It’s not the weekend, and I apologize, but I just had to post this while it was fresh.
On NPR's Morning Edition today, in Tom Gjelten’s report about President Obama’s intentions to cut the tax breaks corporations get for shipping jobs to other countries, we had this interesting lesson in market economics.
As Gjelten could have read from a Chamber of Commerce press release, and he could have let the Chamber’s flack included in the piece parrot the guff, not giving American corporations these tax breaks would mean that they would be at a competitive disadvantage to foreign corporations who get even more favorable tax breaks for their foreign operations. It would be bad for American corporations An unasked question is how a corporation’s foreign assetts enhance their status as “American corporations”.
And to compound this problem, if American corporations are given a disincentive for outsourcing jobs and have to keep them in America, employing Americans, then American worker would be getting an unfair advantage that would amount to unfair protectionism. I’ll leave aside the revenue that the federal government would get from taxing the foreign operations of these corporations aside to balance out the last thing I said in the last paragraph.
- So, when the American government provides tax breaks to “AMERICAN CORPORATIONS” in order to give them an advantage in competing with foreign corporations, it’s sound economic policy.
- But, when the American government takes measures to provide AMERICAN WORKERS with a chance of not having jobs shipped to places that pay slave wages, it is an evil hindrance of true, fair and good economic competition, and no doubt will lead to disaster.
Protecting allegedly “American” corporations, good, pure and right.
Protecting indisputably American workers, evil, corrupt and disastrous.
You got that?
And, lest anyone not appreciate the full flavor of this, NPR will certainly be looking for its handout from the Federal government this year including tax breaks which will give the likes of Tom and Steve and Rene a chance to be employed.