Regarding “american jobs”, I wouldn’t say that the bottom line is that IT DOESN’T WORK. The problem is that our economic policy creates an environment where it will not work.
For example, here’s a great way to reduce military cost. Why don’t we just send all our technology to China and have our weapons manufactured there? They can obviously produce stuff a lot cheaper than we can so “american jobs” don’t work in this case either? Well at the end of the day, we make it work. We enforce an economic policy for military equipement that isn’t very “free market” at all. I guess someone decided that, despite the cost benefits, its not in our best interest to export our technology. This is what keeps us ahead of the competition.
But in the business world, exporting our technology is considered a good thing. We give it away to America’s competitors in search of higher profit margins. We invest in infrastructure in foreign lands so that we can move our jobs to where the pay is cheaper. We’ve all been told that this is the way it has to be … but then again, these same guys thought that investment banks were self-regulating.
My view is that greed rules. The reason why investment banks are NOT self-regulating is because they are comprised of individuals. A single fund manager would gladly see his firm go bankrupt if he could pocket a billion dollars in the process. An employee acting in his own self interest doesn’t mean he’s doing what’s best for the company. A company needs to make sure that the incentives of the employees are in line with its own well being.
Likewise, a business will gladly undermine America’s economy if the incentives were large enough. That’s just the way it is. So it is up to America to create an economic policy which aligns business interests with America’s interests. Unfortunately, these days, it seems like America is corporate owned so I’m not too hopeful that things will change for the better.
