ABJ Editor - We're apparently NOT letting corporations off the hook ENOUGH . . .

[HughBeaumont]

. . . oh, and job offshoring is a win-win POSITIVE for American workers. Right.

Wow, more of the same "US has the second highest corporate tax rate" laissez-fail bullcrapola. Absolutely NO blame to the CEOs and their lottery salaries or that job offshoring has hurt the American worker hand over fist. Noooo, it's that the mean ol' taxocrats are just too, TOO hard on American corporations. Read on, if you can stomach the fallacy:

http://www.ohio.com/editorial/douglas/103810999.html

Democratic allies in organized labor have sent mailings to homes in the 42nd District, including Hudson, Stow and much of Cuyahoga Falls, where Kristina Roegner is challenging state Rep. Mike Moran. The mailings cite Roegner's work as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, adding the kicker: ''a global consulting firm that makes billions as they advise corporations to send American jobs overseas — to countries like China.''

What could Portman and Roegner be thinking? Are they foreign agents? Enemies within? Could these charges of nefarious acts be true?

Hardly.

Let William Melick explain. He is a professor of economics at Kenyon College in Gambier and a former research economist at the Federal Reserve Board in Washington. He issued a paper this month, ''Ohio Employment and International Economic Policy,'' among other things, bringing helpful context to corporate taxes. He tells the larger story behind the sound bite.

Melick begins with the corporate tax rate. The United States has one of the highest effective rates among the leading national economies — at 39.2 percent. Soon, the country will be No. 1, Japan moving now to make a reduction. Melick stresses that since 1990, ''every single country in the developed world reduced its corporate tax rate save for the United States — which actually increased its tax rate.''

Consider the numbers that Melick shares: Canada has lowered its rate from 41.5 percent to 29.5 percent. France has gone from 42 percent to 34.4 percent, Germany from 54.5 to 30.2, Norway from 50.8 to 28, Sweden from 53 to 26.3 percent.

These countries haven't aimed to shower gifts on corporate interests. They've adjusted to become more competitive in the global economy, alert to the increasing mobility of capital. Melick describes the high American rate as ''a self-inflicted wound.'' He cites a Congressional Budget Office study that concludes workers bear the burden of 70 cents out of each dollar of the corporate income tax.

(snip)

Melick acknowledges that, yes, jobs do go overseas. True, too, is that the complexities of the global marketplace are not reduced easily to a single number, either job losses or a tax rate.

Yet Melick makes plain how the Lee Fishers view narrowly the landscape. He points to the most recent data from the Commerce Department showing that foreign employment by American companies increased by 3.8 million from 1997 to 2007. Did those jobs leaving a gaping employment hole at home? To the contrary. The data reveal an increase of 2.1 million jobs at the American parent companies.

In other words, foreign and domestic operations are complementary.

I'd like to hear his explanation on why corporations are sitting on 1.8 trillion in cash and not hiring. Or how he disingenuously glosses over the fact that businesses/corporations are not taxed as individuals are. Or how wealth has been enhanced through lower worker wages, higher profits and higher productivity at the cost of employment. Or acknowledge that direct foreign investment isn't the same thing as what Lee Fisher and Strickland are talking about when companies shift jobs to Asian nations and don't create any back here.

Either way, the type of hack Laissez-faire economics the author seems to be advocating plays a huge role in the prosperity collapse of the American middle/working/poor classes. This IS NOT working, no matter how many bought-and-paid-for intellects you can dig up try to justify it all.

[HughBeaumont]

1. UnRec'd and dropping like a brick.

Classic.

[spanone]

2. k&r.