The “service-oriented” economy has been a bust while a manufacturing based economy worked for years. Yet, this author maintains that manufacturing is better being overseas, and lowering the corporate tax rate wouldn't gain any positive results.p>
As far as raising the child tax deduction, this author has completely missed the basis of Santorum’s point of the family.
Either I'm very wrong in my education and beliefs, or this author is very wrong. Or, more likely, this is just another attempt at a hit piece.
The writer of this article explains why tinkering with manufacturer’s taxes and favoring it over other businesses instead of SIMPLIFYING the tax code is a bad idea:
* Investors would prefer to leave low value work of the manufacturing variety to the least productive overseas.
* We complain about depressed economic times now, but if readers really want to see a Depression, lure manufacturing jobs and their incredibly low pay as dictated by investors back to these shores. If so, lots of Americans will be working in factories; that is, if they want to work at wages far below what they’ve grown used to.
* Assuming the reverse Santorum desires is allowed by investors, are Americans so eager to work in factories once again such that they would accept a fraction of their existing pay? They might ask the Chinese how much they enjoy working in factories; factories that investors will in time move to even poorer countries in Southeast Asia. Put simply, it is the destruction of jobs wrought by computers, cars and innovations that enable the offshoring of low-value work that frees up capital for higher value work.
* If you want to pay manufacturers American level wages instead of Chinese wages, then be prepared to PAY A LOT for the finished goods you buy.
* Most scary of all with Santorum’s elevation of our not-so-grand manufacturing past are the implications for the dollar. Though the weak dollar since 1971 surely hastened the inevitable departure of manufacturing work, it’s wrongly assumed that those who “make things” stateside are advantaged by a cheapened currency. Tell that to the Big Three automakers whose fortunes fell with skyrocketing oil prices in the ‘70s that were the direct result of the collapsing dollar.
Bohunk!
There are other factors such as onerous regulations and oppressive union demands that are part of the mix of things that drive companies offshore but you cannot say that taxes don't matter.
I worked at a company that was in the same place since 1952 until the property taxes alone went over 900K. The company moved operations to Ohio where the tax rates were less than half that.