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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHe destroys manufacturing and creates retail.
SUN JAN 15, 2012
When Mitt Romney came to Kansas City
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Mitt Romney and Bain Capital, however, practice a different sort of business where they make money whether they succeed or fail. Inexplicably, they profit handsomely off of failure, sometimes with the aid of federal bailouts and tax giveaways. To most people, this isn't how the game is supposed to work. Romney and his defenders don't want people to talk about how he does business because he knows that people disapprove of his business practices. To the average person, his kind of business belongs in the same category as loansharking and racketeering rather than invention and innovation. Capitalism isn't on trial. Mitt Romney's business practices are on trial.
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Mitt Romney represents the economy of the people who can't lose. We read about these people all the time. They get hired as CEOs of major corporations, drive those corporations into the ground, and still they walk away with multi-million dollar golden parachutes. They run scams and schemes that bring the American economy to the precipice of total collapse, and not only is nobody prosecuted, but they are bailed out with taxpayer's money dollar for dollar. The workers get cuts in salary and benefits, if not layoffs, while the CEOs simultaneously get huge bonuses. Wall Street firms like Bain can launch a hostile takeover of a steel mill, load the company up with debt, cash out, and leave the wreckage for a bankruptcy court to deal with. When you can't lose, you don't have free market capitalism. You have a rigged casino. We have a class of people running the economy in this country who, no matter what they do, can't lose.
Of course, Mitt Romney will tout the fact that after the huge mess he left in Kansas City after destroying the Grinding Mill, he did manage to open up a Staples. Of course, the Staples in Kansas City does not employ 750 people. Not even close. There aren't any machinists, pipefitters or electricians. Rather, Mitt Romney has created a much smaller team of cashiers, stockpersons, and sales managers at pay and benefits typical of retail work. I'm sure they're all decent people working hard selling rack after rack of products made overseas. But is this the kind of America we want? An America were we loot and close our factories, decimate our workers, and allow corporate raiders to make off like bandits? So we can pay for overpriced printer ink from China with wages from a part-time job in retail? Mitt Romney seems proud of a nation where people are sales clerks at The Sports Authority or pizza delivery guys at Domino's. That's what his "business experience" has accomplished. He destroys manufacturing and creates retail.
more: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/01/15/1054751/-When-Mitt-Romney-came-to-Kansas%C2%A0City?via=blog_1
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He destroys manufacturing and creates retail. (Original Post)
kpete
Jan 2012
OP
Only one quibble, capitalism IS on trial - these are business practices NOW. nt
riderinthestorm
Jan 2012
#5
MichiganVote
(21,086 posts)1. Another pension pissing, insincere, give a shit treasury looter.
Tuesday Afternoon
(56,912 posts)2. fashion is both mfg and retail
just saying
WorseBeforeBetter
(11,441 posts)3. At Bain, Romney pushed 'creative destruction'
http://www.newsobserver.com/2012/01/15/1779047/at-bain-romney-pushed-creative.html
How sad:
In 2004, when Staples bought a small company called Hartford Office Supply, owned by two brothers, employees at the acquired firm worried about their jobs.
"We're all devastated," one worker said then. "This is one of the nicest, most family-oriented places that you could work ... and I don't know why they had to do this."
But according to this guy, Americans are OK with it:
Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, said that despite job losses and other discomfiting changes when companies single-mindedly pursue profit, Americans are ultimately "believers in creative destruction." "Romney is mainstream in one sense, and that is that Americans are very committed to this process, because we believe in the future and we believe in technology," Carnevale said.
Average annual retail salary: $25,000. Awesome.
Initech
(100,102 posts)4. I think we should make Lewis Black's idea a law:
"If you run a company and it can't explain in one sentence what it does - then it should be illegal."
Bain Capital is just one such company.
riderinthestorm
(23,272 posts)5. Only one quibble, capitalism IS on trial - these are business practices NOW. nt