Cisco To Slash Up To 6,000 Jobs -- 8% of Its Workforce -- In "Reorganization" 207
alphadogg (971356) writes Cisco Systems will cut as many as 6,000 jobs over the next 12 months, saying it needs to shift resources to growing businesses such as cloud, software and security. The move will be a reorganization rather than a net reduction, the company said. It needs to cut jobs because the product categories where it sees the strongest growth, such as security, require special skills, so it needs to make room for workers in those areas, it said. 'If we don't have the courage to change, if we don't lead the change, we will be left behind,' Chairman and CEO John Chambers said on a conference call.
A complaint (Score:5, Insightful)
Thanks Edward. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:3, Insightful)
So that is Snowden's fault? That is the equivalent of a rapist blaming someone who reports a rape for his ruined reputation.
Sure, sure (Score:0, Insightful)
Cisco is having sales problems in this depressed economy just like so many other companies due to the inflation (money printing), taxes, regulations, basic lack of freedoms that is preventing new businesses from starting and is causing existing businesses to shrink, outsource or just shut down. In 2014 more businesses shutdown than were started first time probably in history of USA.
There is no recovery, the economy is in a depression being held afloat artificially with all this money counterfeiting by the Fed. The so called recovery is based on bubbles in asset and bond markets, due to all this inflation (money printing). The companies are borrowing huge sums in the USA based on their foreign earnings ( money that was made offshore and remains there due to insane taxes in the US) that are used as the collateral to borrow in the US, so that companies can buy their stock back, pushing up the stock prices and consolidating ownership. Warren Buffet talks US policies of the welfare state and inflation up, while getting rid of the US dollars and buying up assets, like the rail roads and the mines and lands. The US dollar is on its last legs, the population feels worse financially in the so called 'recovery' in 2014 than it felt in 2008, during the peak of the financial crisis. There is no recovery, but there is a huge bubble inflated by the Fed in this depression, hiding the necessary deflation with all this inflation and preventing the real and extremely needed restructuring ( writing off of debts, shutting down most of the government and many of the zombie companies that only exist due to inflation). USA job market is horrible, the new net jobs are part time jobs. Manufacturing is gone, very little is produced and where people are still producing, the government is regulating them to death.
Cisco will probably outsource to China or India if they hire at all. Not like it is easier for them now, afted all the NSA bullshit came out.
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:2, Insightful)
Like I said [slashdot.org], companies are borrowing in the USA from money supply inflated by the Fed using their foreign reserves that companies earned and are holding abroad as collateral in order to consolidate ownership and try and beat inflation. The money is borrowed at very low rate of interest due to money not coming from any savings but being brought into existance with Jannet Yellen's magic touch. This is absolutely rational behavior, since the Fed wants to inflate asset bubbles and provides existing large companies with the cash to do it, people do it.
Of-course this misallocation of resources is destroying the dollar, preventing people from making any interest on savings and inflating savings away, which is why senior citizens are working again, in this economy those who want to work are laid off and those who want to retire cannot.
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:5, Insightful)
It is shooting the messenger.
If that messenger didn't tell us, some other messenger would have sooner or later. It was inevitable.
People only keep secrets (like global warming) when they feel it is their patriotic duty to do so for love of country. When they see widespread abuse, contrary to the values of a democracy, little or no oversight, and their peers feel the same way, it is inevitable that somebody is going to blow the whistle about global warming. If it hadn't been Snowden, it would have been someone else, eventually. This was never going to stay secret forever.
Re:Thanks Edward. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
... so is the value-added tax or sales tax, which hits poor and middle class disproportionately to the percent of income taxed.
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Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Poor people also pay a disproportionate part of their income on food, clothing, energy, housing and transportation. Should all of those things be cheaper for poor people as well?
Should I have done an income analysis on my neighborhood and if I found that I was on the low-end of the income spectrum, should I have demanded a lower price on my house simply because I make less than my neighbors?
I understand charity for the poor, but demanding that poor people pay less for everything simply because they are poor defeats the point of a market economy. If you are going to do that, why not go all the way to a state planned economy?
I'll tell you why.
Because a pure 100% ideological solution to anything is a recipe for failure.
Sometimes a capitalistic approach works. Sometimes a socialistic approach works. Sometimes some other approach entirely works.
If you can achieve a good blend, where you take advantages of systems at their strong points and use some better approach at their weak points, you'll be better off than you will if you live in a binary all-or-nothing world. Where you may get the best of an ideology, but you'll pay for it by getting the worst as well.
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh yea - keep on blaming the poor for being poor! Have you ever lived paycheck-to-paycheck? If not then count your lucky-ducky stars because you are in the minority [cnn.com] of Americans (assuming that you live in the US).
when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year
You're thinking about this in the wrong way. Social safety nets are not about altruism, or even making it easy for the poor to get subsidies (it's not). When poor people lose their jobs, they lose their homes and end up on the streets. When large swaths of the population are homeless, you end up with filthy slums [wikipedia.org] where basic necessities are rare and diseases flourish. Walls, police and even social ostracism may be able to keep undesirable people out of your pristine life, but they won't prevent diseases from spreading from poor communities to the rich who've managed to deny them even a damn toilet to shit in.
