Verizon plans to cut jobs. How's that stimulus working for them?

[DoctorHook]

Their not the only ones planning on cuts, I don't think the stimulus is working for any of us.

[subwm4bush]

The cuts are in response to a shift in businesses to focus on the faster- growing wireless and FiOS video services. The company has already cut 8,000 jobs in the past 12 months, and plans to cut another 8,000 positions in the second half.

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/djf500/200909101656DOWJONESDJONLINE000722_FORTUNE5.htm

[ArmchairGoddess]

The Recovery and Reinvestment Act has little to do with Verizon. Verizon is a company, not infrastructure or working class Americans or retired or disabled veterans or public schools or police/firefighters, or teachers...go to whitehouse.gov/recovery or recovery.gov to discover how each state is using the money. CEOs of big corporations make independent decisions that are profit-driven, and government does not usually interfere with this in a capitalist system such as we have, despite all the vile propaganda being spread by corporate-funded "teabaggers" or scripted town hall disrupters who try to say there has been a "government takeover" (a blatant lie).

The people being laid off will benefit from the stimulus (Recovery and Reinvestment Act) because President Obama extended benefits through December and increased the amount. There are also incentives for people who attend college, and debt forgiveness for medical students who go into general practice instead of a specialty.

What your criticism implies is that Verizon executives have access to money from the stimulus, when in fact they do not. They are an independent corporation making decisions about profit margins that may benefit their executives but not the American people. We could always organize a boycott of their products and services in protest, forcing them to reconsider. The unemployment figures will probably rise for a while, but at least the layoffs have slowed. In order to understand the dangerous severity of the meltdown, look at FRONTLINE: Inside the Meltdown. The only thing they leave off is the two years of price-gouging under oilmen Bush/Cheney that precipitated all the problems for mainstreet Americans that spread throughout the country: People spent less on regular items just to buy gas; stores raised prices due to higher shipping costs; people maxed out their credit cards juggling family budgets, which lowered their credit scores and preventing them from borrowing; some began defaulting on their credit cards, then on their mortgage payments; tourism dollars upon which many states depend did not materialize, which means states began operating in the red;...and so on. I keep wondering why no one mentions the role that the gas price-gouging played when there was actually a glut of oil reserves in the meltdown.

[Kaitosays$560]

Intel's hiring...they were smart and made cutbacks in 2005 to avoid this. Now, some things have changed (for example, you know need second-level managerial approval to fly on the West Coast shuttle), but nobody's been fired. Well, Gelsinger quit

I see this as bad planning.