Minus 1 for Kerry

[CobraTone]

One less thing Kerry supporters can bitch about, and quit placing the blame on Bushy. Where's the job growth? Where's the job growth? Umm, right here. (Clicky below)


308,000 gained in March, despite expectations of 123,000.


Yea yea yea, 2 million gone since Bush came in. Oh yea, thats all his fault, definitely. Couldn't have anything to do with previous administrations, terror attacks, recessions, and so forth. Oh God, they are all going to INDIA!!!!
:kaboom:

 

[LocoGT]

So why can't I find a new sales job that pays me enough then? :cuss:

 

[AzDropTop]

I'm a little concerned that dispite Kerry's obvious short-comings many will vote for him based on hatred for Bush instead of what he stands for. If Kerry wins the election the country is in for a nasty surprise.

 

[wally9404]

200.000 of them jobs were in the fast food industry!!!

 

[2000 MGT]

if Kerry wins you'll see him do the opposite of everything he says. He's the classic "tell them what they want to hear" candidate eventhough he doesn't care about it.

 

[SID297]

I don't like Bush or Kerry. What I want is for one party to control the White House, the other to control Congress, and a moderate Supreme Court. Then everything should equal out.

 

[LocoGT]

Originally posted by 00StangGT
if Kerry wins you'll see him do the opposite of everything he says. He's the classic "tell them what they want to hear" candidate eventhough he doesn't care about it.

They all do that. :mj: :fm:

 

[CalcVictim]

I know one reason not a single V8 owner should vote for kerry. He voted something like 11 times for raising the gas tax by 50 cents a gallon and wanted to increase the average mpg for car manufacturers from 24 mpg to 32 mpg by 2008. He is the "common" Brianny suit wear man.

 

[CobraTone]

Originally posted by wally9404
200.000 of them jobs were in the fast food industry!!!

So that's why we're all getting fat!! :bash:

:beer:

 

[LocoGT]

Originally posted by CalcVictim
I know one reason not a single V8 owner should vote for kerry. He voted something like 11 times for raising the gas tax by 50 cents a gallon and wanted to increase the average mpg for car manufacturers from 24 mpg to 32 mpg by 2008. He is the "common" Brianny suit wear man.

:nonono: :nonono: :nonono:

 

[Rearpl8tsinsite]

My company will take credit for adding 2 more people making our total 22. One thing I find interesting is we have 4 illegals working for us. They have recently recieved their papers for the amnesty granted. I don't think it has anything to do with what Bush is doing more ex-gov Gray Davis who granted them amnesty.

Now here is the catch. All 4 of our illegals were just given papers that make them legit. The past census didn't count them as employed but it counted their positions as possible employment. Hard to understand but when we as a company are asked how many jobs people we employ we say 22. But when they count the people who have a job they are only counting 18 because of the illegals. Now that 18 looks like 22 because they are now legit thus adding 4 jobs to the economy.

How much you wanna bet a bunch of those jobs were from Cali.

 

[SilverStreak02]

Originally posted by AzDropTop
I'm a little concerned that dispite Kerry's obvious short-comings many will vote for him based on hatred for Bush instead of what he stands for. If Kerry wins the election the country is in for a nasty surprise.

Ditto

 

[Kurt Busch]

Originally posted by CalcVictim
I know one reason not a single V8 owner should vote for kerry. He voted something like 11 times for raising the gas tax by 50 cents a gallon and wanted to increase the average mpg for car manufacturers from 24 mpg to 32 mpg by 2008. He is the "common" Brianny suit wear man.

I think it was 40mpg Kerry proposed, which is subcompact territory. That idiot would make everyone in this country drive a geo metro

 

[OKC03Cobra]

http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-news/1109804/posts

 

[Sinister Angel]

Originally posted by Kurt Busch
I think it was 40mpg Kerry proposed, which is subcompact territory. That idiot would make everyone in this country drive a geo metro

Dude, my saturn can barely hit 34 on the highway. You could go diesel, but it still wouldn't touch 40 expect for the small engines, like the TDIs and shit. Here is another issue to consider as well. Some of you should remember the story Juiced-03 told about him getting carjacked. He got out because of speed. You don't go fast with engines that get 40 MPG. The alternative to covering your ass if some f*ckheads decided to jack your car while driving is to forcefully convey your feeling of discontent with the situation by throwing a few rounds into their car. Unfortunately, this assclown also wants to ban guns, so what does that leave people? It leave's people f*cked.

