Companies sitting on record pile of cash (could pay 2.4 M people $70,000 for 5 yrs) yet won't hire

[JohnWxy]

"Anyone wondering where all the economy's jobs are might want to look into piggy banks of the world's biggest companies.
Cash is gushing into companies' coffers as they report what's shaping up to be the third-consecutive quarter of sharp earnings increases. But instead of spending on the typical things, such as expanding and hiring people, companies are mostly pocketing the money and stuffing it under their corporate mattresses.

Non-financial companies in the Standard & Poor's 500 have a record $837 billion in cash, S&P says. That's enough to pay 2.4 million people $70,000-a-year salaries for five years."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=114x80889


This is why the GOP's sabotage of the recovery is working. Repubs often say businesses don't like uncertainty. Well, how about the uncertainty caused by the GOP constantly fighting stimulus bills and Unemployment benefits extension? That certainly creates uncertainty re the recovery in the minds of businesses. Thus you have large businesses with enough cash to hire 2.4 million people for 5 years at $70,000 per year!

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Do these companies need employees?

I mean, they must be making excelent profits if they are able to hoard this much cash? They appear to be meeting both the demands of their markets and of their investors.

I've seen similar threads posted several times now and I am wondering what should these companies do with that money?

[JohnWxy]

7. They are doing just what individual players in a marketplace will do, Hold onto money.

In a depression environment, everybody holds on tightly to their money - individuals and companies and banks. This is why you need the community, the public, through the government, to put money into the economy. Otherwise things just get worse and it takes much longer to get out of this Deregulation Depression.

The stimulus, downsized as it was, has helped by keeping things from being a lot worse, preserving or creating about 2.5 million jobs. But given the magnitude of the DEREGULATION DISASTER (Greenspan: "The market will police itself."), the stimulus should have been bigger. But it would have been worse without the stimulus we did get passed.

[Ozymanithrax]

8. I agree that companies only consideration is the bottom line...

for their investors. I've yet to hear of a business plan that includes world economic rescue.

Nations must repair the economy. That is why national leaders should never be businessmen.

[enlightenment]

9. Probably not, since many of them

are known to require extensive overtime and 'extra' time from their employees. Why hire two people to fill two jobs when you can pressure one person to do both?

GE, at the top of the list in this article, gets constant negative reviews from employees on 'work/life balance'. The idea of a 40 hour work week is not even considered the norm there - 50 or 60 hours is par for the course.

Cisco gets negatives on that end, too - with the same sort of 'well, that's to be expected these days' kind of attitude.

Microsoft? Apparently in some divisions things have improved to the point where you can 'have a life'. yay?

Of course you'd need to factor out-sourcing into the mix, too. It's a lot easier to build up a big cash base when you send a $70000 a year job to Indonesia and pay the new guy $25000 for the same work.

[unpossibles]

12. My department is down a couple of people

and my managers are less than sympathetic about our workload. In fact, I'd love to have the amount of projects we complained about last year, as it was about half of what we have now....

[EC]

2. There is no uncertainty...

They are all working together...the corps hold back while propping up the pigs at the trove who will scuttle any reform or weaken any bill to pry some of that cash out of those grubby hands.

[rfranklin]

3. Or the top execs could pay themselves $10 million a year bonuses!

For years to come! I think that's what they are really thinking about.

[rateyes]

4. It should all be taxed at 90% and the government

start putting people to work in green jobs, internet highways, etc. Minimum wage should be increased to $20 an hour.

[thelordofhell]

5. They're saving it for bribes......

Oh, I mean, unlimited campaign contributions.

:grr: :nuke:

[JohnWxy]

11. Corporations are my Constituents - image

[Andy823]

6. Yes, it's part of the plan

Big corporation, and many small business's owned by republicans "WILL NOT" hire because if they did it would make president Obama look good, and they don't want that! It is sabotage, and it's insane, but the right is insane, so it's par for the course. Things will change after the elections, and either way there will be jobs coming back after the elections are over. No matter who wins, there will be many companies that will start hiring probably slowly at first, but by next spring I think there will be a lot more companies hiring.

This is all the right wings way of trying to get republicans back in charge of congress, they have no "PLAN" on how to fix things, and all they will do if they do regain control of one branch will be to block everything they can while using their gains to stall the recovery even more. I don't think it will work, and I think that if they try this tactic it will backfire big time on them, but they will try it. What we need is for democrats to attack, attack, attack and keep the up front issues on the republicans making them defend themselves for being the party of NO, and the party that would rather help the rich and the corporations than help those out of work get unemployment extensions. They also need to keep showing how republicans want to do away with "ALL" new regulations for big business, wall street, banks and of course big oil companies like BP!

If the republicans can't gain back control, I think their "PLOT" to make Obama fail will fizzle out and business will start hiring, while the recovery speeds up. Democrats have all the ammo they need to win this coming November, all they have to do is use it, and beat the republicans at their own game! Let's just hope they do it and don't back down!

[unpossibles]

10. this is not very surprising

just like the failure of trickle down was not very surprising.

[66 dmhlt]

13. They'll either have to invest in capital improvements or

pay a good deal of it out in dividends.

[applegrove]

14. Just as business schools started to teach that a corporations competators were their shareholders,

their customers, the government, their employees and not just their competators so does the country on a macro level. Rich people now hate the middle class and any government. It has gone viral with regular GOPers, teabaggers and all the rest of the wingnuts spouting what used to only come out of the mouths of right wing pundits.