Good question. But nobody seems to have an answer. Or prefers not to tangle with the question at all.
When pundits do take it on, they either answer in generalities, or dig deeper into the maze and offer some specifics; never really answering the question of WHY big corporations are exiting the United States.
My friend, Barry, points this out in a very telling way. He says that we are getting hosed in two ways: “On one hand, our government has allowed millions of uneducated, low-skill, low-intelligent, legal and illegal aliens into America. At the same time, our business community has exported the higher-skill, higher-pay jobs to Japan, Korea, Germany, and now India.”
He then asked: “Why is our political-business elite doing this to America?”
Wrong question. Big Business is not doing it to America, but to whoever gets in the way. And America, in an odd sense, happens to be in the way.
Comes now more insight from columnist Thomas L. Friedman. Recently, Friedman tells us, India and Pakistan were headed for nuclear war. What restrained them was something that trumped even Colin Powell’s peace initiative: Big Business.
How did they get into the act? Easy in this day and age: they came in through the high-tech back door. India’s huge software and information technology–now the research hub of the world’s largest corporations–told the government to cool it. And the government got the message.
It was, you see, General Motors, not General Powell, that defused the near-war situation.
At the present time, in case you’ve not heard, G.E.’s largest research center outside the U.S. is in Bangalore, India, with 1,700 Indian engineers and scientists, ultra-swift cyberboys who are now furnishing the brain chip for every Nokia cellphone, which are designed in India.
Incidentally, if you want to rent a car on-line from Avis, that’s managed in India, too.
But again, why is our political-business elite doing this to America?
The better question is, why are they doing this at all?
On the political side, there isn’t much our government can do to or for business. It is, after all, a free world. Even if the government could intervene, would it? Probably not. There’s too much money floating around in business for politicians to ignore it. But that doesn’t mean something will get done. Government’s non-involvement in the country’s welfare is clearly evident in the monumental mess we call our immigration policy.
As for Big Business itself, most people think the reason they move to foreign territory is, greed. Not so.
When motivated by a desire to enhance the profit margin of a company, greed, of itself, is good, as Mr. Gecko pointed out in the movie Wall Street, but…don’t confuse the bottom line with the bottom of the barrel. The former is simply a drive for more legitimate profit in a competitive world; the latter is a kind of rapacious avarice that takes no prisoners.
No, my friend, Big Business is saying adios to America because of one elemental business, albeit, human failing: Overgreed–never being satisfied with a reasonable profit, always looking for better “deals”, more, more, always more, even if it means exiting your country and throwing your countrymen out of work.
Overgreed has no conscience, cultivates no friends, knows no bounds, values no loyalties, has no compassion, shuns responsibility, and worst of all, is unconcerned with domestic welfare, apathetic about national sovereignty, and indifferent to even basic patriotism.
Overgreed’s god is the bottom line.
Instead of staying home and slugging it out with the rest of us Americans, Big Business prefers to do its own thing, go its own way, regardless of the circumstances, or who gets hurt.
In short, the Overgreed credo is this:
To hell with the workers who sweat blood and break their backs to make us rich.
To hell with the millions of loyal customers who want “Made in America” goods but have to buy “Made in Indonesia”, to which we attach American price tags.
And to hell with the United States when we can make it on the cheap over there, sell it on the high over here, and pocket the difference. Which is just fine, so long as that difference keeps growing and never stops to take a breather.
I can’t help wondering what Big Business will do when it runs out of poor countries to furnish them cheap labor.
Who knows, they might even think of their homeland first for a change. But I wouldn’t bet my “Made in Laos” shirt on it.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”