What Jobs?
Some GOP ass-wipe, Kasich?, said laid-off workers can be retrained.
Roger Ailes' girlfriend moderator failed to follow-up other than with a crooked smile.
Questions a journalist might ask:
Retrained for what?
Who and what industries are hiring?
The conservative retraining scam for nonexistent and disappearing jobs is something we've been trying to do since Reaganomics was new -- unsuccessfully. Why would it work now? What's changed, besides these being the wealthiest times in human history?
= new reply since forum marked as read
All the statistics in the federal Department of Labor can show you how well the economy is doing. The reality is very different.
Here's what stands out for me:
An Interview with Tim Anderson on Obama's Commerce Nominee, Penny Pritzker, the Sub-Prime Queen
The Privilege of the Pritzkers
by DENNIS BERNSTEIN
CounterPunch, May 3-5, 2013
EXCERPT...
TA: $38 billion. One publication listed eight casinos, another listed 13, with each license worth a half a million dollars. There is another $5-7 billion in casinos. When you own 13 casinos for 5-7 billion, you are a player in the casino business. That’s just the hotels and casinos. There are many other companies they own such as the second largest chewing tobacco company, which they sold for 3.5 billion dollars. They actually owned the second and third largest chewing tobacco company, but have since off-loaded those for billions of dollars. Many of their assets are not what society considers clean assets, but hey don’t care. As far as money goes, they want it. When it comes to casinos or chewing tobacco companies, they don’t care. Their wealth is almost incalculable, because according to Forbes magazine, they are the only family in America to have off shore tax-free trusts because they were grandfathered in. Their off shore trust can ship money back to their family tax-free. It was grandfathered in because their grandfather got it through Congress – he was smart to see the future and got it done. Congress closed the loophole and grandfathered him in. Forbesmagazine wrote about the Pritzker’s off shore trust, they emphasized that there are over 1000 separate trusts. Many families have two or three different savings accounts to keep track of what money belongs to who, but when you have over 1000 different trusts to handle the family estate it’s very hard to comprehend how much wealth there is and how many businesses they control. A few years ago, Penny sold TransUnion, the largest credit reporting agency in America, but there’s a question about whether she sold it to herself by selling it to various hedge funds which her family has a large interest in. Until she sold it, you could say that Penny Pritzker had more files on every citizen in America than the CIA and FBI combined, because everybody has a credit score and credit report. Penny Pritzker had the credit scores and report on every single citizen in America.
SNIP...
TA: She had TransUnion while she had Superior Bank, so she controlled the credit scores of everybody who was getting a subprime loan. You pay a higher interest on your subprime loan based on your credit score. Whether or not it was ever brokered between the credit bureau and the bank, we don’t know, but we know the same people control both entities.
SNIP...
TA: Superior Bank was acquired back in 1989 as part of the original savings and loan giveaway by M, D and E Wall. As I wrote a in a paper for an economic conference in Denver, Superior Bank was sold to the Pritzkers for 42.5 million dollars. They changed the name from Lion Savings and Loan to Superior Bank after they acquired it. Lion Savings and Loan was sold to the Pritzkers just to put up money for the capital. But as government reports show, they only put up a million dollars cash and pledged their assets as the difference, the capital. That’s not supposed to be done, but they are privileged people so they get privileged deals. After they acquired this for $1 million they also got $640 million in tax credits.
SNIP...
TA: The tax credits were designed so they could use it in any entity they wanted. They didn’t have to use it on what they bought. It could be sold on the open market for value, the credits could be used to file back taxes or warehouse them for future taxes. So for a million dollars, they got 640 million dollars for agreeing to take over Superior Bank, which they then looted for years then gave it back to the government with an enormous loss to the uninsured depositors and the whole subprime industry.
CONTINUED...
http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/03/the-privilege-of-the-pritzkers/
PS: I don't have anything against rich people, per se. I'd just like to see the offices and powers of the government go toward helping somebody other than the rich. For a change.
The Shocking Redistribution of Wealth in the Past Five Years
by Paul Buchheit
Published on Monday, December 30, 2013 by Common Dreams
Anyone reviewing the data is likely to conclude that there must be some mistake. It doesn't seem possible that one out of twenty American families could each have made a million dollars since Obama became President, while the average American family's net worth has barely recovered. But the evidence comes from numerous reputable sources.
Some conservatives continue to claim that President Obama is unfriendly to business, but the facts show that the richest Americans and the biggest businesses have been the main - perhaps only - beneficiaries of the massive wealth gain over the past five years.
1. $5 Million to Each of the 1%, and $1 Million to Each of the Next 4%
From the end of 2008 to the middle of 2013 total U.S. wealth increased from $47 trillion to $72 trillion. About $16 trillion of that is financial gain (stocks and other financial instruments).
The richest 1% own about 38 percent of stocks, and half of non-stock financial assets. So they've gained at least $6.1 trillion (38 percent of $16 trillion). That's over $5 million for each of 1.2 million households.
The next richest 4%, based on similar calculations, gained about $5.1 trillion. That's over a million dollars for each of their 4.8 million households.
