Attention All Pod People, Morlocks, and Kool-Aid Kids...

[_Gadianton]

I didn't say lay-offs are evil. My point has been simple. Mitt Romney's job at Bain wasn't to create jobs. It was to create wealth for investors. Sometimes that entailed job creation. Sometimes it didn't. There is nothing wrong with what he did, but it's misleading for his supporters to represent his career as one of "job creating".

Indeed. It would be like saying the Tyrannosaurus Rex was a nurturing influence in the lives of other dinosaurs because the net effect of him eating them improved the genetic base of the species in the long run.

[_Kevin Graham]

What Mr. Obama still fails to admit is that he and his campaign shills have absolutely no idea what Bain Capital actually does, or what Mitt Romney actually did.

LOL! And neither does Romney apparently, since he kept lying about his involvement with it while it profited from outsourcing. You know, those years when he was paid a handsome salary as a board member, but told the media he did nothing for the company during that time.

[_Kevin Graham]

I didn't say lay-offs are evil. My point has been simple. Mitt Romney's job at Bain wasn't to create jobs. It was to create wealth for investors. Sometimes that entailed job creation. Sometimes it didn't. There is nothing wrong with what he did, but it's misleading for his supporters to represent his career as one of "job creating".

Exactly. a while back I posted an article written by a venture capitalists who said millionaires rarely become millionaires by hiring people. He went on to say that hiring employees is usually a last resort for them, and that they'd prefer to try every other trick in the book before going that route.

[_Kevin Graham]

What's the difference between admiring a businessman for his skill and cunning at negotiating his way out of the personal risk that should be inherent in his job than admiring a band of laborers for their skill and cunning in negotiating their way out of risk in the guise of a union?

LOL!

We've been trying to get Droopy to answer similar questions for quite some time now.

He has no answer.

Negotiations are an ethical aspect of the free market, except when they're between employer and employee. Then they are evil. But they love liberty and freedom.

Go figure.

[_beastie]

If I were to run for president, I could justly assert that I've spent my adult life creating jobs, as well. After all, I've participated in the capitalist engine my entire life. I work, I purchase. Hence, I create jobs.

It's not so much that the statement is a lie, but rather, that the statement is misleading in regards to my career. That is the objection I have to Mitt and his supporters who insist his career has been one of "job creator". Has Mitt's work sometimes resulted in creating jobs? Of course. Has Mitt's work sometimes resulted in lay-offs? Of course. These are both side-effects of Mitt's real career, which was to create wealth for himself and investors. And, once again, there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with the fact that my real career has been teaching, but there would be something wrong if I were to run for office and insist that my career was creating jobs, even though the creation of jobs was a side-effect of my life participating in the capitalist engine.

Somewhere along the line, some republican "wordsmith" who studies the effect that words have on people, decided that Mitt was better off claiming the title of "job creator" than "wealth creator". The reason why is the same reason that his republican opponents during the primary charged that Mitt was the worst possible candidate for this particular time period. They were right. His entire life is a study of the inequity that many people are angry about in the first place. His greatest achievement in governing was a health-care law that provided a template for the health-care law his base wants to dismantle. He was a terrible candidate for this moment in time. But the sad part is that he was the most practical candidate among the available pool, despite this handicap.

[_MeDotOrg]

During the George W. Bush presidency, liberals foamed at the mouth over Enron. Enron and President Bush were both from Texas. Enron went bankrupt, proving in leftist minds that George W. Bush was corrupt. Yet the one question most liberal critics of President Bush could not answer dealt with the business of Enron. Liberals secretly had no idea what Enron actually did.

Enron's stockholders lost $74 billion dollars in four years, 40-45 billion was attributed to fraud. 20,000 Enron employees lost 2 billion dollars in pension funds. Because a relatively small number of Arthur Anderson employees aided and abetted the fraudulent accounting practices and shredded documents pertaining to their complicity, the most venerable accounting firm in the United States was destroyed.

So what's the lesson from Enron?

Is it that Wendy (wife of Senator Phil) Graham, who cast the deciding vote at the Commodities Futures Trading Commission granting Enron an exemption for trading energy derivatives, then resigned from the CFTC to join Enron's Board of Directors and Audit Committee?

Is it that the Mark-to-Market accounting instituted by Jeff Skilling can open some large doors to fraudulent revenue booking?

