Quote:
Originally Posted by Cavernio
I might be wrong here, but if anything the US did would actually do this, your plan or another one, then would it not merely end up incentivizing using labour from poorer countries even more because the US as a whole, in comparison, will have become even richer?
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If the government started issuing penalties on moving labour overseas, one of two things would happen:
1/ The penalties would still make it cheaper to operate overseas, companies just pay the penalties, and pass the extra cost onto the consumer in the form of higher prices. Things become more expensive, but nobody is making any more money, people in general become poorer, the economy goes deeper into the shitter
2/ The penalties make it cheaper to operate locally, companies move their facilities into the US, offer jobs at the lowest possible salary, try to employ illegals under the table if possible, unemployment drops, but the higher cost of production causes prices to go up anyway. Inflation occurs. People have more money but their money is worth less buying power. At best, in general people stay exactly as poor as they were before, but if the inflation causes a larger price jump than the difference in income of people on Unemployment or Welfare, they become generally poorer, the economy goes deeper into the shitter
The only ways the government has to make it more appealing to a corporation to operate in the US pretty much all have the effect of being harder on the currently working poor in exchange for being nicer to the unemployed.
If they subsidize wages, they're spending tax revenue they have to make up somewhere else, resulting in the cutting of programs (This would work beautifully if the thing they cut was Defense, but how likely is that to happen?) and reduction of services. If they make up the revenue by taxing the corporations themselves more heavily, they're basically robbing Peter to pay Paul, and taking money away from them to have money to give them doesn't actually fix/change anything.