Romney promises to create 12 million new jobs (audio)
by O. Kay Henderson, RadioIowa.com -- August 8, 2012
[...]
Romney promised that his own proposals would lead to economic growth.
“We’re going to have 12 million new jobs in America during my term,” Romney said, pausing to say, “Yeah,” as the crowd interrupted him with applause. “And Americans are going to see more take-home pay and, let me tell you, I know it’s going to happen.”
Just Trust him. He knows the real numbers.
Meanwhile employment studies show Romney has a 'wealth of experience' creating exactly the jobs at the other end of the spectrum -- ie. Minimum Wage Jobs:
The Romney Economy: Too Few (American) Jobs, Too Little Pay
by Elizabeth Parisian, huffingtonpost.com -- 07/31/2012
[...]
According to a recent report by the National Employment Law Project (NELP), many of the fifty largest minimum wage employers in the country are either currently owned or have been owned by Bain Capital in recent years, including:
• #17: Dunkin' Brands, which owns Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin Robbins and is currently owned by Bain Capital. U.S. workforce: 132,000 employees.
• #25: Bloomin' Brands, which owns Outback Steakhouse among other causal-dining restaurant chains and is currently owned by Bain Capital. U.S. workforce: 85,200 employees. Incidentally, this is the same company that is trying to lower the minimum wage in Florida.
• #45: Staples, Inc., for which Romney provided investment funds back in 1985 and served on the board for over a decade. U.S. workforce: 32,991.
• #20: Domino's Pizza, Inc., owned by Bain Capital from 1998-2010. U.S. workforce: 98,220.
• #7: Burger King, acquired by Bain Capital from 2002-2010. U.S. workforce: 191,815.
These five companies alone account for about half a million workers -- workers who get up every day to work for $7.25 an hour or close to it, usually with little or no benefits, in order to help these companies grow so that their profits can be funneled directly into the pockets of Bain Capital investors like Romney.
[...]
In other words, Mitt Romney may be promising to create "12 million new jobs in his first term" --
but what kind of Jobs will those be?
Mitt's employer track record, kind of speaks for itself. And it errs of the side of cost-cutting, downsizing, and "right-sizing" workers -- right out of the profits, their hard work helps create.
Here are some more summary points, about the employment trends the Mitt Romney help create, in his long career of 'entrepreneuring' -- from that recent National Employment study, cited earlier:
National Employment Law Project (NELP)
Data Brief -- July 2012 www.nelp.org
Big Business, Corporate Profits, and the Minimum Wage
Executive Summary
America’s low-wage economy is marked by two extremes. On the one hand, workers earning at or near the minimum wage are seeing the real value of their paychecks diminish steadily over time, as the cost of living increases while their wages remain stagnant. After nearly half a century of neglect, today’s federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is decades out of date. In terms of purchasing power, its value is 30 percent lower today than it was in 1968.[1 ]
On the other hand, many corporations are posting record-breaking profits. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that, after sinking from 2007 to 2009, corporate profits had successfully caught up to their pre-recession peak by the beginning of 2010 -- and that by the third quarter of 2011, total profits for U.S. corporations reached a new record high of $1.97 trillion.[2]
[...]
Specifically:
• The majority (66 percent) of low-wage workers are not employed by small businesses, but rather by large corporations with over 100 employees;
• The 50 largest employers of low-wage workers have largely recovered from the recession and most are in strong financial positions: 92 percent were profitable last year; 78 percent have been profitable for the last three years; 75 percent have higher revenues now than before the recession; 73 percent have higher cash holdings; and 63 percent have higher operating margins (a measure of profitability).
• Top executive compensation averaged $9.4 million last year at these firms, and they have returned $174.8 billion to shareholders in dividends or share buybacks over the past five years.
[...]
Lest it be say I am progressively bias -- and believe workers deserve a honest competetive wage for honest, hard work --
that workers deserve a "Living Wage" (because I do believe those things)
-- it seems the Bloomburg Business channel has asked much the same kind of questions of Romney's so-called Jobs record:
As in, What kind of Jobs will Mitt Romeny create?
Romney’s Retail Jobs Wages Lower Than Middle Income (Video)
Bloomberg TV
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- Bloomberg's Mike Tackett and Hans Nichols report on the political impact of Mitt Romney's job creation claims at Staples and Sports Authority. Sales associates at the two chains make less than $9 an hour on average, according to survey data from Glassdoor.com, meaning someone working 40 hours a week would earn below the poverty line of $19,090 for a family of three.
In that Bloomburg news clip, the reporter unwittingly answers the Mitt's-Jobs question:
"These are not really the kinds of jobs, you would want all Americans to aspire to."
Yeah, and about 12 more million of them, as Mitt is now promising.