[QUOTE=KatzPajamas;444401
First, we have never had a left wing ideologue occupying the White House like we have today. The man is serious and committed.
[/QUOTE]

This is where it starts to lose me. Carter was more of a 'socialist' than Obama. Let's not forget LBJ and his "War On Poverty". Sometimes Americans seem to have very short memories.

And just to add to the stories about "corporate America", I'll add my experience with Putnam Investments.

I put 6 years in there. For the last 5 of those, I was with a fantastic team doing great work. I survived 4 rounds of layoffs. #5 got me. #6, a few weeks later, got a guy who I thought would be turning the lights out at the place. What happened?

- They offshored the support team. First firing a group that had worked together for years, making the rest of us train a group that was temporarily brought down from Nova Scotia. They figured offshoring would make it cheaper when they moved back to Canada.

- They broke up the developers. (I was one)

Ok, that all sounds normal for a business in a bit of a downturn. Here's what happened next.

- The head of Putnam (who reported to the CEO of the parent company) was given an 8-figure bonus for killing several hundreds jobs in the name of "cost savings". My back-of-the-envelope calculations figured that his bonus could pay for the salaries of the people he laid off for at least 2 years. (I estimated average salaries and benefits high - if they were closer to the national average it would have been closer to 4 years)

- The 'customers', the people who calls we fielded and who's data we supplied? They started complaining about the poor quality of the service they were getting and they started pulling out. Result? More losses (to the point where Marsh McClennan, the parent company, ended up selling Putnam to a Canadian firm).

This is how the so-called "job creators" now work in too high a percentage of our companies.