Black unemployment: Highest in 27 years

     Identity Alert!!!!

    

     If I were black, I would be sorely upset by these figures and even more upset by the President's apparent indifference. 

-------lee

By Annalyn Censky @CNNMoney September 2, 2011: 3:13 PM ET

     NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- The August jobs report was dismal for plenty of reasons, but perhaps most striking was the picture it painted of racial inequality in the job market.
Black unemployment surged to 16.7% in August, its highest level since 1984, while the unemployment rate for whites fell slightly to 8%, the Labor Department reported.
     "This month's numbers continue to bear out that longstanding pattern that minorities have a much more challenging time getting jobs," said Bill Rodgers, chief economist with the Heldrich Center for Workforce Development at Rutgers University.
     Black unemployment has been roughly double that of whites since the government started tracking the figures in 1972.
     Economists blame a variety of factors. The black workforce is younger than the white workforce, lower numbers of blacks get a college degree and many live in areas of the country that were harder hit by the recession -- all things that could lead to a higher unemployment rate.

     But even excluding those factors, blacks still are hit with higher joblessness.

Unemployment rate, state by state

     "Even when you compare black and white workers, same age range, same education, you still see pretty significant gaps in unemployment rates," said Algernon Austin, director of the Race, Ethnicity, and the Economy program at the Economic Policy Institute. "So I do think the fact of racial discrimination in the labor market continues to play a role."
     About 155,000 blacks got jobs in August, but the group's unemployment rate still went up because those jobs weren't enough to make up for all the people who started looking for work during the month.
     However, the gain for whites of 211,000 jobs was enough to bring their unemployment rate down.

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California Unemployment, Poverty Contribute To 'Post-Industrial Hell'

"California dreaming ....."
  ------lee

By Lance Williams 
10/12/11 08:28 PM ET                          
     Since the recession began, times have been tough in California – everybody knows it. The economy is in a protracted stall.
     But it took economists at California Lutheran University’s Center for Economic Research and Forecasting to describe, in hyperbolic language, the depth of the problems that have beset the Golden State since the stock market started to tank in the summer of ’08.
     “California,” writes center director Bill Watkins, “is fast becoming a post-industrial hell.”
That’s true “for almost everyone except the gentry class, their best servants and the public sector,” he writes.

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Job Creation and the Taxation of Foreign-Source Income

This is a story with a moral, and the moral is--get out of the WTO now!  Also, end offshoring, outsourcing and illegal immigration.---rng

By Daniel Mitchell, Ph.D.

January 26, 2004

     The World Trade Organization (WTO) has ruled that portions of U.S. tax law--specifically, the Foreign Sales Corporation/Extraterritorial Income (FSC/ETI) Act--provide an impermissible "export subsidy." This creates a bad news/good news situation.

     The bad news is that the WTO is interfering with America's fiscal sovereignty by insisting that      Congress repeal the FSC/ETI legislation or run the risk of more than $4 billion of compensatory tariffs on U.S. exports to European Union nations. The good news, however, is that this creates an opportunity for lawmakers to enact much-needed tax reforms, especially reducing the tax on income earned by U.S. companies abroad so that they can compete on a level playing field with foreign-based firms.

     Worldwide vs. Territorial Taxation    

      The U.S. tax code currently places American companies at a competitive disadvantage by taxing them on income earned abroad. This policy of "worldwide taxation" can subject U.S.-chartered companies operating overseas to tax burdens several times larger than those imposed on their foreign counterparts, most of which come from countries with "territorial taxation" (the common-sense policy of taxing only income earned inside national borders).

     America's high corporate tax rate--the second highest in the developed world--exacerbates the anti-competitive impact of worldwide taxation, and American companies competing in low-tax jurisdictions like Ireland or Hong Kong are the most adversely affected. As the example in Table 1 indicates, U.S. companies can face an enormous additional burden because of America's worldwide tax regime.

     Some lawmakers are concerned that moving toward territorial taxation would encourage companies to relocate jobs and factories from America to low-tax countries. The high U.S. corporate tax rate is an incentive for companies to create jobs and expand operations in jurisdictions with better tax law--or would be if they did not also have to pay the high U.S. corporate tax rate on overseas earnings.

     Does this mean that worldwide taxation protects American jobs by making it more difficult for U.S. companies to produce overseas? Absolutely not. Worldwide taxation can--and does--limit the ability of American companies to compete abroad, but it does not affect the decisions of non-U.S. companies. In other words, bad U.S. tax law may prevent an American company from taking advantage of a profitable opportunity to build a factory in a low-tax jurisdiction, but this simply makes it easier for a company from another country to exploit that opening. And since a foreign-based company can ship goods into the U.S. market under the same rules as a U.S. company's foreign subsidiary, worldwide taxation does not insulate America from overseas competition. It simply means that foreign companies get the business and earn the profits.

     How Worldwide Taxation Destroys Jobs    

     By placing U.S.-based companies at a disadvantage in world markets, America's worldwide tax system harms the U.S. economy and undermines job creation. This is because companies with foreign operations are more likely to purchase raw materials and intermediate goods from their home countries. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development estimates that every dollar that a company invests overseas yields two dollars of additional exports for its home country.

U.S. data strongly support the link between foreign operations and exports. An academic survey found that every dollar of overseas production by U.S. affiliates generates an average of $0.16 in exports from the United States. According to Commerce Department figures, U.S. companies sold $232 billion worth of American-produced goods to their overseas affiliates in 2000. This is impressive, but exports surely would be much higher if U.S. companies competing abroad were not hamstrung by worldwide taxation. Territorial taxation would allow American companies to win a larger share of foreign markets, and this would then translate into higher U.S. exports and more U.S. jobs.

     Furthermore, companies generally build factories in other countries in order to serve foreign markets--not to produce goods for America. According to Commerce Department data, nearly 90 percent of the output from U.S.-controlled foreign companies is sold to foreign consumers. This explains why two experts found that shifting to a territorial tax system would not influence where U.S. firms locate their factories. The Council of Economic Advisers also reviewed the research and found no support for the notion that jobs and exports suffer when U.S. companies invest abroad.

     Some politicians think that multinational companies hurt the U.S. economy. In reality, however, companies that produce at home and abroad generate more than 21 percent of U.S. economic output, produce 56 percent of U.S. exports, and employ three-fifths of all manufacturing employees--about 9 million workers. These numbers would be even higher if these companies were not hindered by an onerous tax code.

     Conclusion    

     Worldwide taxation places U.S. companies at a competitive disadvantage reducing their share of the global market. This limits the degree to which U.S. companies can benefit by operating in low-tax jurisdictions, but it does not discourage foreign companies from building new factories in jurisdictions with good tax law or exporting products to the United States. In other words, worldwide taxation neither limits competition from factories in low-tax countries nor restricts imports. Instead, it impedes U.S. companies' ability to maintain profitable operations in foreign countries.

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Senate delays jobs bill to take on China Defies Obama on top priorities

By Stephen Dinan
The Washington Times

Tuesday, September 27, 2011

     President Obama is still pressing Congress to pass his jobs-stimulus bill immediately, but Democratic Party leaders in the Senate once again have delayed taking a vote on the legislation and instead will take up a bill to punish China over its currency valuation.
     Senators late Monday passed a bill to keep the government open into the next fiscal year and then adjourned for the rest of the week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said when they return they’ll take up the China measure rather than Mr. Obama’s jobs plan.
     “I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” said Mr. Reid, who is the chief Senate sponsor of Mr. Obama’s plan, but who said taking on China is a bigger priority right now.
     Mr. Obama sees it differently.

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