what this entire argument is all about - and I refuse to contribute to an evil corporation that is taking advantage of millions of workers, thousands of communities, and hundreds of millions of american taxpayers and non-american workers just so I can save a few bucks. (Since I've already had to pay how much tax penalty to provide government support for the workers, a few bucks more doesn't hurt me.)

Corporations get tax breaks to relocate or to stay where they are. They are still paying their workers.

Wal-mart has a market capitalization in 2004 of about $215billion, and a net profit of more than $10billion. Please explain to me why Wal-mart needs tax breaks at all? Are they still a struggling small business that needs a leg up? No, they are not. They are the most successful retailer in the world. And the old chestnut that they are providing jobs and thus tax base in small communities is both specious and false argument.

The truth is, Wal-mart does not need corporate tax breaks at the community level or at the federal level. Wal-mart has succeeded and should be allowed to stand on its own, without government (federal or local) largess, whether overt or covert. As a corporate citizen they should pay their fair share. After all, being able to operate in this country and make the profit they do (annual revenue $288 billion) is reward enough.

You "vote with your feet and wallet", have you voted out those people granting the tax breaks in your community? They will take what you give them. Stop giving. I can ask for a million, but if I get a Wendy's hamburger, fries and a frosty I'm happy. Also revoke the tax break. Y'all seem to want to hold those evil corporations guilty, how about the lawmakers, the city council and mayor? The state lawmakers, legislature and governor?

How do you come to a number for fair profit? Corporations report to stockholders (us) and they're intrusted with maximizing their performance for our good. So $10 billion is bad, how about $7B.? $5B? What is $10B, 5% profit? Big number in total, but 5% isn't so big. Paying $1.50 for a soda that has a 10% food cost is okay all across America, $1.25 for an iced tea even less in food cost. Do you want to go after the Dairy Queen down the street that charges the same as the Wendy's 1 mile away? They both have the same profit from that tea or soda.

walmarts are sure crowded tho.

Max Speaks!