Friday, December 2, 2016

The Truth About Those 1000 Jobs Saved


As the link from Digg below indicates, it wasn't Trump who made the deal with United Technologies, but Governor Pence who made the deal, and he did it the same way it's been done for years now by both parties: by offering this billion dollar company more tax breaks in Pence's state of Indiana. Which means that the folks there will have that much less revenue in exchange for these jobs. The revenue that makes possible schools, good roads and transportation, and a number of other social needs.

Sure, the fact that these folks won't go into the ranks of the unemployed will help the state, not to mention these workers, but the actual net benefit as far as the state is concerned is questionable to say the least; especially as it only serves to further reinforce the idea that American companies have to be bought off to provide jobs here; jobs that have historically been paying less precisely because of global labor competition.

The real problem here isn't evil corporations, even though they do seem to be amazingly susceptible to the temptations of outright greed, but the economic operating system that now puts all workers in the world at odds with each other. The same system that keeps pushing corporate profits up as wages either stagnate, or rise at mere fractions of what the holders of capital keep getting. Until we understand that it won't matter at all who we put in the White House (assuming that it's change for the better that we are looking for).


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