Thanks for the post, Tim.
A big factory goes under and people can point to all the job losses, but new jobs are often spread out throughout the economy as the resources that went to produce and buy the old uncompetitive product are freed up.
Let's say, to keep the illustration manageable, that company A moves one of its plants from a rural section of central PA to Thailand, thereby saving a large amount of money in labor costs but costing it some amount of money for the move (construction costs, local bribes, whatever).
Presumably, the company only makes the move because they will make more money. Let's say either the state of PA or the federal govt had legislation to the effect that a certain percentage of those gains went to (a) assist those communities to replace their economic base, (b) provide some sort of relief for out of work former employees, and/or (c) job retraining programs, if workers wished.
Your objection, I assume is that it slows growth. I assume by that you mean that plants would be less likely to move and thus less likely to increase the incomes of workers in the new country. Right?
But its advantage is that it recognizes that economic activity is always a part of a social matrix. There are social costs when a plant is uprooted that the company ownership should share.
One more small comment. One of my unstated concerns in all this is the outrageous salaries that the top reaches of corporations get these days. If the differentials between the top and the middle and the bottom were not so unbelievably large; if those at the top saw themselves as part of community they were disrupting by their moves; and if those large amounts of money at the top did not cultivate arrogance and perceptions those at the top are just somehow a better class of human beings because of their wealth, then I might wind up a bit closer to your position.
John |
