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IBM, Other Multinationals "Detaching" From the US
theodp writes "If you're brilliant, work really hard, and earn a world-class doctorate from a US university, IBM has a job for you at one of its US research sites — as a 'complementary worker' (as this 1996 piece defined the then-emerging term). But be prepared to ship out to India or China after you've soaked up knowledge for 13 months as a 'long-term supplemental worker.' Newsweek sketches some of the bigger picture, reporting that IBM, HP, Accenture, and others are finding it profitable to detach from the United States (even patenting the process). 'IBM is one of the multinationals that propelled America to the apex of its power, and it is now emblematic of the process of creative destruction pushing America to a new, less dominant, and less comfortable position.'"
Instead of blaming them for leaving, why don't we stop chasing them away?
They are multinational corporations... what kind of national loyalty are we expecting from them?
They behave exactly as legislation allows them to behave. If you don't like it, change the legislation.
Large corporations are not good citizens and care little about the welfare of the nations that created them. I've heard them described as sociopathic is nature, which is probably quite an accurate description. They rarely have any long term vision in most cases and only seem to look a quarter or two ahead to make investors happy. Limiting their greed just slightly compared to their competitors might earn some good will in the future, but even that seems to be beyond most corporations.
The Egyptians complained about the English "stealing" their cotton spinning and weaving business. The English complained about the Yankee New Englanders, who complained about the Southerners, who complained about the Mexicans, who complained about the Malaysians who are complaining about the Chinese and Indians.
When I say "complained", I mean passed laws and regulations, imposed sanctions, taxes and duties, fought wars, battled smuggling, and whined.
In the long run, the laws of econonics ALWAYS win. The US should fix the causes, not the symptoms.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
The fact is that Obama is a redistributionist who claims that jobs are owed and not earned. Sorry, but that kind of attitude is what's driving employers away from the USA. You wish you had a girlfriend/boyfriend? Then make yourself appealing, so that someone will want to hook up with you. Don't go talking about how having a significant other is your inalienable right, somehow owed to you by society or other unspecified parties. You wish you had a job? Then make yourself appealing and more competent, so that someone will want to hire you. Don't go talking about how somebody else is "stealing" "your" job, as if a job is somehow owed to you, regardless of how incompetent you are.
Obama is consistently talking about "American jobs" as if the jobs are rightfully American. His political stance is well known to be re-distributionist. Start earning, and stop whining for a handout.
Because the stuff that's "chasing them away" is the same stuff that still nominally keeps the American people from being totally subjugated and destitute like the Chinese and Indians are.
What makes you think that's achievable? Americans are competing with Chinese and Indians. What possible reason would there be for anybody to pay more to an American worker than to a Chinese or Indian worker?
Companies aren't going to stop leaving the US until we are so broken by their flight that we are forced to become fascist.
Companies don't care about fascism. We just need to become cheaper, or we need to help Chinese and Indians become rich.
Isn't the real fix that we improve the countries they are outsourcing to until the economy there demands the same as US salaries? At that point geography becomes the benefit instead of dollars and they want to hire the guy closer to "home."
-Xen
Actually corporations owe the public a lot.
Incorporation's primary purpose is to shield those who make the profit from the consequences of their company's actions. If this legal shield is ever removed we can start talking about everybody being on their own but it's absurd under current law.
I find the fact that corporations such as this, especially in a time of economic hardship, are basically harming american workers and showing such contempt for the USA, to be greatly offensive and angers me to no end. i think its time that we detach from china and india which has basically decimated Americas economy and who have stolen our jobs. I think its clearly time that we need to stop allowing these companies to abuse the USA looking at it as only a market to sell their overpriced chinese crap, and start creating jobs here again. Globalisation is such a big scam its ridiculous, its destroying this countyr and allows these greedy companies to basically exploit slave labor in china. The US should and can, and must for its survival, implement a tariff on imports of cars, textiles, furniture, IT services, customer service calls to India and China, etc, and so on. When we have 15% unemployment in reality and people struggling to find work the notion of any company moving jobs somewhere else really should cause a revolt from americans and demands to implement tariffs. Its time to get past this irrational hysteria about tariffs. Tariffs are good and can help this countries economy rebound. There is nothing wrong with it since it simply allows americans to make products for other americans. Think about it, why cant the chinese make things for other chinese, and americans make things for other americans. it would be better for the chinese of the products that chinese workers stayed in china to benefit to the people there. It would be better for americans to create more jobs in the US making products for use by americans. The only people that globalisation benefits is the wealthy rich elite corporations who important products made by employees in slave labor camps in china making a few cents an hour, living in filthy dormitories, who are treated in the most inhumane way, beaten, and even not allowed to use the restroom, with litany of human rights abuses, the products these slaves make are then sold off at a 100% markup in the US and the wealthy elite take the profit. Both the american and the chinese worker are the losers. Globalisation is what has allowed as well corporations to basically dictate to countries basically how they will treat workers and the environment and rewards countries which allow their environment and workers to be ruthlessly exploited by massive global corporations. This is a system where massive global corporations get their way and make the laws through making countries compete against each other to see who can allow their employees to be treated in the most inhumane way. Through the global consolidation and globalisation the corporations are able to control markets resources, jobs, and so on in many different countries and operate as sort of transnational governments. Through this we are seeing a new world order emerge where the governments of countries are simply puppets of a powerful fascist global corporate order who controls wealth, resources, jobs, markets, capital, etc.
If we value our freedom, we need to implement tariffs which would give our own worker welfare laws, our own democratic state, some force and allow us to implement unions without the corporations threatening to move jobs to other countries. If you want to be treated like a decently like a human being, to have a good life and to be paid decently for decent work, we desperately need to implement broader democratic unions which allow employees a democratic vioce where they can act as a safeguard against mistreatment and slave wages. Unions are essential to our economic recovery and for stopping the destruction of the middle class. The unions built the middle class in the USA and ironically created a middle class that had the spending power which made companies like IBM so successful. Unions are essential for workers to have decent wage since it more often than not is the tendancy of corporations to pay workers as little as they can, leading to a vast impoverished state in the economy. Its just shocking and disgusting tha
As if US corporations ever actually pay anywhere near what the rates actually are - any corporation can find innumerable tax loopholes while setting up offshore holding companies to cut the effective rate down to nearly nothing. Goldman Sachs paid an effective 1% tax rate in 2008, many US corporations manage to get an effective rate of 0% and pay no taxes at all. I'm all for reducing corporate tax rates, if the loopholes are closed so that the rates set down have some actual fiscal meaning.
I think this idea of a lack of engineers with "valuable and unusual skills" in the US is more myth than reality.
The primary value that the H-1B program has for companies is economic. If you convert these workers to citizens, you'll have to pay them competitive wages and they'll be free to change jobs. Not much economic value there.
It's funny how people complain that illegal immigrants are cutting to the front of the immigration line but there's always a place for athletes, actors, and celebrities to go to the front. Of course, there really isn't a line anyway.
I don't blame the consumer. I blame the people who wrote the trade laws that allow for slave labor to have equal playing field. Those trade laws completely destroy the fundamental American principle of freedom.
I blame the trade laws which basically guarantee that if you build a product in a responsible manner, it's not going to succeed, because the people who ignore environmental and safety standards can build it cheaper.
Laws that protect us from this kind of behavior add costs that push companies to these countries.
And here we find the weakness in capitalism — the tyranny of the masses, who want cheaper and cheaper DVD players and disposable razors, and don't care how many twelve year olds have to work in sweatshops to deliver them. (Me too. I'm trying to be better, but my habits are very bad. Like most of us.)
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"