Exporting US Jobs

The New American Magazine-JBS ^ | Sept 22, 2003 | William Norman Grigg

[Voltage]

What can be done to change this? Can businessses who contract labor overseas not receive tax cuts? Or is it hopeless?

It's not hopeless if we can get over the idea that US businesses are able to pay for everything we desire.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"It's not hopeless if we can get over the idea that US businesses are able to pay for everything we desire."

You've got it backwards. Consumers are the ones who have to pay for everything they want. Unless the vast majority of them, the great unwashed hordes of Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack are able to work decent jobs at decent wages, they will be unable to buy anything.

People have to have money to buy stuff. They can only have money if they make stuff to sell. If we insist on making all of our stuff overseas, Mr. and Mrs. Joe Sixpack can't get the jobs that pay the wages necessary for them to buy anything.

Nevermind the insanity of relying on foreign sources for our ever diminishing consumption of the machine tools absolutely necessary for national security.

[remember]

What can be done to change this? Can businessses who contract labor overseas not receive tax cuts? Or is it hopeless?

It's not hopeless if we can get over the idea that US businesses are able to pay for everything we desire.

Actually, I think that you both have a point. All companies consume and/or benefit from various government services. Among these are the courts, the police, and the military. For that reason they should, like private citizens, pay taxes. However, companies also provide benefits. Chief among those benefits is the creation of jobs which provide the country's citizens with a livelyhood and the government with individual tax revenues and lower social spending. However, outsourced jobs do not provide that benefit to this country. Hence, I would propose that we give companies tax cuts for creating and maintaining jobs in this country, up to the amount of benefit that the job provides the country. For example, we could waive all or part of the employer portion of the payroll tax.

Currently, it seems that the government treats businesses as some sort of mystical, benevolent force totally outside their control. They offer the sacrifice of tax cuts to the economic gods, assured by the ancient teachings that the gods will then reward us with jobs. We need to take our fate into our own hands and develop a tax policy that rewards companies to the extent that their actions are beneficial to this country. It is becoming obvious that we cannot continue to depend on the whimsical charity of businesses to provide us with jobs. We need to develop a system under which it will be to their benefit to do so.