General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWSJ Article: Bain created 1,300 jobs under Romney, not 100,000.
Tally of Job Creation By Bain Proves Vexing
How many jobs did Mitt Romney help create at Bain Capital ?
By his count, and that of his presidential campaign, the answer is more than 100,000. The calculation comes primarily from counting every position added until now at four successful investments, including Staples Inc. and Sports Authority Inc., by the private-equity firm Mr. Romney founded.
...
Assigning jobs numbers to private-equity firms has been a fairly rare exercise among researchers, though several academics have studied the topic in the past few years to gauge the economic impact of the industry.
As a result, there is no widely accepted accounting measure. Some academic experts said the Romney campaign's 100,000-jobs count is flawed, because it gives Bain all the credit, even though other investors also played a role in the four key companies, and includes jobs added long after Mr. Romney left Bain in 1999.
"I don't think that an investor should get credit for the jobs created beyond the ones where an investor has a position in the company," said John M. Abowd, a labor economist at Cornell University who donated to the Obama 2012 campaign.
.He suggests yet another way: Give Mr. Romney and Bain credit for a share of jobs created proportional to Bain's ownership stake in its investments at the time. Because Bain held minority stakes in all four firms, and sold out years ago, that method would produce a far lower totalless than 1,500.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303292204577519293959381060.html?mod=WSJ_article_comments#articleTabs%3Darticle
MannyGoldstein
(34,589 posts)The total would likely be quite negative, I suspect.
reformist2
(9,841 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,096 posts)Apparently according to this-
http://www.democraticunderground.com/125153684
he was still there AFTER 1999. How many more were "outsourced" or "downsized" between 1999 and (at least) 2001?
One wonders about this seemingly arbitrary cut-off...? He ran for governor in 2002 which would make the 2001 year more plausible if you're going to lie.
SDjack
(1,448 posts)Customers create jobs. You and I create jobs by buying stuff from Staples and Sports Authority. Bain and Rmoney simply sense opportunity and supply us. When those corporations disappoint us, we will destroy those jobs by taking our business elsewhere. Rmoney has the ability to create jobs. He could pay more taxes and give more to charity. Because he is over-consuming now, not likely that he will increase that to create more jobs.
JaneQPublic
(7,113 posts)...just through the purchase of food, gasoline, durable goods, etc. over the years.
HopeHoops
(47,675 posts)napkinz
(17,199 posts)JHB
(37,161 posts)The easy example is Staples: Its business is office supply. That's not exactly a new industry. Plenty of office supply companies have existed, so how many jobs at Staples were new (serving previously underserved demand) vs. how many essentially cannibalized the existing office supply jobs pool?
Increasing its share of the office supply market is dandy for Staples' executives and shareholders, but for the economy in general it's at best a wash, and due to efficiency it more likely reduced jobs in order to send more money upward.