by Glenn Littrell
NO! How much incentive does an American plant need? What about responsibility, civic commitment, and community? Why is it that when the oil companies where reaping record profits they were gouging us at the pumps? Then when people complained they pointed to their inability to drill off shore as 'unfair', even though they weren't exploring the permits they had. Yet, since then the proven cause of the high gas prices wasn't a shortage, but speculation and profiteering. At the beginning of the mortgage crisis all the blame was laid at the feet of those individuals who were losing their homes because they had taken out mortgages they couldn't afford on homes with inflated value. But who sold them those homes without concern for the buyers ability to pay? Who packaged those loans with the intent to sell them to reap inflated profits before the true nature of the loans were exposed? And the tail end of this predatory package is the purchasers of those bad loans who harass and harangue people at all hours of the day and night trying to get them to pony up even as they are going through hard times?
With 4 out of 5 Americans believing it is immoral to default on a mortgage where is the shame on the other side? Why don't corporations have any shame about defaulting on their commitments? And what's even more concerning is why do we hold the individual accountable for responsibility, patriotism and the welfare of this nation but then allow groups of individuals to hide behind their corporate shields to abuse the benefits that the working family struggles to obtain.
What more incentives could we give them? Less regulation? That's what got us into this mess [recession] Enron, Tycom, the banking crisis, the mortgage crisis etc. All [in a large part] results of deregulation over the last ten years. Lower taxes? Compare the top tax bracket for the last hundred years and you will see that current taxes are relatively low and what makes anyone think that lowering taxes for the wealthy will result in plants being built here? The lower taxes that we give to the rich and corporations are financing plants in other countries! And more and more of the rich are investing in foreign assets and hiding money offshore. Where's their since of responsibility to their nation?
How many of these companies and corporations only exist because of incentives given to them by us, this country? Billions of dollars in government funded and backed business loans, government grants, incentives etc., Years of sweat from their employees. Then they bail on us. Yeah they need more incentives.
How many companies are moving their plants because they're losing money [long term] and how many of them are doing it just to increase profits? What's the real incentive they want? Lower wages? Less employee benefits? Well there you go, now we have it. Lower taxes for the wealthy so that people who don't have to work for a living can better enjoy not working [when poor people do it we condemn it as welfare]. Less regulation so that corporations can continue to take greater risk and speculation with less public detection [when working families do it and loose their homes or worse its condemned as irresponsible if not criminal]. Less regulations by building plants in third world countries that have no environmental regulations, thus allowing the dumping of toxic waste directly into the air and water that is used by the workers they employ. Lower wages by employing third world or indigent poor to work for pennies an hour with no benefits. Could we possibly compete with that? So what possible incentive could we offer these companies to stay that they haven't already received. Lower wages and no benefits. None of us could afford the pay cut that would take. Which is ironic because none of us who would still have a decent wage would want to pay the cost [ever increasing] that would result from an ever growing lower class that comes from the exporting of these jobs.
We all want to condemn excessive bonuses for executives and the greed of Wall Street but we never want to criticize the greed and irresponsibility of excessive profits [not profits, excessive profits] and greed by corporations. THEY ARE ONE AND THE SAME!
Those executives work for the corporations! The corporations are what Wall Street is all about. Who do we think the lobbyist we all complain about work for? Insurance companies [corporations] spent millions of dollars to fight health care and are now raising premiums to pay for it. 'Poor' Oil companies with record profits, 'poor' mortgage companies who got ripped off by hard working people, 'poor' insurance companies who couldn't compete with a government option.
Don't want to eventually pay for health care, higher unemployment benefits, a resurgence of welfare, a crumbling infrastructure, more entitlements? Then we need to rethink our attitudes on whether the solution is to protect the working man and build our economy from there or cow tow to the greed and avarice of Wall Street, its executives and yes the corporations that run it and our country.
Glenn Littrell
Notes From Other Sources:
“ Today, 1.2 million jobless workers lose their extended unemployment insurance (UI) because some Senate millionaires think a $300 a week unemployment check will make people too lazy to look for a job. This group also is pushing to reduce the nation’s budget deficit rather than use short-term spending to create desperately needed jobs for the nation’s 26 million unemployed or underemployed workers…
…While more than 15 million U.S. workers can’t find work because there’s five workers for every one job opening, the rich are getting massively richer. The ranks of the nation’s millionaires rose 16.5 percent, to 2.87 million, last year. Their total wealth in North America rose 17.8 percent, to $10.7 trillion…
…A new poll shows the majority of the U.S. public wants government to take a larger and stronger role in making the economy work for America’s workers. Nine out of 10 agree that government and corporations should join with individuals to place the common good above greed….
…So, in short: Republicans in Congress are out of touch with the American people and are working with the growing group of millionaires—like coal mine owner Don Blankenship of Massey Energy Co. and BP CEO Tony Hayward—to ride roughshod over those whose sweat and hard work built this nation.
Some say the United States is now a corporatocracy.”
Millionaires Killing Jobs by Tula Connell, Jun 25, 2010 @ AFL-CIO Now Blog