Out of the Mouths of Babes Real People: Just Keep Jobs Here

/in /by

The powers that be–those that give a damn about creating jobs at all (Obama’s campaign manager doesn’t)–have a bunch of tired plans for creating jobs in America: get rid of labor unions, repeal healthcare reform, cut the safety net, create green jobs (to compete against China, which has had a huge head start), improve education, reduce the deficit, persecute undocumented workers.

According to Gallup, those proposals are supported by, respectively, 1%, 1%, 1%, 3%, 4%, 5%, 5% of people recently asked an open ended question as to the best way to create jobs in the US. (h/t Gotta Laff)

The leading suggestion–one rarely talked about these days by the smart people in DC–is simply to stop shipping jobs overseas. 25% of people polled said we should just keep our manufacturing jobs here.

Mind you, this guy used to talk about ways to stop shipping jobs overseas. But that’s before he put one of the guys who has shipped the most jobs overseas in charge of job creation. And hired someone who doesn’t much care about job creation to run his reelection campaign. And committed to a NAFTA-style trade agreement with Korea.

But a solid quarter of this country still thinks the best way to create jobs is to make sure they keep the jobs they have. What a novel thought.

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  1. JohnLopresti says:

    I think the Republicans would acquiesce on the continued existence of weak laborunions, the kind prohibited from collecting union dues and applying some of the dues-based revenue to political campaigns and lobbying. The Republican idea is to anihilate all of Democratic party*s own revenue streams; and the rusting unions are a prime objective in the Republican strategy, optimally in time to invert funding streams before the 2012 election season advances much farther.

    On the China issue, I have heard some possibly relevant representations: The carbon foot print of China has serious impact on global warming; that centrally planned, one-party state has a modicum of EPA- and OSHA-like government regulations, but some compliant factories, for example, will claim to be operating, say, a smokestack scrubber, 24/7/365; whereas, in fact, the pollution reducing device is operated only during previously scheduled inspections, the rest of the time the factory owning aparatchik can order the scrubber decommissioned, to save money, and to ingratiate the owner to the local cadre of the one-party in power. Smog and global warming may increase, but the factory shows excellent profit margins by saving the cost of operating the scrubber. I wonder if the US Chamber of Commerce would consider that sort of intermittent functioning of the scrubber a falsification of records. The Chamber is working to prevent EPA from addressing global warming CO2 gas emissions. Then there is the Chamber*s recent announced commissioning of exAG Mukasey to lobby to make the reporting of Foreign Corrupt Practices Act transgressions more opaque. China may want to develop and then sell technology to limit greenhouse gas production by foreign nations, but its own politics is not transparent. Imagine labor unions donating dues to a candidate running against the incumbents in a centrally planned one-party system. China may not get there soon. And the Republicans and the Chamber would like democratic processes to quit scrutinizing business practices and emissions by the US both domestically and in US international trade.

    • NMvoiceofreason says:

      We are no longer necessary to the corporations. The recent few quarters have shown with record unemployment they are producing record profits. Why should they change what they are doing? Why should they increase their costs, their expenses, when we are clearly not necessary? There is no law that says they should. There isn’t even a pressure of public opinion. Where are the jobs? They are gone and they aren’t coming back. The financial sector had breakfast of the goose that laid the golden eggs and ate the omelets too. We are left to starve. Just keeping jobs here is not our policy and will never again be our policy. Policy is made by those with sufficient means to influence the outcome. “They babble about law and order, but its all just an echo of what they’ve been told. There’s a monster on the loose. It’s got our heads into a noose. And it just sits there – watchin.” – Steppenwolf

      • marymccurnin says:

        They have sucked the juice out of the country and will leave it to us. Then they will return after we are weakened to strip the continent of it natural goods. We are screwed and they are the spawns of Satan. Think Dick Cheney.

  3. NMvoiceofreason says:

    Making Matters Worse: The U.S. Tax Code

    In principle, the U.S. taxes American companies on all of their worldwide earnings. Worldwide taxation would eliminate any incentives to move offshore. However, two major exceptions swallow this rule.

    First, American multinationals can defer U.S. taxes indefinitely as long as profits are held in a foreign subsidiary. Taxes are only due when the money is returned to the U.S. parent corporation.10 The result is like an IRA for multinationals’ foreign investments: foreign profits accumulate tax-free. U.S. taxes are effectively voluntary on foreign investments.

    Not surprisingly, then, few corporations choose to pay taxes. Only about seven percent of all income earned in low-tax countries was returned to the U.S. in 1992.11 At the end of 2002, American companies held more than $639 billion in profits in foreign subsidiaries, roughly three-quarters of which would be subject to U.S. tax if repatriated.12

    from Shipping Jobs Overseas: How the Tax Code Subsidizes Foreign Investment and How to Fix It by James Kvaal

  4. selise says:

    i completely agree with the goal, but there are many strands of thought about how this might be done.

    i like things like:

    * public infrastructure development to decrease the cost of doing business here… things like: universal comprehensive first dollar healthcare (no healthcare costs on business hiring), universal SS retirement regardless of individual contributions and with higher benefits (no pension costs on business hiring), universal public education for anyone capable and willing to do the work (no student loans for individuals to pay off), national build out of public low cost high speed broadband to facilitate working at home, etc, etc (needless to say, all these things help the self employed as well).

    * public tech, r&d investments to create jobs here are that are leading edge for next generation mfg and energy… (and will keep maintain some level of the skill set needed here).

