Posted on 06/22/2012 6:16:14 PM PDT by Kaslin
Ughh. It sickens me that our country’s leaders are thusly engaged in such damaging, cheap populism.
The Washington Post just wheeled out a new report, detailing how “Romney’s Bain Capital invested in companies that moved jobs overseas.” Am I imagining it, or is anybody else detecting a gentle hint that we’re supposed to believe that this is necessarily a bad thing?
Mitt Romneys financial company, Bain Capital, invested in a series of firms that specialized in relocating jobs done by American workers to new facilities in low-wage countries like China and India.
During the nearly 15 years that Romney was actively involved in running Bain, a private equity firm that he founded, it owned companies that were pioneers in the practice of shipping work from the United States to overseas call centers and factories making computer components, according to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. …
But a Washington Post examination of securities filings shows the extent of Bains investment in firms that specialized in helping other companies move or expand operations overseas. While Bain was not the largest player in the outsourcing field, the private equity firm was involved early on, at a time when the departure of jobs from the United States was beginning to accelerate and new companies were emerging as handmaidens to this outflow of employment.
Cue the liberals’ various denunciations of the “vulture capitalism!”-ilk, and other such disgraceful, intellectually shallow talking points:
The campaign’s senior strategist David Axelrod blasted out an email with the Washington Post story, saying it exposed “breathtaking hypocrisy” by a candidate who frequently calls for the need to return American jobs to the United States. …
In a conference call with reporters Friday, Axelrod knocked Romney as an “outsourcer in chief” and asked whether the presumptive GOP nominee’s business experience is the kind of philosophy needed in the White House. He especially questioned Romney’s ability to “stand up to China” on trade.
“It’s particularly egregious when you try to repackage yourself as someone who’s going to be tough on countries that you sent jobs to,” Axelrod said on the call. He later described the report as a “significant moment in this campaign.”
Shaking my head, people — shaking my head.
First of all, when Romney talks about China, he isn’t denying companies’ rights to move their operations out of America if they so please. He’s talking about creating a level international playing field (and no, I don’t mean that like how President Obama uses it). Free trade is spectacular, but it doesn’t work when communist China is consistently doing things like manipulating their currency, pirating our technology, and other such highly nefarious endeavors.
Well, China has an interest in trade. China wants to, as they have 20 million people coming out of the farms and coming into the cities every year, they want to be able to put them to work. They wanna have access to global markets. And so we have right now something they need very badly, which is access to our market and our friends around the world, have that same– power over China. We– to make sure that we let them understand that in order for them to continue to have free and open access to the thing they want so badly, our markets, they have to play by the rules.
They can’t hack into our computer systems and steal from our government. They can’t steal from corporations. They can’t take patents and designs, intellectual property, and, and, and, and duplicate them, and duplicate them and counterfeit them and sell them around the world. And they also can’t manipulate their currency in such a way as to make their prices well below what they otherwise would be.
We have to have China understand that like everybody else on the world stage, they have to play by the rules. And if they do, we’ll have open trade with them and work with them. And they should in every way want to collaborate with us and not become a belligerent nation economically or militarily.
Secondly, if everybody on planet earth could just get the following through their heads so we can all move on and lead more productive lives, that would be great: When businesses find ways to do business less expensively, consumers win. Whether the business can offer their product more cheaply and consumers can then stretch their dollars further, or if the business is able to then hire more workers and grow their operation — the economy is going to grow. Which, in turn, means that everybody wins. That’s the great thing about free trade: all transactions are voluntary and mutually beneficial. When businesses outsource, they cut costs, and people in other, poorer countries with fewer opportunities are able to find jobs and income.
Everything related to this whole “Buy America” fallacy is just awful — barring even greater costs such as threats to national security, why on earth would you do something more expensively than necessary? That’s not the way to help people — buying goods from where they are most cheaply and efficiently produced is the best way to make everyone wealthier. Prosperity is not a zero-sum game, and a busy, bustling global economic village is probably just about the only true route to world peace in existence.
This sort of populist rhetoric that perpetuates these types of economic myths sorely needs to end.
Maybe he can outsource them right back to the US.
There are those that outsource jobs overseas, and there are plenty of US companies that import foreigners to work in the US temporarily at much lower wage rates.
Especially in the IT world.
Back in Hungary, George Soros was involved in an even earlier form of outsourcing.
Free trade is spectacular, but it doesnt work when communist China is consistently doing things like manipulating their currency
How can any government which holds any reserves avoid manipulating it's currency? What upsets us about China is not that it has a policy, but that it's policy is to prevent it's currency from increasing in value relative to other currencies. It maintains that policy in order to make its exports more attractive, which China feels is in its short term best interest.
Meanwhile, Obama sends the oil industry to Brazil and we will be their best customer. Hmmm, Hmmm, Hmmm. Barack Hussein Obama.
Is anyone surprised?
Either that RINO Romney is like this?
or that the DNC + MSM, which have sponsored Milt Romney,
have JUST BEGUN to release this mountain of
information which will doom any GOP ticket
with the supreme RINO RomneyCARE at the top.
While Ubama “IN-SOURCES” American jobs to ILLEGAL aliens - through his blanket SHAMNESTY “Executive Order” edict!
Amen! But shame on Romney for indulging in exactly the same kind of demagogy -- specifically, his China-bashing ads that are now up in Ohio.
Meanwhile, GE sends jobs overseas and pays no taxes.....
But we hear crickets when Jeffrey speaks!
Romney’s job was to make money for Bain, one way he did this was to outsource jobs to save money. This may have had something to do with policies in America at the time, maybe he can use his experience to make sure companies won’t have to do this in the future.
Romney’s job was to make money for Bain, one way he did this was to outsource jobs to save money. This may have had something to do with policies in America at the time, maybe he can use his experience to make sure companies won’t have to do this in the future.
You got that right
Sense Obama has been Chairman of the Board GM has more Jobs in China than US.
The dems impose the highest corporate tax rate in the world on America and then they blame shifting of jobs overseas on the private sector.
This is one tough sell. Romney ran Bain and Obozo runs Blight.
Pray for America
And "cheap populism" is, sadly, used on the Right as well.
If you can't appreciate the pure beauty of the violin after hearing this, something's wrong with your ears.
Or you can get raw with these strings.
How about this gamechanger from America's Got Talent (which they SHOULD have won).
Either way, the violin is sweet yet lethal.
Do it!
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