The objective of President Obama’s proposed changes to tax laws affecting companies that operate internationally is to penalize them for “exporting” American jobs and to encourage “giving” these jobs to domestic workers in the US. Need we be reminded of what entity is responsible for the creation of the labyrinthine tax structure that already double taxes the income of US corporations and allowed the so-called “loopholes” to develop in the first place?

Politics, partisan politics, is the ongoing sport being played here. Note how the corporations have acted in a rational self-interested fashion on behalf of shareholders to minimize costs, especially taxes. Now they are labelled as irresponsible by the President of the United States. The corporations and individuals doing business abroad are among the most adventurous and risk-taking ones on earth. Doing business abroad is not “shipping jobs overseas” but creating them in locations that for one reason or another offer better or at least additional opportunities to succeed profitably.

Instead of tinkering with the structure of the extant barriers to international trade and globalization they should be torn down and chucked into history’s dumpster. If you think the US is resented overseas now, just wait until the perception sets in that America is becoming more insular and unwilling to encourage development in the Third World by methods other than those of the anti-freedom World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Entrepreneurs the world over seek opportunities to improve their own lives, not to eke out an existence from the alms that trickle down through political elites acting as agent-beneficiaries for international agencies financed by Western guilt-ridden donors.

Copyright 2009 Edward Podritske