The least wealthy 90% in our country own only 11 percent of all stocks excluding pensions (which are fast disappearing). The frantic recent surge in the stock market has largely bypassed these families.
2. Evidence of Our Growing Wealth Inequality
This first fact is nearly ungraspable: In 2009 the average wealth for almost half of American families was ZERO (their debt exceeded their assets).
In 1983 the families in America's poorer half owned an average of about $15,000. But from 1983 to 1989 median wealth fell from over $70,000 to about $60,000. From 1998 to 2009, fully 80% of American families LOST wealth. They had to borrow to stay afloat.
It seems the disparity couldn't get much worse, but after the recession it did. According to a Pew Research Center study, in the first two years of recovery the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%. And then, from 2011 to 2013, the stock market grew by almost 50 percent, with again the great majority of that gain going to the richest 5%.
Today our wealth gap is worse than that of the third world. Out of all developed and undeveloped countries with at least a quarter-million adults, the U.S. has the 4th-highest degree of wealth inequality in the world, trailing only Russia, Ukraine, and Lebanon.
3. Congress' Solution: Take from the Poor
Congress has responded by cutting unemployment benefits and food stamps, along with other 'sequester' targets like Meals on Wheels for seniors and Head Start for preschoolers. The more the super-rich make, the more they seem to believe in the cruel fantasy that the poor are to blame for their own struggles.
President Obama recently proclaimed that inequality "drives everything I do in this office." Indeed it may, but in the wrong direction.
FORUM HOSTS, PLEASE NOTE: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 License.
Paul Buchheit is a college teacher, an active member of US Uncut Chicago, founder and developer of social justice and educational websites (UsAgainstGreed.org, PayUpNow.org, RappingHistory.org), and the editor and main author of "American Wars: Illusions and Realities" (Clarity Press). He can be reached at paul@UsAgainstGreed.org.
Original Article: http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/12/30-0
I'm searching for the latest figures. Don't want to be anecdotal.
Who cares about jobs? Trade will help bring the profits of the future to those who earned them: The Capitalist.
The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) includes special protections for corporations that offshore American jobs to low-wage countries. The TPP would not only replicate, but actually expand, the North American Free Trade Agreement's (NAFTA) extraordinary privileges for firms that relocate abroad, and eliminate many of the usual risks that make firms think twice about moving to low-wage countries. The TPP's offshoring incentives include a guaranteed minimum standard of treatment in the offshore venue and compensation for regulatory costs.
The NAFTA-style offshoring incentives that the TPP would expand have contributed to the net loss of more than 57,000 American manufacturing facilities and nearly 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs – one out of every four – since NAFTA took effect. The U.S. Department of Labor lists millions of workers as specifically losing their jobs to offshoring and import competition since the Fast-Tracking of NAFTA, the World Trade Organization (WTO) and NAFTA expansion deals – and that is under just one narrow program that excludes many whose job loss is trade-related. Studies estimate that the U.S. economy could have supported 7 million more manufacturing jobs if not for the massive trade deficits that have accrued under current U.S. trade policy.
By expanding NAFTA's legacy of middle-class job erosion, the TPP would also exacerbate U.S. income inequality. A litany of studies has produced an academic consensus that trade flows during the era of TPP-like deals have contributed to the historic increase in U.S. income inequality – the only debate is the degree to which trade is to blame. NAFTA-style deals have exacerbated inequality by displacing well-paid manufacturing workers who must then compete for lower-paid non-offshoreable service sector jobs, which in turn depresses wages in those sectors, spurring broad-based middle-class wage stagnation.
A recent study finds that even with a conservative estimate of trade's contribution to inequality, the losses from a projected TPP-produced increase in inequality would wipe out tiny projected gains from the deal for most U.S. workers. The net result would be wage losses for all but the richest 10 percent of U.S. That is, for anyone making less than $88,000 per year, the TPP would mean a pay cut.
CONTINUED w/links...
http://www.citizen.org/Page.aspx?pid=6475
PS: Wouldn't you like to be a "Capitalist," too, dairydog91? We might, if we win Powerball.
PPS: I know, "Public Citizen." What's Ralph Nader know about justice, protecting consumers and democratic principles?
Take Wealth Management at UBS, they're hiring.
See if you can spot some familiar names on this list:
Small world. Phil Gramm, the Republican who spearheaded bank deregulation in the Senate, now works as vice chairman at Swiss bank UBS. He hired Bill Clinton, the Democrat, who signed bank deregulation that benefited Swiss bank UBS and other financial institutions.
They now work together at UBS -- which received uncounted billions in bailout money by the way -- to specialize in some kind of "Weath Management."
PS: Forensic economist and former Fed regulator William K. Black wrote it reminds him of what happened during the Savings and Loans Crisis of the late 80s and early 90s. At the time, that was the greatest bank heist in history. How were we to know it was a dry run for the really big money in 2008?
Rather than going to the rich banksters, do you know how many jobs $16 trillion could create? I bet it's a lot.
