There are legitimate reasons why millions of willing-to-work Americans remain unemployed. Or remain trapped in part-time, no-benefits jobs far below their levels of education and experience.

Some companies—such as Toys R Us—declare bankruptcy and go out of business. Others—such as Macy’s and J.C. Penney—are struggling to meet the challenges of e-commerce and the decline of shopping malls.

But there are sinister ones, too–such as the deliberate refusal of Congressional Republicans to create job opportunities for their fellow Americans.

U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I, Vermont) made just that argument to guest host Ezra Klein on the June 12, 2012 edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show.”

KLEIN: Now, some Republicans say and some people say didn’t we do infrastructure a couple years ago? You heard a lot in the stimulus we had done infrastructure. So, how come we have all of this outstanding?

SANDERS: Because we ignored the needs for a long, long, time. Yes, we did put infrastructure. We put it into the state of Vermont, put more money into roads and bridges. But we need a lot more and that`s true for the other 49 states as well.

It’s not only roads…bridges…water systems. It’s mass transportation. It is rail. China is building high-speed rail all over the place. We are not. Our rail system is in many ways deteriorating.

We have schools that are aging. We have culverts that need work. We have tunnels that need work.

We have an enormous amount of work that is ready to go right now and it is beyond comprehension that our Republican friends will not support infrastructure legislation.

If Sanders is correct, Republicans were deliberately sacrificing the economic life of the nation because:

• They hated President Obama; and
• They believed that making the American people suffer would lead them to elect Mitt Romney.

On June 4, 2012, veteran political analyst Chris Matthews discussed this possibility with John Heilemann, the national affairs editor for New York magazine. 

MATTHEWS: How much of that is bent because of the 1% campaign of the president….going after them for grabbing most of the wealth in this country through tax policy and everything else? Are they resentful enough of that…

HEILEMANN: Yes….If you talk to people in business and finance….about the actual substance of the president’s policies, the substance does not bother them as much as the rhetoric.

More than six million Americans are now unemployed because many employers have designed “hiring” systems that simply don’t work.

So says Peter Cappelli, the George W. Taylor professor of management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also the author of  Why Good People Can’t Get Jobs: The Skills Gap and What Companies Can Do About It.

Employers often whine that they can’t find the talent they need. Today’s applicants, they claim, lack skills, education and even a willingness to work.

The truth is altogether different. According to Cappelli, the fault lies with employers, not job-seekers:

• Employers “ask for the moon” by vastly inflating their requirements for openings.
• Many qualified people are automatically removed from consideration by computer technology. The reason: Their resumés don’t match the inflated qualifications demanded by employers.
• Many employers aren’t willing to pay for the education and skills they claim to respect.  They’re looking for people who are young, cheap and experienced.
• Online applicants are often asked: “What salary do you expect?”  If you name a salary that’s higher than what the company is willing to pay, you’re instantly rejected.  
• Many of the candidates employers want to hire refuse to accept the positions at the wage level being offered.
• Employers don’t want to hire entry-level applicants right out of school. They want experienced candidates who can contribute immediately with no training or start-up time.
• Employers demand that a single employee perform the work of several highly skilled employees.
• When employers can’t find the “perfect candidate” they leave positions open for months. But if they were willing to offer some training, they might easily fill those positions.
• Companies no longer hire new college graduates and groom them for management. They no longer offer training and development. As a result, companies must recruit outsiders.
• Employers’ unrealistic expectations are fueled partly by their own arrogance. Employers believe they should be able to find “perfect people.” 

According to Cappelli, the hiring system desperately needs serious reform: 

• If jour job descriptions are inflated, bring them down-to earth.
• Don’t expect to get something for nothing—or next to it. Offer competitive salaries.
• Make sure that the automated systems aren’t screening out qualified candidates simply because they don’t have all the brass buttons in a row.
• Beef up the Human Resources section.

Cappelli worries that the complaints about a labor shortage caused by an unwilling, unskilled workforce will be repeated enough that they will be accepted as truth:

“It’s a loud story…that could become pernicious if it persists. It does have a blame-the-victim feeling to it. It makes people feel better. You don’t have to feel so bad about people suffering if you think they are choosing it somehow.”  

And where there are victims, there are always people ready to profit from their desperation.

Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern politics, warns in his masterwork, The Discourses: 

All those who have written upon civil institutions demonstrate…that whoever desires to found a state and give it laws, must start with assuming that all men are bad and ever ready to display their vicious nature, whenever they may find occasion for it.

