The left does not believe higher corporate taxes create jobs; it believe they reduce federal debt. - Edit 5
Before modification by Joel at 18/09/2012 11:08:37 PM
As to your question, there are two methods that have worked amazingly well.
1) A modern Works Progress Administration. The right would condemn it as "paying people to prop up brooms," but did the same in the '30s when it was building the Hoover Dam, TVA, LCRA and most of Americas infrastructure. That one-time investment over less than a decade delivered a return of trillions of dollars still growing to this day, and gave millions of unemployed Americans a fair days wage for a fair days work, putting money in their pocket as well as self esteem and civic duty in their hearts. It should be obvious that 80 year old infrastructure is badly in need of repair and/or replacement after a half centurys neglect, so a second WPA dedicated to that purpose is a no brainer. Those are the "shovel ready" jobs Obama promised on the campaign trail; only he can tell you why he abandoned them.
2) Outsourcing can be solved by barring products made without consumer safety, labor and environmental standards required in the US, and prosecuting US companies who exploit the absence of such laws overseas. It is disgraceful that a party predicated on abolishing slavery now insists there is nothing wrong with US companies enslaving children as long as they do not do it in America. That makes a mockery of the phrase "free" trade.
Even if it did not, free trade is impossible without a level playing field. So long as America prohibits companies dumping toxic waste in public drinking water, making poison food and drugs, enslaving children and refusing to pay a minimum wage, it cannot hope to retain multinational production that can do all those things in China, Indonesia, etc. It is bad enough that happens, but that American companies are the primary exploiters is worse, and that America is their primary market is intolerable. The FDA was created to end unscrupulous companies saving money by sweetening toothpaste and cough syrup with antifreeze, and ended that practice—except now companies are importing those same toxic "medicines" and stocking US grocery stores with them.
Try googling cases of toothpaste made with antifreeze that were sitting on US grocery shelves waiting to be bought until discovered and recalled; I know of at least half a dozen such incidents. Or the Chinese coal production company that kidnapped and enslaved local children. Or the FoxConn plant where employees routinely jump off the roof to their deaths rather than keep working there, and that recently canceled local schools and bussed in the students for forced labor. Why are products made like that legal in a country that has had child labor laws for a century, and food and drug regulations nearly as long? Why does American celebrate—even SUBSIDIZE—its multinationals doing things that would put their CEOs in prison if done in America?
My working theory is it is because Big Business threatened for years that US production and jobs would leave if regulations were not abolished and, when proven wrong, devised "free" trade to make good the threat. Rather than raising Third World living standards to Western levels as promised, "free" trade is only LOWERING Western living standards to Third World levels—which was the idea. The only way to save Western production and living standards OR improve Third World living standards is FAIR trade, not falsely so-called "free" trade. Unless/until all products sold in the West are held to the same standards, regardless of source (i.e. including US GMOs sold in Europe,) Western production and living standards must inevitably continue eroding: It is just economics, but has nothing to do with taxes.
In fact, just as an aside on that note: Many US companies list their nominal headquarters as post office box in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, but virtually none have any production there. Corporate taxes are not driving US production overseas: Globalism, which is nothing more than deregulated internationalism, is doing that job, with a vengeance (possibly in a very literal sense.) The only antidote to that is putting an end to Western companies from doing an end run around Western laws by making their products elsewhere, under conditions criminal throughout the West, then selling them in lucrative Western markets that are becoming less lucrative as the consumer, labor and environmental standards that made the West the envy of the world disappear.
1) A modern Works Progress Administration. The right would condemn it as "paying people to prop up brooms," but did the same in the '30s when it was building the Hoover Dam, TVA, LCRA and most of Americas infrastructure. That one-time investment over less than a decade delivered a return of trillions of dollars still growing to this day, and gave millions of unemployed Americans a fair days wage for a fair days work, putting money in their pocket as well as self esteem and civic duty in their hearts. It should be obvious that 80 year old infrastructure is badly in need of repair and/or replacement after a half centurys neglect, so a second WPA dedicated to that purpose is a no brainer. Those are the "shovel ready" jobs Obama promised on the campaign trail; only he can tell you why he abandoned them.
2) Outsourcing can be solved by barring products made without consumer safety, labor and environmental standards required in the US, and prosecuting US companies who exploit the absence of such laws overseas. It is disgraceful that a party predicated on abolishing slavery now insists there is nothing wrong with US companies enslaving children as long as they do not do it in America. That makes a mockery of the phrase "free" trade.
Even if it did not, free trade is impossible without a level playing field. So long as America prohibits companies dumping toxic waste in public drinking water, making poison food and drugs, enslaving children and refusing to pay a minimum wage, it cannot hope to retain multinational production that can do all those things in China, Indonesia, etc. It is bad enough that happens, but that American companies are the primary exploiters is worse, and that America is their primary market is intolerable. The FDA was created to end unscrupulous companies saving money by sweetening toothpaste and cough syrup with antifreeze, and ended that practice—except now companies are importing those same toxic "medicines" and stocking US grocery stores with them.
Try googling cases of toothpaste made with antifreeze that were sitting on US grocery shelves waiting to be bought until discovered and recalled; I know of at least half a dozen such incidents. Or the Chinese coal production company that kidnapped and enslaved local children. Or the FoxConn plant where employees routinely jump off the roof to their deaths rather than keep working there, and that recently canceled local schools and bussed in the students for forced labor. Why are products made like that legal in a country that has had child labor laws for a century, and food and drug regulations nearly as long? Why does American celebrate—even SUBSIDIZE—its multinationals doing things that would put their CEOs in prison if done in America?
My working theory is it is because Big Business threatened for years that US production and jobs would leave if regulations were not abolished and, when proven wrong, devised "free" trade to make good the threat. Rather than raising Third World living standards to Western levels as promised, "free" trade is only LOWERING Western living standards to Third World levels—which was the idea. The only way to save Western production and living standards OR improve Third World living standards is FAIR trade, not falsely so-called "free" trade. Unless/until all products sold in the West are held to the same standards, regardless of source (i.e. including US GMOs sold in Europe,) Western production and living standards must inevitably continue eroding: It is just economics, but has nothing to do with taxes.
In fact, just as an aside on that note: Many US companies list their nominal headquarters as post office box in tax havens like the Cayman Islands or Bermuda, but virtually none have any production there. Corporate taxes are not driving US production overseas: Globalism, which is nothing more than deregulated internationalism, is doing that job, with a vengeance (possibly in a very literal sense.) The only antidote to that is putting an end to Western companies from doing an end run around Western laws by making their products elsewhere, under conditions criminal throughout the West, then selling them in lucrative Western markets that are becoming less lucrative as the consumer, labor and environmental standards that made the West the envy of the world disappear.