Is it that the people who ran Enron were much more adept at making it look like they were producing revenue than actually producing revenue?

Is it that accounting firms that verify those fraudulent books can be battered and intimidated into vouching for the veracity of that which they know to be false?

No, according to Mr. Golub the answer is some that liberals thought the company that started as Ken Lay's natural gas company was not an energy company, but an oil company.

What can I say? An analysis worthy of a Tea Party Blogger.

[_EAllusion]

Droopy's point seems to have devolved into that the sum-total of economic activity in the market is ultimately beneficial, even its creative destruction, therefore the actions of anyone in it are good even if they harm people in the short run. This is more or less true, but trite and off the point when trying to defend Romney as a "job-creator." Everyone is a job-creator in that sense and if the point is that Romney is more so simply by the fact that he was a wealthy investor in charge of a major firm and therefore more impactful, then Droopy's real point is simply that Romney was a rich investor. We all know that. That doesn't tell us the kind of information the crafted phrase "job-creator" is meant to imply.

[_beastie]

Droopy's point seems to have devolved into that the sum-total of economic activity in the market is ultimately beneficial, even its creative destruction, therefore the actions of anyone in it are good even if they harm people in the short run. This is more or less true, but trite and off the point when trying to defend Romney as a "job-creator." Everyone is a job-creator in that sense and if the point is that Romney is more so simply by the fact that he was a wealthy investor in charge of a major firm and therefore more impactful, then Droopy's real point is simply that Romney was a rich investor. We all know that. That doesn't tell us the kind of information the crafted phrase "job-creator" is meant to imply.

Exactly why I'd be justified running for president as a "job-creator."

[_Gadianton]

Another point about the "skills" required to restructure a company, e.g., cut fat by laying people off. It's not so much a knowledge-based skill as a personality-based skill -- you've got to be really good at being a dick. A typical boss isn't going to rush out and cut a job in his firm that isn't producing anymore than he's going to immediately sell his Porsche because it gets bad gas mileage. Communities build within companies, and what an outside consultant can accomplish isn't much more than the writing on the wall the executives within the firm can already read, it's just easier for them to do emotionally.

Though I myself have fortunately never been laid off, a previous employer of mine went through several rounds of layoffs. At one point, a primary investor in the company frustrated with the losses brought in "their guy" to turn things around. Their guy didn't work for Bain, but he was a somewhat-known Mormon businessman/consultant who was self-made. Yet, he was there to do the same kind of job. He prefaced his arrival with comments about reviewing the books and learning how the company works. He made insights about the laziness of many employees (which were valid observations). He said he didn't want to cut jobs and hoped people in the company, if they didn't have enough to do, would come to him and he'd put them to work. He made self-deprecating jokes about being a Mormon and jokes related to the Old Testament nobody got except for me, because he didn't understand that his particular understanding of the Bible was unique to Mormon theology. All this was obviously his way of saving the company while at the same time being a missionary. At any rate, he ended up gutting half the company. Big surprise, if there is no market for widgets, then all this fluff about showing up to work on time to produce more widgets doesn't make a lot of sense. It's great self-justification though, "it's sad...but let's face it, these folks weren't really as engaged as they could be." Later on, as things only improved in the specific way downsizing can improve things, comments were made about employees needing to take on more responsibility and build the success of the company. To interpret, that means the widget makers should be out trying to find a way to sell their company. More justification, as after a few months of showing up to the office and making a few phone calls, this guy couldn't find a market. Well, perhaps he could have if he really had been engaged, but ultimately, building a sustainable front end of a business is very hard. He'd done it before, but that was back before he'd "made it". Now that he'd made it, there was far less incentive to knock on doors and sell, or dream up an innovative new direction and pursue 18 hours a day like he did back in the day. His reputation would see him to the next job site that needed gutting -- something that doesn't take much talent to do. The ROI on gutting a company compared with building one is much, much higher, so there is little incentive to do the latter if you have the option to do the former.

I'm not saying that what this consultant did was wrong, had it been a computer simulation, I would have cut even more jobs. But he wasn't doing anyone any personal favors, and it was clear he had major self-honesty issues given he actually thought he looked like a savior and was making the Church look good.

[_Bond James Bond]

Droopy is envious that liberals got out of paintball right before he bought his range.