Keeping the poor from becoming that poor is a necessity for any civilization. Subsidies for the poor do far more for the common good than tax breaks for the rich.
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:3, Insightful)
You are completely misunderstanding the difference between the taxes, which are decided on by the society and prices, which are decided by the market.
Capitalism has nothing to do with the actual percentages of different taxes that we vote into laws. The poor and middle class are hit by taxes the most proportionately to their means. We cannot expect one group of people to pay 50% of their income in various taxes and fees and another group to pay 15% or less. Our tax system is completely broken and that has very little to do with capitalism, socialism or whatever.
Also, capitalism was great, when the basic resources, like shelter, food, education, healthcare and protection were in shorter supply than the demand. But we live now in society where covering the basic needs of everyone would cost less than 50% of the GDP. A system which leaves some citizens unable to afford to cover their basic needs is not necessary anymore. And since keeping someone without shelter, food, healthcare or education is a choice of the society and not a necessity as it used to be, one can easily argue that such choice is amoral.
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes should be flat across the spectrum. You shouldn't get a break because you are extremely rich or poor. Besides, a flat tax is naturally progressive. If you make more, you pay more.
A flat tax is only "progressive" if you abuse the word to mean something else and completely ignore how everyone else is using the word progressive.
Here's a letter from the 3rd President of the USA to the 5th President.
Thomas Jefferson to James Madison [uchicago.edu]
28 Oct. 1785
Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise. Whenever there is in any country, uncultivated lands and unemployed poor, it is clear that the laws of property have been so far extended as to violate natural right. The earth is given as a common stock for man to labour and live on.
That's the author of the Declaration of Independence writing to the "Father of the Constitution" and author of the Bill of Rights.
Better still, let's not tax income or property. Since all money in the economy is eventually spent, let's simply tax consumption and fund our society that way. Everyone consumes - those that consume less will pay less tax.
How did this get modded up.
Everyone has a basic level of consumption: food, water shelter, clothing, transportation.
For the poorest, this basic level of consumption makes up most of their spending.
It's the difference between a 10% tax on 90% of your income or 1% of your income.
That's not progressive, that's not better, that's not fairer.
And the founding fathers thought it was dumb.
Re:While Buying Back $1.5 Billion In Stock (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, the rich should be paying more back into the economy (through taxes or spending) instead of hoarding wealth, and the H-1Bs and other outsourcing of costs has to be curtailed.
However, when the poor stop getting earned income credits totaling in the several thousands every year (which goes up with the number of children claimed as dependents), while they don't pay a penny in income tax because they're unemployed for whatever reason, then you'll have a solid argument. Until then, too many of the "poor" are getting a free ride on the backs of bad government policy - and they have no skin in the game. Maybe they need to get rid of their iPhones, stop buying $250 Nikes, and cut their cable to pay some taxes back into the system that's paying for those luxuries.
This is a very emotionally appealing "solution". But notice that these "freeloading poor" are contributing to the economy by buying iPhones, $250 Nikes, and cable. Keeping money in circulation and creating jobs.
On the other hand, how many iPhones, numerically speaking, are 1% of the population going to be buying? How many pairs of Nikes? Probably more that any single poor person, but there are so many poor people. Companies like Cartier may be able to prosper serving only the wealthy, but Apple didn't get to be the behemoth it is by selling solely to the well-to-do, even at Apple's notoriously high prices.
We more or less respect the "idle rich" whose money comes not from working, but from investments, whether direct or inherited.
Maybe we can spare a little love for the "idle poor" as well.
Re:Everything hits poor people harder (Score:5, Insightful)
Communism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves. Because of that base assumption about human behavior it's a terrible system.
Libertarianism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves.
Laissez-fair capitalism is a great idea as long as every actor is altruistic and interested in the welfare of the society above themselves.
Etc...
All these "improvements" on the system we have only work if you assume people aren't self-interested greedy pricks that will screw over their own mothers for $5. As soon as you insert the real world into these system it collapses from the sociopaths gaming the system for themselves. As you said you need checks and balances, capitalism with regulation to prevent the abuse of the system that is common appears to be the most functional system, that is as long as you don't get people that are so stupid they think the regulation is the problem.
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Taxes should be flat across the spectrum. You shouldn't get a break because you are extremely rich or poor. Besides, a flat tax is naturally progressive. If you make more, you pay more.
I used to think that too, but it is simply a fact that it is easier to make money when you have more money -- you are proposing a feedback loop that would promote the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. At the very least you have to deduct the cost of necessities. Compare this to a business -- imagine what would happen if you taxed businesses based on revenue, rather than profit. Yet, people see no problem proposing the same for individuals.
Re:He's also advocating for tax hikes for the rich (Score:5, Insightful)
Every [wikipedia.org] definition [investopedia.com] I've [merriam-webster.com] seen [princeton.edu] disagrees [reference.com] with [indiatimes.com] you [investinganswers.com].
Your flat tax is actually defined as "proportional," not "progressive."