Blame Corporations?
Would you hire people purely out of national loyalty knowing that doing so meant your company would eventually become fiscally insolvent?
Corporations, like any business, are in business to make profits. Jobs are the byproduct of profits, not the other way around. Until U.S. corporate tax rates are cut to globally competetive levels, the corporations will outsource jobs overseas in order to make profits for their investors. Unless capital gains taxes are reduced to globally competetive levels, private capital is disincentivized to invest in America. Until Dodd Frank is repealed, small banks, which make small business loans are going to go out of business because they can’t afford to pay the armies of lawyers and accountants needed to comply with the new regulatory burdens. Unless EPA regulations are reduced to levels that allow manufacturing to become cost effective, there will be no new manufacturing. Until obamacare is repealed, businesses and corporations will not add new jobs because they have no idea what the healthcare costs will be for new hires.
You can blame big corporations all you want for shipping jobs overseas but in doing so, you’re completely missing the point that corporate decisions to ship jobs oversears are a reaction to the real problem. High tax burdens, excessive regulations and big government interference in private businesses and private industries.
https://mjfellright.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/blame-corporations/
It would take me a week to thoughtfully respond to your unsupported conclusions above. So I won’t. I’ll pick one, provide more support for it in a few sentences than you provided for any of your conservative talking-point conclusions.
You wrote: Until U.S. corporate tax rates are cut to globally competitive levels, the corporations will outsource jobs overseas in order to make profits for their investors.”
I’ll take that one. This story applies to Google Inc., Apple Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Microsoft Corp. to name a few for whom this same story is applicable.
Intel just spent a billion dollars building a campus in Vietnam. Not only will it be put to use for production but also for research and development; the front end stuff. So why did it do it there? Do you believe that huge incentives were not offered by the government of Vietnam for Intel spending a billion foreign dollars there? It’s unimaginable to me the extent they might have been. Could have been free land, no taxes, utility provision for a couple decades, road infra-structure, etc. Sometimes corruption/brides is “THE” way of doing business in other countries. [Vietnam 2009: two journalists were arrested and convicted in connection with their reporting on high-level corruption, and several journalists and editors at leading newspapers have been fired. Several Internet bloggers were also arrested, jailed, and convicted after writing about corruption, and protesting China’s actions in the disputed Spratly and Paracel Islands and Chinese mining of bauxite in the central highlands.] Who knows what “deals” might have been struck with politicians there. Do you believe that all businesses here in the US should be offered similarly “competitive” incentives? Just curious.
Did you know what the average annual income is in Vietnam is less than $1,200. (?) Do you honestly believe that somehow we could reduce corporate taxes enough here in the US to offset that kind of labor savings that Intel captures in Vietnam – to be competitive?
Are you aware that our existing tax system provides that corporations that do not “bring home” overseas profits but instead make capital investment overseas, (like for example, in the new Intel facility in Vietnam), it remains untaxed until it may or may not be “brought home” ? Our current system actually provides incentive for corporations to create jobs overseas. (Do you suppose corporate lobbying had anything to do with that tax arrangement?) The total amount we’re talking about is $1.4 trillion (estimated) in American corporate profits.. completely untaxed. They may never be taxed if Intel builds it’s next campus in Jakarta, for example.
So. Your battle cry is… lower taxes for corporations…. like Intel…. and perhaps hopefully they’ll stop outsourcing jobs?
How about we start by taking away tax incentives for corporations to burying their profits overseas as a first step (?) and we see how much money comes home to create jobs in ? Hey, If none, let em create jobs overseas and we instead have a new great source of tax revenue. The capital gains rate on $1.4 trillion can help cover costs for the 50,000 “security forces” we’re providing free to corporations keeping Iraq a stable environment for them to make overseas corporate profits! Why does my proposal sound better?
It’s time we instead re-hired 280,000 laid off teachers instead of giving wall street corporations more tax cuts against record profits they have indeed returned to earning since Bush. Don’t think so? Well, that’s precisely why Occupy will be here… until after we’ve made some adjustments desperately needing.