President Obama unveiled his new plan to create jobs and help restore the economy. Unfortunately, unless you are a multinational corporation, the new jobs plan won’t be much help to you.
Obama chose to unveil the new plan at a Maryland manufacturing plant, a fitting setting. Few industries so wholly encompass the current American worker’s plight as industrial fabrication and manufacturing. Often the employees, the line and floor workers, are left to carry the business while corporate executives enjoy exorbitant salaries and bonuses. Then, those same executives, having never spent a day on the line or the floor of a factory, will make a decision that it is best for the company to ship jobs overseas or park the profits of the company there too, avoiding taxes.
The new plan from Obama recognizes all these conditions and says, ‘better the devil you know,’ by granting corporations a “repatriation holiday” through which they can move the almost $1.3 trillion they have overseas. While this may sound great, (The money is coming back to the U.S. after all. Right?) the fact is that given the opportunity to move such a massive amount of money without experiencing the normal tax burdens that are associated, corporations have the option to choose to use the money to issue bonuses to the same executives that chose to hide it overseas in the first place.
“In this context, Obama’s proposal is, in a word, insane,” commented Mike Papantonio, host of Ring of Fire. “The new plan is neither ‘Grand’ nor a ‘Bargain’, unless you’re a corporation.”
While the new plan is a welcome gesture – it is trying to encourage job growth in the United States – the method of encouraging that growth is to cater to the interests of the same corporations that have wrecked the economy before.
Joshua is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @Joshual33.
