ZH — Should You Be Subsidizing Executive Compensation In The Name Of Job Creation?

On Friday every main stream media organization was hyperventilating over the amazing NFP number and the Unemployment rate. Three years after the great recession ended JOBS were created. Hallelujah - end of story. But has anyone really thought about what kinds of jobs are being created (other than Zerohedge). [As a matter of fact, yes.] Has anyone thought about how their tax dollars are being used to support the very generous compensation packages of Executives (higher stock prices are always good for executives who are compensated in stock) while the “newly employed” are compensated with barely sustenance level wages and NO benefits. [Again, yes.] Has anyone raised the notion in this election cycle about how the “soft landing” in American living standards, is going to affect GDP growth going forward, considering that the US is an economy based 70% on consumption. [Yep, again. Why do these ZH people think that they are only ones who have a clue? I guess they don't get out much.]

On Friday Caterpillar announced they were closing a factory in Canada. They had wanted the workers to take a 50% pay-cut plus a substantial cut to benefits. The workers understandably were not excited at the prospect of going from earning $67,000 a year to $28,000. One might think that Caterpillar was a struggling company, asking workers to accept a 50% pay-cut, one couldn’t be more wrong. Profit was up 36% in 2011 vs 2012. Oddly the CEO’s (also Chairman of the Board) pay package in 2010 (latest available numbers) was quadrupled from 2009, to a total of $22.5 million including a $16 million stock grant.

Read it at Zero Hedge

Should You Be Subsidizing Executive Compensation In The Name Of Job Creation?
Submitted by lizzy36

This is reverse socialism. It is the redistribution of wealth from the lower to the upper class with explicit State support. It is the sort of wealth redistribution that if allowed to go unchecked leads to social instability.

Is Zero Hedge sounding like Mother Jones, or is Mother Jones sounding like Zero Hedge? Either way, I like it.

BTW, someone tell lizzy that this is Mussolini's definition of "fascism" rather than "reverse socialism." "Reverse socialism" is capitalism. Capitalism is private ownership of means of production, while socialism is public ownership of means of production.

Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers

Congressman Peter DeFazio smelled a rat and boy did he find one. A host of Oregon forest thinning and clearing jobs, created by the American Recovery Act and funded by taxpayer dollars, went to foreigners, brought over on H-2B guest worker visas, instead of unemployed Americans. DeFazio fought and obtained funding for those forest projects and jobs in the 2009 Stimulus bill. DeFazio assumed with so many unemployed and desperate U.S. Citizens in his state, of course those jobs would go to them. He was wrong.

A local newspaper in Bend Oregon, actually did their job and started investigating how forest thinning work was going to foreigners instead of unemployed loggers in the area. Defazio read the newspaper.

In 2010, the Forest Service awarded Stimulus Recovery Act contracts to four employers totaling$7,140,782 for forestry work in Oregon. These four employers in turn hired 254 foreign guest workers. This is when unemployment in Oregon was hitting 15% in rural areas and loggers were hard hit.

Believe this or not, even with taxpayer dollars, supposedly to create jobs, employers are not required to recruit U.S. workers. That's right, you can be unemployed, pay taxes which in turn import foreign workers and deny Americans employment. Below is a local KATU news segment where one logger tells KATU the real unemployment rate in forestry work was over 40%.

Read the rest: Stimulus Money Used to Employ Foreign Guest Workers Instead of Americans at Economic Populist.

This is a real blood boiler.

Seniors...the new "job creators."

People are buzzing about Obama's "bold" $450 bln jobs stimulus plan.

Obama says, "it will be paid for."

By whom?

Seniors.

That's because Obama also offered up big cuts to Medicare.

So who's paying for this bold new jobs plan? Rich people?

Nah...

Seniors!

Seniors are the new job creators.

Way to go, Obama! Way to go.