    * an employer of last resort program so that anyone who wants a job can have one.

    * ending tax benefits for offshore profits, etc.

    i don’t like:

    * short or even medium term policies to fundamentally changing our trade balance (and especially our foreign current account balance) and policies to limit imports.

    the jobs crisis makes people desperate and vulnerable to nationalistic demagogues if they (and we) can’t imagine either the alternatives or the repercussions of the nationalistic approach. we may not be able to affect policy in the short term, but we can articulate an progressive alternatives and make the case that when all else fails there will be progressive ideas at the ready.

    p.s. edit to add: every time we have a recession, we lose jobs that don’t come back. doing something to stabilize our stupid boom/bust macroeconomy might be a big help in slowing down that process.

    • emptywheel says:

      I agree with a lot of your suggestions.

      But I’d caution about thinking that public tech, by itself, will do that much. Remember all the people who don’t know that iPhones are made in China, after all.

      We invested big in car battery technology–it was one of the smart things Obama did with stimulus.

      But now he has crafted the proposed trade agreement w/Korea that would, IMO, move production of the Volt to Korea within a decade. Korea has set no tariff on electric car imports, suggesting that one ofthe few things Koreans will import from the US will be Volts. But as soon as a real market opens up there, we’ll make the cars there. And since their battery tech is so much more advanced than ours, and their labor cheaper, there’s a decent chance GM would move proudction there.

      And then there’s the example of drugs, which we do invest heavily in and in which we lead; but that ends up hurting our society as a whole given that we insist on making taxpayers pay so much more than any one else for the stuff we paid to develop.

      • selise says:

        my biggest problem with NAFTA-like trade agreements is how much harm they do to workers in other countries, how much they undermine the public commons, restrict national policy space and how much they undermine democratic institutions via chapter 11 like rules. the wto’s fsa is another biggie in my book.

        my thinking very well could be all wrong… and i’d love to have more of a discussion about these issues… i have lots to learn and i want to make that effort. but i’m not now just talking out of my ass without having given this stuff a lot of thought. it’s something i care deeply about… so much so that i spent my 2003 vacation in miami (and before that assisting a little with the local pre-organizing) getting tear gassed, pepper sprayed, etc for the anti-ftaa protests.

        …..

        a few things:

        1. under current arrangements (primarily the role of the dollar as reserve currency), we benefit greatly from imports. i don’t think this benefit is appreciated or taken advantage of sufficiently because we don’t have a full employment policy. but that’s about our employment policies, not trade policies.

        2. when 10 year old tech goes to korea (or wherever) for large scale manufacturing, we should be working on the next generation tech (and future generations after that). trying to hold on to old tech mfg doesn’t do us (or the rest of the world) much good. we’ve really shot ourselves in the foot on this one with decades of low to no infrastructure development.

        when i look at what is happening to university of california (for example) which used to provide a world class and virtually free college education to every student in the state who graduated in the top 10% of their class (a lot more students benefited also from the v low fees for instate students) i just want to cry.

        3. when all costs are accounted for, how much does gm, et al. save per car by off shoring mfg… and how would that number be affected if employee healthcare, pension and education was not a cost to gm?

        4. mfg alone isn’t going to solve our country’s employment problems. but as a national security matter (among other things) having the infrastructure and tech knowhow to ramp up in case of national emergency (see climate) is of critical importance. (and imo working in mfg provides a great training in learning that what works matters far more than theory or ideology).

        • selise says:

          p.s. imo big pharma needs a complete restructuring (i was going to write “needs to be taken out an shot” but of course i don’t mean that literally)… along with all rentiers (monopoly or other).

          so, i agree completely that public investment generally (not just tech) isn’t sufficient. will only argue that it is necessary — and at levels far greater than we have been doing.

      • jerryy says:

        …Korea has set no tariff on electric car imports, suggesting that one ofthe few things Koreans will import from the US will be Volts. But as soon as a real market opens up there, we’ll make the cars there. …

        It could turn out that way, but I think that is pushing the Koreans to wait too long, they would end up losing too much market share to Nissan, Honda (and maybe Tesla). So they are instead aggressively pushing forward on their own:

        http://www.engadget.com/2011/04/01/kia-naimo-concept-ev-debuts-93mph-124-mile-range-and-suicide/

        http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13746_7-20049310-48.html?tag=mncol;title

        They seem to be going after the Japanese car makers instead of the Americans.

  5. tejanarusa says:

    selise–your suggestions just make too much sense. A few years ago I believed it was still possible.

    Now, and even more since reading that Nation piece about Messina (I don’t believe the press didn’t know what Messina ws doing, pretty much allof which seems to have destroyed every possibility of getting what we voted for), I no longer believe in the possibility.

    Your suggestions would be great for the country and the majority of the citizens, therefore it will never happen.

    • selise says:

      yes, but….

      James K. Galbraith: We Need to Make an Honorable Fight… the Fate of the Entire Country is at Stake

      This isn’t a parlor game. The outcome isn’t destined to be all right. It will not necessarily end in progress whatever happens. What we do, how we proceed, and how we effectively resist what is plainly about to happen, matters very greatly for the future of our country, of our children, and of every generation to come. We need to lose our fear, our hesitation, and our unwillingness to face the facts. If we thereby lose some of our hopes, let’s remember the dictum of William of Orange that “it is not necessary to hope in order to persevere.”