If their evil disposition remains concealed for a time, it must be attributed to some unknown reason; and we must assume that it lacked occasion to show itself. But time, which has been said to be the father of all truth, does not fail to bring it to light.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Where the crimes of corporate employers are concerned, we do not have to wait for their evil disposition to reveal itself. It has been fully revealed for decades. We need only find the courage to redress the costly outrages we see every day in the workplace.

In its June 8, 2011 cover-story on “What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths,” Time magazine warned that profit-seeking corporations can’t be relied on to ”make it all better.”

Click here: What U.S. Economic Recovery? Five Destructive Myths – TIME

Wrote Rana Foroohar, Time‘s assistant managing editor in charge of economics and business:

American companies “are doing quite well,” but most American workers “are earning a lower hourly wage now than they did during the recession.”

Corporations, in short, are doing extremely well. But they don’t spend their profits on American workers.

“There may be $2 trillion sitting on the balance sheets of American corporations globally, but firms show no signs of wanting to spend it in order to hire workers at home.”

In short:  Giving even greater tax breaks to mega-corporations—the standard Republican mantra—will not persuade them to stop “outsourcing” jobs. Nor will it convince them to start hiring Americans.

While embarrassingly overpaid CEOs squander corporate wealth on themselves, millions of Americans can’t afford medical care or must depend on charity to feed their families.

Yet there is also a disconnect between the truth of this situation and the willingness of Americans to face up to that truth.

The reason, writes Foroohar:

Republicans have convinced most Americans they can revitalize the economy by slashing “taxes on the wealthy and on cash-hoarding corporations while cutting benefits for millions of Americans.”

To restore prosperity, America will need both tax increases and cuts in entitlement programs.

Now, fast forward to a March 30, 2018 story in The Motley Fool: “These 12 Companies Have Laid Off Workers in 2018.” 

The “tax reform” bill passed by a Republican Congress in 2017 “included a long-awaited reduction in corporate taxes. The top rate for corporations fell from 35% to a flat 21%.

“It also set a one-time repatriation tax on foreign profits at 15.5%, creating a windfall for many companies.” 

“In spite of the good fortune these events have bestowed on corporate America,” sums up the writer, “you might be surprised to find that there is a growing list of employers that are sending workers home this year.”   

Among those companies: 

• Verizon Wireless – 3,000 employees.
• PepsiCo, Inc. – 1,000 layoffs. 
• J.C. Penney – 360 layoffs on top of an already 5,000 firings.
• Ford Motor Company – 2,000 layoffs. Amazon.com – hundreds of workers (no specific number given).
• Macy’s, Inc. – 5,000 jobs eliminated. 
• AT&T – 4,000 employees.
• Walmart – eliminating 3,500 co-manager positions in its domestic market, and replacing half of these with lower-paying assistant store managers. It’s also laying off about 500 headquarters staff this year, and will do so in 2019.
• Kimberly Clark Corporation – laying off 5,000 to 5,500 employees.
• International Business Machines – According to a Mother Jones article, laid off an estimated 20,000 U.S. workers over the age of 40 since 2013, who were all replaced by “less-experienced and lower-paid workers.”
• Toys R Us – Filed for bankruptcy and plans to liquidate its 700 remaining U.S. locations, resulting in the loss of 33,000 American jobs. 

The companies:

• Hewlett-Packard – cutting 5,000 jobs.
• McDonalds – Undisclosed.
• Citigroup – 20,000 jobs.
• Tesla – 3,600 jobs.

And a June 28 article in The Street announced: “These Companies Have Had Some of the Worst Layoffs in 2018.”  

• EBay. Inc. – Cutting “cutting a single-digit percentage of jobs.”
• General Mills – 625 employees. Mid-Continent Nail Corp – firing 60 workers. Deutsche Bank – laying off 10,000 employees. 

Admittedly, some companies have legitimate reasons for cutting back on employees:

• PepsiCo has suffered a fall-off in customers as Americans switch from soda to healthier drinks. 
• Sears has struggled for years after the rise of e-commerce and the decline of customer traffic at shopping malls.
• Macy’s is another company struggling to realign itself in an age of online sales and changing consumer habits.
• Toys R Us has filed for bankruptcy and will soon be gone.

But there are also sinister reasons why millions of willing-to-work Americans remain unemployed.  Or remain trapped in part-time, no-benefits jobs far below their levels of education and experience. 

Chief among these is the refusal of Congressional Republicans to create job opportunities for their fellow Americans.