Lynn Parramore: Capitalism’s Dirty Secret: Corporations Don’t Create Jobs, They Destroy Them

Yves Smith reposts Lynn Parramore: Capitalism’s Dirty Secret: Corporations Don’t Create Jobs, They Destroy Them:

For the last four decades, U.S. corporations have been sinking our economy through the off-shoring of jobs, the squeezing of wages, and a magician’s hat full of bluffs and tricks designed to extort subsidies and sweetheart deals from local and state governments that often result in mass layoffs and empty treasuries.

Passmore strongly believes that government exists independently of the Capitalists and is able to enforce benevolence upon the corporations. She sees the problem with corporations as the short-term focus on profits:

Bad things happen when corporations are unconstrained by strong national policies that force players to think long term, behave decently, and refrain from dumping their short-term costs on the rest of us. They tend to focus single-mindedly on maximizing profits for shareholders at the expense of all else – including jobs. Executives set their sights on a path to short-term boosts in share prices paved with layoffs, wage cuts, and jobs moved overseas, while slashing research and development and investing in the skills of their employees.

Passmore correctly says that the corporations owe their success to the social investment made in education and other public utilities:

Corporate executives have lost the sense that they owe anything to the public. They have forgotten that the 99 percent, as taxpayers, have made huge investments in them. They fight to lower taxes as if all the money “belongs” to the companies. They fight regulations as if the public doesn’t have the right to interfere in their business.

Passmore also points the link between worker's income and consumption. No wages, no profits.