Oct 16 2008
Rant—U haz bin warnd
Within the past couple of years, a company I used to work for has participated in vigorous “job creation,” creating FIFTEEN THOUSAND NEW JOBS!
IN INDIA!
They started small, only a thousand jobs or so, but when they saw that an Indian worker would accept as a yearly salary what one of their American employees expected for a week’s work, they decided to dramatically expand their “overseas resources.”
Now, they did give their American workforce every opportunity to become more fiscally attractive employees. They forced every American employee to part-time so the company didn’t have to offer benefits. They did an across-the-board pay cut. They “upgraded” to a “better” network that may have had a few bugs, but they almost always had it working again within eight hours, so all those impossible Americans had to do was work a different shift at a moment’s notice.
But NOOOOOOOO, those selfish, greedy Americans thought they were too good for those conditions and abandoned ship en masse, clearly leaving the company no choice but to resort entirely to foreign labor.
That company’s American workforce currently consists of about 30 people at the corporate office. And they are RAKING in the moolah because they’re paying their “overseas resources” 10 percent of the previous payroll while continuing to charge their clients 100 percent for their services.
The shareholders are pissing themselves with glee and cleaning up the mess with hundred dollar bills.
Meanwhile, 9.5 million Americans (the equivalent of the entire population of Georgia, the ninth most populous state in the nation) are jobless—2.2 million of those added within the last 12 months.
Gosh and by golly, what could the problem be, since corporate America is busily creating jobs to earn them thar tax breaks and keep the economy thriving?
Um… I’m no economist, but with my mad skillz at recognizing obvious cause-and-effect, I deduce that while creating jobs in China and India and Mexico is probably doing fabulous things to the economy in China and India and Mexico and fabulous things to the bank accounts of the corporate bigwigs, it’s not doing a damn thing for the American economy or the American worker. And when the corporate bigwig buys his German-made sportscar and his summer mansion in the French Riviera, his largesse isn’t “trickling down” to the middle or—god forbid—the lower class in America.
So unless there’s a stipulation that all this fabulous “job creation” is taking place IN AMERICA associated with any tax favoritism toward the wealthy, I don’t believe they should get a tax break. In fact, I think they should be taxed for every job they outsource until such a time when there are not enough Americans to fill the number of jobs they need to fill.
The government has been accepting Big Business’s kickbacks and kissing its ass for many, many years now, and it’s brought us to economic collapse. The model obviously isn’t working, so let’s not put it back together with a paperclip and Scotch tape and pretend that will get us back on track.
Incidentally, rich old white men patting me on the head and saying “I know best” absolutely enrage me like few other things can.
October 16th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I absolutely agree that companies who create jobs elsewhere shouldn’t get a tax break/benefit at all. Isn’t the point of the tax break to encourage businesses to stimulate OUR ecomony? We need to make it financially beneficial to companies to KEEP jobs here. Enough already.