A New York Times story today (10/28/11) by Jennifer Steinhauer on the state of bipartisanship in Washington noted:
Outside of a few recent flashes of light–the passage of three trade bills this month, and an agreement on patent reform–there have been no big bipartisan jobs initiatives in this Congress.
The idea that trade deals with Colombia and South Korea are “big” job creators is not a fact–it’s an argument that proponents of the deals make. But a corporate media that gives a thumbs-up to anything labeled “free trade” are going to be just as eager to call these deals job creators.
As Janine Jackson noted in a recent article in Extra!, the media didn’t seem interested in evaluating the job creation numbers peddled by the deal’s promoters, who were claiming 70,000 jobs would be created by the Korea agreement. According to Public Citizen, the deal could result in a net loss of jobs.
The story with patent reform is similar–lawmakers make spectacular claims about the jobs that are going to be created, while critics suggest the effect will be minor.
Wasn’t NAFTA supposed to create thousands of U.S. jobs, too? From 1993-2002, over 525,000 American jobs were lost to NAFTA. Weren’t we promised fair trade, not free trade? These agreements were modeled after a proven failed trade model, NAFTA.
What is seldom mentioned is that in the South Korean Free Trade Deal, only 35% of a product needs to be made in South Korea. Sixty-five percent can be made in a third, outside country, such as China and will eventually flow into the U.S., duty free, in a few years. The benefits of the pact don’t even fully accrue to the trade pact partners but to unknown, third countries.
Colombia is a place where union activists are killed and there is nothing in this agreement that relates to loss of trade for Colombia, if this, and other human rights abuses, continue.
Panama is another tax haven for multinationals.
The U.S. is the market of last resort for the world. Want a place to dump your products? Come to the U.S.A.
It looks like the ghost of Bill Clinton’s NAFTA and Chinese trade pact is coming back to haunt us this Halloween. The more I think of Bill the worse I think of him. NAFTA, MFN status for China, the Financial Modernization Act of 1999, derivatives deregulation–the deregulation bills may have been Phil Gramm’s idea, but Bill Clinton didn’t have to sign them!
FAIR should talk about how every media outlet for almost a year has refused to talk about National Hiring Day, the grass roots jobs idea, though they talk about jobs almost daily.
There’s only one jobs program that doesn’t need government involvement at all.
There’s only one jobs program that makes every corporation in the US part of the solution
There’s only one jobs program that costs nothing.
There’s only one jobs program that works in one day.
National Hiring Day – This is a day that corporations are encouraged to hire new employees. Corporations are called on to put patriotism first and help their country in
hard times. Those corporations that cannot hire, are asked to stop firing for that month.
http://wp.me/p5S9X-nv
By hiring one person now, a business gets thousands of customers with new jobs and buying power in return. Business gives a little to get a lot in return.
You’ve been flogging this national hiring day for a while, no? Do you really think that a toothless “call for action” is going to budge most of the corporations into doing something they don’t want to do? Or that they can’t do? Shame, as you should know by now, doesn’t work on the utterly shameless. And it’s always profits before anything . . . c’mon now.
Although free trade agreements have appealed to me previously, philosophically. to allow other nations to improve their economy and standard of living, as well as lower costs for products, I realize now that the real agenda was “cheap labor” for corporations, to enable CEOs to recieve huge salaries and bonuses. Trade agreements, with China and other nations should have included provsions requiring improved working conditions and better pay for foreign workers, but the corporate lobbyists made sure that didn’t happen. Now, manufacturing and employment in the US has suffered greatly and wages have stagnated, while CEOs high-five each other.
The time is ripe for the Occupy Movement. I hope it succeeds, and will do all I can to see that it does, with the hope it grows and corruption of economies and the body politick is prurged.
“Free trade” means trading with countries where the workers work for free (or at $5 a day for Mexico it’s nearly free) Pretty clear that anything that gets past our congress is going to screw us. No consumer protection agency that can do anything to protect consumers should be proof enough that we don’t have a representive democracy anymore.
Whirlpool annoucing profits and then layoffs should be another clear sign that it doesn’t matter whether a company is “American” or not. Soon enough they will just completely abandon this country for greener pastures in Asia. Get ready to trade with your neighbors (like the barter system so well practiced by the Russians since their government was a failure as well) if you want to survive the next downturn, which has to come since nothing has been done to fix our system since the last crash.
Well I agreed with Ross Perot when he said about NAFTA “that giant sucking sound you hear, is jobs going away from America”.The problem is the alternative.Then and now we must compete.To compete we must lower corp tax rates.We can piss and moan all day about cheap labor forces.We still must compete
Lower corporate tax rates? Are you kidding? As a share of GDP, the U.S. has the second lowest tax rate for corporations in the developed world. This is according to the Center for Tax Justice. In 2009, U.S. corporate taxes had fallen to 1.3 percent of GDP, from 4% in 1965. Some pay no taxes at all. It’s 35% on paper only.
Corporate profits are at an all-time high. Their lobbyists swarm all over Pennsylvania Avenue and are becoming increasingly brazen.
The Center for Responsive Politics has identified more than 325 former members of Congress, and 3,664 former staffers, in lobbying or related fields. To say that there’s a revolving door between big business interests and Washington, D.C., would be an understatement.
“Getting government off our back” means”getting government off of Wall Street’s back and big business interests.
Yeah, let’s compete and see who can get to the bottom first and stay there.
In its “Paying Taxes 2009” publication, based on its 2009 Doing Business report, the World Bank-International Finance Corporation estimated that the United States has a lower effective rate of current corporate tax than that of several other nations, including Germany, Canada, India, China, Brazil, Japan, and Italy.
Because the U.S. tax code offers so many deductions, credits, and other mechanisms by which corporations can reduce their taxes, the actual percentage of profits that U.S. corporations pay in taxes â┚¬” or what analysts refer to as their effective tax rate â┚¬” is not high, compared to other developed countries.
The current effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. is somewhere between 25 and 27%
Woodward and Elaine…So you spurn the idea that our corp tax rate is the highest in the world?Strangely our president does not.He wants to lower the tax rate.
And you two feel that the tax rate has nothing to do with our businesses moving out to greener pastures,or competing with China?Well I feel much better now that i know everything is well.Im sure I will feel even happier when your plan to RAISE corp taxes is enacted ,and jobs come flowing back.Is this whatit is like to be at a liberal meeting?Maddness
our stated rate, 35%, is second highest in the world, our effective rate is not.
obama’s proposed changes to the corporate tax code would lower the stated tax rate while placing new limits on deductions.
the new stated rate would probably be in the neighborhood of the current effective rate, 25%-27%
i didn’t suggest raising the tax rate in my comment.
Woodward…Do you agree with the basic premise that anything that hurts the creation of new business ,is an attack on job creation?
And remember the effective rate of taxes to any corporation is 0%.Tax them at 1 or 50% and they will simply pass that on to the consumer.So this whole game is not about bringing corporations to heel.It is how to raise the most revenue without effecting business growth.I would say today that line is razor thin, and is in fact a trade off.We need to decide if we want more growth, with less taxes.Or less growth -with more taxes.Problem is all things being equal….one creates jobs ,and one does not.
Fanny and Freddy asked for another 6 billion in gov stym funds today.They are handing out massive pay stubs and bonuses to their head honchos.Oh well they only lost 100 billion.Sounds like a good investment