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, then 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.

According to 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.

In November, 2017, President Donald Trump and a Republican-dominated House and Senate rammed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 through Congress. It became law on December 22, 2017.

Donald Trump

According to Chye-Ching Huang, director of the Tax Law Center at New York University School of Law, the legislation did nothing to help ordinary Americans.

Testifying before the House Budget Committee on February 27, 2019, Huang stated that the law:

• Ignored the stagnation of working-class wages and exacerbated inequality;
• Weakened revenues when the nation needed to raise more;  
• Encouraged rampant tax avoidance and gaming that will undermine the integrity of the tax code; 
• Left behind low- and moderate-income Americans—and in many ways hurt them.

For American corporations, however, the law was a godsend: 

• Cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%;
• Shifting toward a territorial tax system, where multinational corporations’ foreign profits go largely untaxed;
• Benefitting overwhelmingly wealthy shareholders and highly paid executives.

Despite all these giveaways, it didn’t encourage those corporations to hire willing-to-work Americans.

For an ever-expanding number of corporations, “outsourcing” is the received religion.

According to a February 9, 2022 article on the website Fortunly: 

• About 300,000 jobs get outsourced out of the United States each year.
• Almost 54% of all companies use third-party support teams to connect with customers.
• There are 59 million freelance workers in the United States.
• About 71% of financial service executives outsource some of their services.
• About 51% of technology executives say they outsource application and software maintenance, and 40% outsource their data centers.

Among those companies who have replaced American workers with foreign ones:

1. Facebook
2. Google
3. IBM
4. Nike
5. Hewlett-Packard
6. Unitedhealth Group
7. American Express
8. Wells Fargo
9. LinkedIn
10. The Coca-Cola Company

The most commonly “outsourced” jobs are:

1. Manufacturing
2. Accounting
3. Web design and development
4. Data entry
5. Payroll 
6. Writer 
7. Marketing
8. Tax preparring
9. Human resources
10. Medical transcription
11. Customer support
12. Information Technology

There are several reasons why CEOs love outsourcing.

1. They can throw higher-paid American workers into the street and hire lower-skilled foreign workers at “coolie wages.” 
2. The CEOs can then pocket much of those “savings.”
3. They can avoid stricter American laws protecting employees against such abuses as racial discrimination and unhealthy/dangerous conditions.

Thus, millions of Americans remain unemployed—or trapped in part-time, no-benefits jobs far below their levels of education and experience.

The most sinister reason for this: The refusal of Congressional Republicans to create job opportunities for their fellow Americans.

When Republicans hold the White House, they bluntly side with corporations—as they did with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. And when they don’t hold the Presidency, they refuse to do anything that might make a Democratic President look good.

As United States Senator Bernie Sanders said on the June 12, 2012 edition of “The Rachel Maddow Show”: “If it’s good for America, if it creates jobs, if it’s good for Barack Obama, we can’t do it.”

Have you noticed how every American employer has suddenly become a “job creator”?

At least, that’s the official Republican line.

But if that’s true:

• Why are so many employers not hiring at all?
• Or, if they are hiring, why aren’t they hiring American workers?
• Why are they hiring mostly part-time employees on a no-benefits basis?
• Why are so many employers shutting down American plants but starting new ones in China, Mexico or the Philippines?

A September 20, 2021 article in Recode—“Why Everybody’s Hiring But No One Is Getting hired”—explains “America’s broken hiring system.”

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) says that 6.6 million potential workers are unemployed—and a record 10.9 million jobs open. 

Why?

“For some of the jobs available, people don’t have the right skills, or at least the skills employers say they’re looking for. Other jobs are undesirable — they offer bad pay or an unpredictable schedule, or just don’t feel worth it to unemployed workers, many of whom are rethinking their priorities.

“In some cases, there are a host of perfectly acceptable candidates and jobs out there, but for a multitude of reasons, they’re just not being matched.”

Throughout the United States, “help wanted” signs can be seen virtually everywhere. “But just because a bar or restaurant or gas station wants a worker doesn’t mean a worker wants to work for them. The millions of jobs available aren’t necessarily millions of jobs people want.”

And what makes these jobs undesirable?

Low pay, unpredictable schedules, no benefits, no long-term stability—as well as the employer practice of hiring one person to do the work of 10.

Yet countless employers whine to the media: “Nobody wants to work anymore.”

Countless job-seekers who do want to work are locked out of it by the computerized “résumé readers” employed by many companies. Many of the résumés submitted are automatically rejected—because they lack certain keywords that have been programmed into the software. 

A classic example: Software scans for registered nurses with computer programming skills—when they just need data entry.

Finally, a lot of employers simply don’t want to hire.

An article in the March, 2011 issue of Reader’s Digest gives the lie to the excuses so many employers use for refusing to hire.

Entitled “22 Secrets HR Won’t Tell You About Getting a Job,” it lays bare many of the reasons why America needs to legally force employers to demonstrate as much responsibility for hiring as job-seekers are expected to show toward searching for work.

Among the truths it reveals:

TRUTH NO: 1: After you’re unemployed more than six months, employers consider you  unemployable.

TRUTH NO. 2:  It’s not what but who you know that counts.

TRUTH NO. 3: Try to avoid HR. Find someone in the company you know. If you don’t know anyone, contact the hiring manager.

TRUTH NO. 4: Cover letters are often ignored, going directly into “the round file.”

TRUTH NO. 5: Employers judge you on the basis of your email address. Avoid the type that reads: “Igetdrunkandparty.”

TRUTH NO. 6: You’re not protected against age discrimination. Many employers regularly ignore the law. Are you in your 50s or 60s?  Leave your year of graduation off your resume.

TRUTH NO: 7: Just because it’s illegal to discriminate against applicants who have children does not mean you’re safe. Many employers try to screen out parents—such as by checking cars for child safety seats.

TRUTH NO. 8: It’s harder to get a job if you’re fat, since fat people are usually assumed to be lazy.

TRUTH NO. 9: Make sure you give the interviewer a firm handshake. Or he might assume you’re a loser for giving him a weak one.

TRUTH NO. 10: The more you can get the interviewer to talk–especially about himself—the more likely you are to be hired. Ego-driven interviewers love hearing the sound of their own voices and will assume you’re better-qualified than someone who doesn’t want to listen to them prattle.

Millions of Americans blamed President Barack Obama for the nation’s high unemployment rate during his administration. And millions more believe that President Donald Trump created an economic miracle—despite those millions of Americans still desperately searching for work.

The brutal truth is that no President can hope to turn unemployment around until employers are forced to start living up to their responsibilities.

And those responsibilities should encompass more than simply fattening their own pocketbooks and/or egos at the expense of their fellow Americans. Such behavior used to be called treason.

Americans need to recognize that a country can be betrayed for other than political reasons. It can be sold out for economic ones, too.

Trea$on

Employers who enrich themselves by weakening their country—by throwing millions of qualified workers into the street and moving their plants to other countries—are traitors.

Employers who set up offshore accounts to claim their American companies are foreign-owned—and thus exempt from taxes—are traitors.

Employers who systematically violate Federal immigration laws—to hire illegal aliens instead of willing-to-work Americans—are traitors.

And with a new definition of treason should go new penalties—heavy fines and/or prison terms–for those who sell out their country to enrich themselves.