Right. I see liberals normally mentioning Obama as the Messiah of the auto industry without ever mentioning the tens of billions of dollars in stop-gap funding provided by the Bush Administration until the incoming Obama Administration could make a decision about the company's fate.
I have no problems crediting Bush for several of the steps he took, at the end of the term, to prevent the economy from complete meltdown. Including loaning the auto industry about $17bn.
I get that our economy is evolving. What I don't get is why our government seems so hellbent on assisting companies in speeding up the process of moving jobs out of the country.
Yeah, that's because... it doesn't.
Corporations do not get special tax breaks or tax incentives to outsource jobs or production. They don't get state or federal grants either. Presidents, including Obama, have frequently criticized companies that move. Obama, along with Congress, has tried to dampen inversion.
In fact, many states are elbowing each other with tax breaks and other incentives to entice corporations to move to their states -- often just moving from one state to another.
The federal government has basically just gotten out of the way of companies doing what they want to do. Ironically, this is what conservatives, Republicans, pro-capitalists and free marketers
ought to want. Now, they will have to deal with a federal government that in one breath says it wants to remove regulations, and in the next threatens them and demands to micromanage their factory locations.
I wonder, what would happen if a big company wants to move from Texas to California? Does Greg Abbott now have the option to call up Trump, and demand that he stop the move, because it will benefit a Democratic state and hurt a Republican one?
If Ford announced that they're going to lay off 10,000 workers, is Trump going to Tweet at Ford not to fire anyone, or else they will suffer the consequences? How should Ford react?
Is it the tax code? Perhaps, but probably not. Attempts to fix corporate taxes in the US (whose effective rates are already quite low) invites disaster. One issue is that obviously, if effective tax rates go even lower, then our revenues will decline, and we're exacerbating the deficit. (Normally this causes Republicans and conservatives to scream bloody murder... but only when Democrats are in office.) The other issue is a race to the bottom. If the US was able to cut taxes low enough to entice other companies to move in or move back, then other nations may have an incentive to cut their tax rates for the same reason, with an end result of every company moving its HQ to the Cayman Islands and paying a 0.01% corporate tax.
I mean, I'm glad we have companies with six employees sporting billion dollar-plus market caps that make their stockholders filthy rich, but we also need companies that actually employ working stiffs for more than peanuts.
If that's the case, then I suspect you are not going to like the future very much.
We are getting better and better, every day, at automating jobs. Today we have 3.5 million truck drivers; in 10 years, that entire profession will be all but obsolete. Self-driving trucks will probably be faster, safer, cheaper and more efficient than human drivers. Should we
not have cheaper goods and safer roads, because we want to keep humans employed? Should we pass laws against self-driving trucks, based not on safety, but on a desire to keep those drivers employed in the same jobs they've done for years?
What happens when 200 million Americans want to work, and there's only enough jobs to employ 150 million Americans? Or 100 million?
The fact that we need (or merely want) people to have jobs is not sufficient to create those jobs.
Sometimes the market isn't healthy for our own security.....
Yeah, not really sure how GE/RCA is really an example of that. Unless you're suggesting that Britain jeopardized its national security by not having its own electronics behemoth, auto industry capable of producing every car, sufficient agricultural capacity to put a steak on every plate every night?
What do your propose we do as automation continues to take jobs?
