In the week that President Obama stood before his nation and proclaimed that “we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America” as this was the “price and the promise of citizenship”, Microsoft proves that corporate America is beyond that hard-won citizenship, that it can act as it wants with no thought to solving the problems of the world.

Today Microsoft announced that this past quarter it had made profits of 4.17 billion dollars on quarterly revenues of 16.63 billion dollars. This in a company that employs 94,000 people and has 20 billion dollars in the bank.

Let me put that into a bit of perspective. This quarter Microsoft accounted for the equivalent of the entire GDP of Niger according to the 2007 listing on Wikipedia. It had revenues which equaled the GDP of countries like Tanzania and Bahrain and if you think about it that would be close to its yearly profits.

However, this is far from enough for the giant, rich company. It wants to lay-off 5,000 workers, because the times are tough.

Times are tough? The company earned 4.17 billion dollars as profit. This is not a company that lost money, this is a company that made 4 billion dollars in profit. Is this how corporate America reacts to beginning the remaking of America? Is this the way to show the price of citizenship? That it made 0.5 billion dollars less in profit is unfortunate, but is that really a reason to announce lay-offs?

Microsoft, let me tell you about when “times are tough”. When your country went deep into a depression that saw millions out of work, many starving and the prairies turn into a dust bowl, those are tough times. When people have to line up for food and not be able to feed their children, those are tough times. These are the hardships that created your country, these are the hardships that gave you the ability to own and run your company.

I work for Sun Microsystems, I know we’re laying off people. But at least we are making a loss, there may be some justification to it. Microsoft, look at yourselves: your company is making a profit, you are one of the great engines of the North American economy. Your inability to have an imagination, to heed the words of your newly elected president, to try to remake what it means to be corporate America is a shame upon all of corporate America.

Admit the fact that announcing layoffs is a way to appease the greed and sensibility of Wall Street.

Putting people out of work when you can afford to keep them and to try harder to create new markets, new technologies, new avenues for growth, that would be an answer to get us all out of this problem. Instead you successfully spread fear, doubt and fuel an even worse disaster.

For shame Microsoft, for shame.