Companies now putting it to their workers

That's a proven strategy, Boeing built bedroom furniture and speedboats to stay alive after the First World War.

Simple business math, your profit margin is a % of gross revenues, but your losses are 100% of expenses in excess of revenue. If you make 10% and your revenues are 1000 a day, but you lose 500 a day for 30 days before turning a profit again, that's 150 days of profit spent paying off your losses. Just because you're showing a profit on paper doesn't mean you're out of the woods, or you have the money to add staff (or that adding staff would be advisable since business could turn down yet again).

It sure is popular to be anti business these days. I guess the tone has been set with that kind of talk coming from the White House. Do we need to be reminded that profits are the reason that capital is invested in business in the first place? It is the essence of job creation. (not the government as some would have you believe) Oh, and those sinister profits? That's where most of the "boat buying" money comes from.

Bring back slavery and cotton will be king again and plantation house sales will go through the roof!

What's good for business isn't necessarily good for everything else. Being against screwed up economic policies doesn't equate to being "anti-business." That is a bit of anti worker, anti environment, anti social jingoism that only benefits a very tiny portion of the population.

To interject slavery into this debate is not only ludoucris, it also demonstrates a complete lack of factual content. My comments were in response to caps assertion that jobs should somehow come before business. They do not. I don't consider it "screwed up economic policies" for a company to only have the number of employees that they actually have work for.

Ed, it's painfully apparent that you are staunchly anti-management, but I would argue it's better to keep some employed than none employed. The alternative you present is exactly the reason you drive a Hyundai - witness the 1970s/1980s domestic auto industry. Eff the company, eff the product... you only end up effing yourself harder than anyone else ever could. It's self defeating, no matter how feel-good it might seem at the shallowest level.

Burger lay offs

NY Cap's philosophy ?? .. from every man according to his ability ..to every man according to his needs...would seem very fair and perhaps the POTUS believes it also.???

Burger lay offs

Ahhhhhhh, good old Marxist philosophy alive and well in NY City...seems for some history does repeat itself...

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. He only handles the money. It is the product that pays the wages." ~Henry Ford, 1922, also sometimes quoted as "It is the customer that pays the wages"

Not mentioned in the MSNBC article is the current regime's anti-business stance, uncertainty in regulatory issues, the health care debacle--businesses abhor such uncertainties and of course will limit hiring to only just what they need.
Obama in today's WSJ exhorting businesses to "stop hoarding money and start hiring" ...as if by hiring people that are not needed, that there would somehow be more demand.

But, then, the CIC nor ANY of his staff (Pre-Imelt et.al. in the past few weeks) have EVER had a real job.

Recall Jerry Ford and his [WIN] 'Whip Inflation Now' buttons. Another moron treating you and I like morons. I am an equal opportunity Dem/Republican basher, Ed.

Little Susie's lemonade stand business could teach these guys a few things.

Rant complete.

I read the article you linked and I'm not sure of your point. Productivity is bad? The company improved productivity and paid higher wages to it's workers as a result.

Maybe companies have been overly cautious of expanding payrolls due to an anti-business administration with an appetite for pushing additional costs on employers. It's difficult to run a business when you don't know what new government mandate is around the next corner. Hopefully the mid term elections put the brakes on that.

The fact is the POTUS has been espousing anti business rhetoric for two years. From his criticism of Las Vegas conventions to his lame attempt at reconciliation with the Chamber of Commerce a few days ago where he inexplicably claimed that investing in eduction would create jobs. Ask the unemployed college grads in Egypt about that. Business gets nervous when the guy at the top doesn't have a clue.

I was going to keep quiet on this but I need to put in my 2 cents. I attended a Small Business Conference in Miami last week sponsored by NAVSEA. The way they presented, it looked like they were seeking small businesses to be the avenue of the future for new products for the maritime arm of the government. The truth is that there is so much red tape involved that it makes it extremely difficult to get in. It almost seemed like a dog and pony show. I have e-mailed a couple of the presenters. I guess the truth will come out if I get responses from them. By the way, where are all the tax benefits promised to increase small business that is talked about so much by this administration? I haven't seen it. If someone has, please let me know.