Maddening

I was talking with a friend of mine yesterday, and she mentioned to me that she was frustrated because her boss brought up the idea of outsourcing some of their work to India to save some money. This is maddening, to say the least.

 

I mean, this is the crux of what the "Occupy" protests around the country are about. The income gap between the wealthiest 1% of this country and the rest of us is growing wider, with no lessening of the gap on the horizon. The "too big to fail" banks who got bailed out on the precept that they needed to keep making loans to survive, aren't lending money anymore, even though they're making record profits. They're borrowing money from the government at 0%, and instead of lending to business, they are buying up Treasury bonds from the government, and getting 2-3% interest. So in a roundabout way, the government is giving these banks free money.

 

Because the banks aren't lending to business, cash-strapped businesses can't expand, and since they can't expand, they can't add jobs. There's a real unemployment rate of about 17% out there, people want to work, but can't. And wages are stagnant, unless you're a CEO or a banker.

 

The government is cash-strapped, because our progressive tax structure doesn't hit these high-earners, since they're making money from carried interest and long-term capital gains, both of which have a much smaller tax rate then do personal rates. So the rich keep getting richer, and the middle-class is indirectly supporting them.

 

And then you have companies like the one my friend works for - they want to improve their bottom line (see: profits) by outsourcing work overseas, where they won't have to pay payroll taxes on the labor. They would put more people out of work to improve their bottom line and make the wallet of their CEO fatter, through performance bonuses.

 

And yet, people still will blame President Obama somehow for this jobs crisis we're in. News flash - the government (and especially the President) doesn't "create" jobs; they create a climate that makes it possible for businesses to create jobs, through government spending programs. Forget tax cuts - that was tried 10 years ago, and we're in a worse predicament now then we were then. But Congress (who crafts and sends legislation to the President) refuses to implement any spending programs. So on one hand you have big businesses making money hand over fist but refusing to contribute positively to a society desperately in need of help, and on the other hand a federal legislature that refuses to do what is necessary to help society move forward.

 

And what we get is anger at what looks like collusion between government and big business to keep wages depressed and make corporate fat-cats and greedy politicians even wealthier. All at the sake of us.

 

Something needs to be done.