 

[03SonicStang]

Interesting

Interesting that some Fast Food jobs will now be considered manufacturing jobs. The lose of manufacturing in Michigan is crazy! Start to look at everything you use, China, Korea, etc. No to mention the technological jobs, can you say India. How about for once this country thinks about it's citizens other than profits. Well, I guess when PIGS FLY!

 

[JD03Cobra]

Sending jobs overseas is what is pissing me off.

U.S. firms keeping billions overseas

By Jonathan Weisman
Updated: 12:10 a.m. ET April 02, 2004
With sales up 5 percent last year, Merck & Co. was not satisfied: To hold down costs, the pharmaceutical giant shed 3,200 jobs as 2003 drew to a close, and announced that an additional 1,200 positions would go this year.

But Merck's picture abroad was quite different. It made 1,300 new hires in 2003 outside the United States, on top of the 900 brought on the year before. Company documents indicate that Merck had a cumulative $18 billion in foreign earnings untaxed by the end of last year, $3 billion more than in 2002. And the company said it had no intention of ever paying U.S. taxes on that burgeoning sum.

"Foreign earnings of $18.0 billion . . . have been retained indefinitely by subsidiary companies for reinvestment," Merck's annual filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission said. "No provision is made for income taxes that would be payable upon distribution of such earning."

Last week, Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.), the likely Democratic nominee for president, made such lucrative income-tax deferrals a focal point of his campaign, asserting that they are driving companies to expand abroad. Merck's numbers appear to back that up, and so do those of several other big U.S. companies.

By the end of its 2003 fiscal year, Hewlett-Packard Co. had "indefinitely" deferred taxation on $14.4 billion of foreign earnings, according to SEC filings, a move that helped lower its effective tax rate from the statutory corporate income tax rate of 35 percent to 12 percent.

Down at home, up abroad
Domestic employment at Intel Corp. slipped by more than 3,300 people last year, but it grew by more than 4,300 abroad. By the end of 2003, the company had $7 billion in cumulative foreign earnings, $700 million more than it had sheltered in 2002, according to SEC filings. The semiconductor powerhouse stated that it "intends to reinvest these earnings indefinitely in operations outside the U.S."

The Kerry campaign said U.S.-based multinational corporations are deferring taxation on $12 billion in foreign earnings each year, a figure that may be low, corporate tax experts say. Corporate tax revenue in 2003 fell for the third straight year, to its lowest in a decade. As a percentage of the economy, business taxes last year reached the second-lowest level since the Great Depression. Few doubt that tax avoidance has been a reason for meager corporate tax collections, and the deferral of taxes on foreign earnings may be one of the biggest factors.

"It's probably next to impossible to get a read on how big the number is, but it's fair to say it's a big, big deal," said Douglas A. Shackelford, an accounting professor at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School who has studied the issue.

Policymakers call for change
Since Kerry announced his corporate-tax-reform proposal, tax experts have debated its impact on the U.S. job market and its consequences for U.S-based multinationals. But liberal and conservative tax policymakers now appear to agree on one point: The byzantine U.S. system of foreign business taxation is in need of major change.

"This is a largely broken system, rife with abuse," said Gene B. Sperling, a former economic aide to President Bill Clinton who advises Kerry and is an architect of the candidate's plan.

"There is a real problem here," said Gary C. Hufbauer, an international tax expert at the Institute for International Economics, who is skeptical of Kerry's proposal. "U.S. firms doing business in the U.S. are taxed more heavily than many of their foreign competitors. That's demonstrably true."

Under Kerry's plan, U.S.-based companies would have to pay taxes immediately on virtually all foreign profits that are not taxed by another country. Firms could still defer taxation on profits from subsidiaries set up abroad to serve local markets, but if a U.S. company sets up overseas to ship goods back home, taxes would be due in full.

'Tax holiday'
The $12 billion in additional taxes would be used to lower the corporate tax rate to 33.25 percent, from 35 percent. By closing a major loophole used by only the largest multinationals, the plan would bestow a tax cut on more than 99 percent of U.S. companies, Kerry advisers say. Kerry would also try to lure an estimated $639 billion in untaxed foreign earnings back home with a "tax holiday" that would lower the rate on repatriated earnings to 10 percent for one year.

"In any proposed change to corporate tax law, there will be some companies that will do less well than others," said Roger C. Altman, a senior Treasury official in the Clinton administration and a top Kerry economic adviser. "But the preponderance of companies will do better" under Kerry's proposal.


Eliminating loopholes and lowering overall tax rates is standard, orthodox tax theory, said Joel B. Slemrod, a tax economist at the University of Michigan. On balance, he said, Kerry's plan would probably benefit the U.S. economy.

