Today Apple announcedthat it would begin using its $100 billion cash hoard to pay dividends to shareholders and buy back stock.
Reading this article, a couple of things jumped out at me:
1) Under Steve Jobs, Apple hasn't paid a dividend since 1995. They spent the past 17 years amassing a hoard of cash. Pawlenty's response to the State of the Union tried to make hay of Jobs' name in repeating the "job creator" canard. But if Steve Jobs was sitting on $100 billion in cash, why wasn't he creating more jobs? He could have created a million jobs paying $50k a year in 2010 and still had half of those cash reserves left over. But he didn't do it. If we are to believe the "job creator" myth, why didn't Steve create those jobs?
2) The stated purpose of the reserves under Jobs was to provide security and give the option to buy other companies. Not to expand Apple's operations directly through new hires or the building of new factories (which they could have done and failed to do), but to simply buy out other companies in such a way that no new jobs would be created (just more profits for Apple).
3) Splitting stocks, which would benefit small investors, was decided against.
4) The new CEO Cook stated that if US tax laws were amended so as to allow Apple to repatriate its foreign profits, the dividends would have been higher. NOT that new jobs would be created, just that shareholders would get even more money.
We all know that hiring people without a demand for them to fill would just be throwing money away as a business. I don't think Apple has conducted itslef poorly in this regard. My beef is not with Apple's decision making process. But this is an opportunity to seize on a very public counterexample of the mythology that if we just give businesses enough money, they'll create jobs.
Apple sat on tens of billions of dollars through the economic crisis without using that money to create jobs. Given the opportunity to repatriate even more money to swell their cash hoards, they have publicly stated they would simply use that money to buy back even more stock or pay higher dividends to stock holders. And not just any shareholders, bc splitting was ruled out, but massive shareholders who will reap financial windfalls from their dividends.
Progressives always knew the "job creator" line was a myth. But now that Apple has so blatantly pulled the curtain back we need to really press the media and our politicians to comment on that exposure, and use it to put the feet of the myth to the flame.