© Merle Harton, Jr. | About | XML/RSS

The Bush Administration continues to have unprotected sex with multinational corporations.  Although the president's chief economic advisor, Gregory Mankiw, has apologized for saying that the outsourcing of jobs was "probably a plus for the economy in the run," job outsourcing continues to be the good news whispered around the White House—and why not? Profit for large corporations is the K-Y jelly of the president's economic platform. We know already that the president is another supply-side economist favoring tax cuts as the straight path to economic growth. On the sheathe of the tax-cut knife, however, is written the words "hide the off-shore dollars." The tax cut is supposed to free up money for the average worker and investor, thereby giving them more money to spend or invest, but there isn't enough money because it's going off-shore. (Here's a weird example: Remember the tons of US dollars held by Saddam Hussein, his sons, and their account in Iraq's national bank? Those weren't checks or promissory notes—that was hard currency. Every US company ends up stashing US greenbacks whenever they take their business offshore.) So US dollars go off-shore, taking currency from the domestic economy; so the tax cut puts some more money back into in the domestic economy.

Outsourcing cuts costs for the global-minded US corporation and raises its profits, giving it more money to invest in the domestic economy through job creation. Alas, the publicly-held corporation really isn't made to behave like that and our current situation is a witness to this. The US economy managed to grow by 7.2% in the third quarter of 2003, but at the same time it cast off more than 41,000 jobs, some to outsourcing, some just to cost-trimming; in all, about 3 million jobs have been lost since Bush became president. I mean no disrespect for the average multinational corporation, but the publicly traded corporation—domestic or multinational, it doesn't matter—exists only to whore in the marketplace. Her sole reason for existing is to make money, to collect profits, and to return these profits to investors in the form of dividends and through a higher return when her stock is sold. She has no other purpose. If she manages to bless the US economy with some domestic jobs, that is only because of some selfish corporate motive: perhaps the sex was good or the John paid well. She can just as quickly take away those jobs, perhaps tomorrow. In the meantime, the small business owner, like a chaste and loyal wife, is left to walk barefoot in the kitchen.