Corporate Profits Were the Highest on Record!

Amid all the doom and gloom, drum roll... Corporate Profits Were recently the highest on record!

So, economy is in the pits, budget deficit seems like a black hole and 11% Americans are unemployed, but someone's coffers are busting with golden ducats! And why that may be happening?

This breakneck pace can be partly attributed to strong productivity growth — which means companies have been able to make more with less — as well as the fact that some of the profits of American companies come from abroad.

Aha, so as I suspected, move the capital and jobs abroad and provide employment to people some place in Bangalore, screw America over and over. And get rich.

I just don't think that the system (or what it mutated into, in the past 20 years since job exodus started) works in the interest of the United States anymore.

When they say things like "The Economy is growing", all they mean is the rich people have started making money again. That is all it has EVER MEANT.

I mean we are fast begining what they expected to be one of the coldest winters for decades and British Gas just put all prices up 10% despite the massive profits they made.

Honestly as far as im concered these guys are no better than pedophiles, and we need to start treating them all as such!! Absolute, total SCUM is what they are!

Why are we against extra regulation again? In before unconstitutional. Justice for the American people first, constitution second.

When you print 600 billion in fake money, then hand that money out to favored private sector industries such as Goldman Sachs and the defense industry, profits tend to increase.

Of course, this isn't real productive growth, its simply inflation.

Interesting Graph

Link

In 1988, the income of an average American taxpayer was $33,400, adjusted for inflation. Fast forward 20 years, and not much had changed: The average income was still just $33,000 in 2008, according to IRS data.

Meanwhile, the richest 1% of Americans -- those making $380,000 or more -- have seen their incomes grow 33% over the last 20 years, leaving average Americans in the dust.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Really? Corporations and big businesses have been making record profits? So when will that money trickle down? Where are all the jobs? I thought Obama was a socialist or a communist so how can corporations be making record profits? Mean while the unemployment rate remains this bad, we give them additional tax cuts... we have been doing so for the last 10 years and where has this gotten us? It is still unbelievable that people still buy trickle down economics.

and 100% of those companies making
a profit will file their corporate income
taxes in another country to avoid the
US High Tax rate. This is called a
corporate loophole. They file in another
country when they have profits and then file
in the US when they have a loss to get
the write-off. I believe this should be
stopped and outlawed.

I also believe that if you are an American Company
that you should be required by law to make
your ENTIRE product here using the work
force available. It is an unfair trade practice for a
mom and pop small business to have to use
American Labor while international corporations
use cheap labor abroad that don't have the same labor
laws.

Repeal every free trade treaty we ever signed.
You cannot have free trade when the standard
of living is different in every country. There is
no one size fits all.

Globalization kills small businesses

reply to post by boondock-saint


I can agree with 100% of your post. What still allows these absurd practices to continue is the constant brainwash, mainly from the right, saying that our society needs to be a free-for-all. Well, now we know how this worked out.

Ask yourself, why is this a matter in relation to government? Just as the no religion should be coveted by any government, nor should the private dealings between business should either.

The major problem is that collusion between business and government has been allowed to run rampant without any checks or balances in place. Everyone is up in arms when a teacher in some school district that no one had heard of mentions god, but not one makes a big clamor about the former head of GE getting a lush and powerful position with the confines of government.

Who cares what the corporate profits were; unless of course they were made via legislation and law passed by Congress. That is the major problem. Capitalism requires a level playing field. It isn't capitalism that is to blame here. It is the compass of many congressmen that are to blame. Cowing to pressure, they formulate and dictate economic policy in which they shouldn't. Resulting in favoritism and quid pro quo.

Policies like 3.2 beer in some states pushed by larger beer makers is to ensure that smaller beer makers are left out of the picture. Policies that favor larger businesses that can afford multiple processes in their model while barring smaller, competitive alternatives from entering the market are the problem. Not capitalism.

Nicely written (but sad) NYT article

A 69-year-old woman from northeastern Vermont wrote plaintively:

“We are the first generation to leave our kids worse off than we were. How did this happen? Why is there such a wide distance between the rich and the middle class and the poor? What happened to the middle class? We did not buy boats or fancy cars or diamonds. Why was it possible to change the economy from one that was based on what we made and grew and serviced to a paper economy that disappeared?”

reply to post by buddhasystem


To bad it isn't enough for them, now there spending alot of those profits supporting politicans and political parties trying to break unions nationwide....

sad really.

More on growing inequality

So apparently those who effectively own the economy and apparently do a cr@ppy job running it get richly awarded. Beats me.

So far, the prospects for progress are at best worrisome, at worst terrifying. Earlier this week, House Republicans unveiled an unsavory stew of highly regressive tax cuts, large but unspecified reductions in discretionary spending (a category that importantly includes education, infrastructure and research and development), and an evisceration of programs devoted to lifting those at the bottom, including unemployment insurance, food stamps, earned income tax credits and many more.

If GOP growth is 2 percent, of even negative, but one section of the population experiences intense growth, then it has to come from somewhere, in a closed system to the detrimental of the section of the population who does not experience that growth.

If you are on a fixed income and inflation is high, then you become cheaper and cheaper for the company.

The Reagan recession was intended to take care of the inflationary economy he said he would fix. Of course, business didn't want to see their profits drop. A large pool of unemployed was created to help wages not rise.

Over time, profits could rise, as American workers accepted lower/stagnant wages (or forcing households to have two income earners to keep up), increase in benefits contributions, taking out loans to keep up the middle class lifestyle, and accepting cheaper goods, via Walmart for ex, in a global economy.

So, yes, I could see the following happen...

As a result, the top 1 percent has done progressively better in each economic recovery of the past two decades. In the Clinton era expansion, 45 percent of the total income gains went to the top 1 percent; in the Bush recovery, the figure was 65 percent; now it is 93 percent.

buddhasystem's source

Of course profit went up, less workers doing more for the same pay = more coin for the few at the top.

This says it best...




Derek

I like this one too.



It isnt so much about slow growth. Is is more about that one section experiences more growth than the other and if that is the case, the additional growth has to come from somewhere.

Everything gets more expensive, but that worker, if he wants to be more expensive, even a salary that is annually adjusted for inflation, he is a commie job destroying peeeg.