Given their long-standing support for "tax holidays" on foreign earnings and lower corporate rates, some businesses said they were willing to suspend judgment until they see more details of the proposal. Spokesmen for Merck and Intel said their expansions abroad are not driven by tax factors. Merck spokesman Tony Plohoros noted that the company just opened a research facility in Seattle and is building a multimillion-dollar research lab in Boston.

Chuck Mulloy, an Intel spokesman, said Intel's growth abroad is fueled by a simple fact: 70 percent of the company's sales are international. But he did not dismiss Kerry's plan out of hand.

"It certainly deserves serious consideration," Mulloy said.

But even philosophical supporters of the plan see major problems. Leonard E. Burman, a former assistant Treasury secretary for tax analysis, said he understands why Kerry wanted to exempt income earned in local foreign markets. But, he said, separating out such income would be difficult, and could open an abused system to still more abuse.

"It's great news for accountants and lawyers," he said.

Could it make things worse?
More fundamentally, critics said, the plan would only hasten the movement of companies abroad. Some countries, such as France, tax only income earned within their borders. Many Republican tax economists say the U.S. system already taxes companies more heavily than other countries and has pushed companies to reincorporate abroad.

Under Kerry's proposal, "What's to prevent them all from going overseas?" said Terry Holt, a spokesman for President Bush's reelection campaign.

Altman, who is now a Wall Street investment banker, scoffed at that prospect. "If a corporation has a successful foreign investment, I don't think they're going to divest it for reason of changes in the tax law," he said.

But Shackelford, who supports Kerry's plan, suggested that Hufbauer has a point. At least, he said, it would create incentives for corporate mergers that wind up headquartered overseas, just as Chrysler Corp. and Daimler-Benz AG produced Germany-based DaimlerChrysler AG.

"If deferral is eliminated, there's going to be some hurt there, I don't think there's any question," Shackelford said.

Kerry advisers conceded that they wrestled with many of those objections before deciding to push ahead. "This is a tough issue, but I kind of think we came out in the right place," Sperling said.

He said objections to the fine print should not distract from the point Kerry is trying to make: The U.S. tax code is actually encouraging the movement of jobs overseas.

"This is a big deal," agreed Robert S. McIntyre of Citizens for Tax Justice, who has inveighed against foreign tax deferral for years. As a company, he said, "you may go to India or China or Ireland for the wage differentials — there's nothing we can do about that. But we don't have to pay you to go there

 

[CobraTone]

Originally posted by OKC03Cobra
http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-news/1109804/posts

:lol:

 

[CobraTone]

Re: Interesting

Originally posted by 03SonicStang
Interesting that some Fast Food jobs will now be considered manufacturing jobs. The lose of manufacturing in Michigan is crazy! Start to look at everything you use, China, Korea, etc. No to mention the technological jobs, can you say India. How about for once this country thinks about it's citizens other than profits. Well, I guess when PIGS FLY!

Ok, here I go with the quotes again. Source: WSJ

"Each generation considers its own time to be unique. Today's popular demon is foreign competition. Forty years ago, it was automation. In March, 1964, three dozen liberal luminaries wrote Lyndon Johnson that 'the combination of the computer and the automated self-regulating machine' was creating 'almost unlimited productivity capacity which requires progressively less human labor'. Without massive government spending, they warned, the U.S. would suffer mass joblessness and poverty."

"Since then, the U.S. economy has added 72 million jobs. Compared with a counterpart with similar schooling and experience, the typical full-time male worker's wages have risen by 18% after inflation; for women, wages are up 37%. Today's unemployment rate is almost exactly where it was in 1964. Computers in the factory and in the office have replaced humans. But jobs lost were replaced by jobs unimagined in 1964."

"'Outsourcing accelerates what technology was already doing. Take call centers. Eight, 10 years down the line, we could do a lot more with voice-recognition softwware. But with outsourcing you can do away with those jobs now.'"

"New jobs surely will emerge to replace those lost. That has happened with every past breakthrough in technology and trade. 'In 1940,' observes Greg Manikiw, the chief White House economist, 'no one could have predicted that some grandchildren of farmers would become Web-site designers and CAT-scan operators. But they did, and at much higher wages and incomes."

 

[Sinister Angel]

You people do realize that this country's economic system is that of a capitalistic one, right? I forget who said it, I think it might have been Keyne's, but I could be wrong, but it was said that a businesses only responsability is to make money for it's shareholders.