It's becoming more and more obvious, the disconnect; as Robert Reich points out below, unemployment stays high as corporate profits soar. Not that the disconnect wasn't always present ("always" means post-Reagan, the outer limit of anyone's memory these days). But it's getting harder to hide, and they're not taking much pains to keep it under wraps.
This Countdown segment does a nice job of making the disconnect plain. Corporate America has created 1.4 million jobs abroad — enough to reduce American unemployment nearly 1% if created here. Can't get much more obvious.
A good job by Sam Seder, filling in. No wonder Mr. and Ms. Corporate Master feel unloved; guilty conscience.
A second look at those Apple iPhone numbers (Apple, the corp that loves the anti-corporate rebel in you):
$179 – Retail priceNeed we say that the so-called "U.S." Chamber of Commerce is a big supporter of laws that reward outsourcing? Nope; that's been said.
$131 – Labor cost
$120 – Foreign labor
$ 11 – U.S. labor (design jobs, which are moving abroad as well)
As Ian Welsh noted, tax cuts for the rich, of necessity, create jobs abroad:
If you can build a factory overseas which produces the same goods for less, meaning more profit for you, why would you build it in the US?The problem in a nutshell. I don't think the answer is a Democrat–CEO Summit, unless the question is, Can I have some campaign contributions please?
Until that question is adequately answered, by which I mean “until it’s worth investing in the US”, most of the discretionary money of the rich will either go into useless speculative activities like the housing and credit bubbles, which don’t create real growth in the US, or they will go overseas.
GP
