This seems like a no-brainer to me:
Rep. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) will introduce a bill Wednesday requiring large U.S. companies to disclose how many of their jobs are based on U.S. soil and how many are based abroad, an attempt to shed light on the number of American jobs being outsourced.
Such data is closely guarded by some of the country’s biggest multinationals, including Pfizer, Apple and IBM. Public filings by these firms disclose their total number of employees, but don’t specify where those jobs are located. Meanwhile, other data shows that multinationals overall cut 2.9 million jobs in the United States and added 2.4 million overseas between 2000 and 2009.
The Outsourcing Accountability Act would require firms with revenues over $1 billion to report how many employees they have in the United States and break them down by state; jobs abroad would have to be broken down by country. Firms would also have to track the percentage increase or decrease of these figures from the previous year.
“This is fairly easy for a company to do,” said Peters. “They certainly have that information readily available, and I think it’d be surprising for a company to say it doesn’t know where it sends its paychecks.”
I understand that companies might have perfectly good reasons for outsourcing jobs but given how much today’s Galtian ballers/shock-collars like to brag to the American people about all the jobs they’ve created, it’s only fair that they be required to disclose how many of these jobs are in the US and how many are elsewhere.
Apple (directly and indirectly) employs about 700K people worldwide but only 43K in America. Those kinds of numbers need to be part of the debate and that requires more transparency.
balconesfault
This raises another thought.
The right wing pundits seem to again be banging on the “Federal employees earn too much” drum … I think it was Boortz the other day complaining that while total compensation for the avg Fed employee was 133K, the avg Microsoft employee (highest in the private sector) was 132K.
Are those multinationals getting to average in their foreign workforces? That would explain a lot …
FlipYrWhig
I would never have guessed that this wasn’t already publicly available information. Wow.
chopper
from a practical aspect (and needling the GOP) it’s a no-brainer. this is great, put guys like romney in a bind. maybe a great gooper candidate could defend this sort of secrecy but not mittens.
reflectionephemeral
I can imagine a plausible opposition to this bill– companies don’t want their competitors to know how they organize themselves. Dunno if that’s reasonable in real life, though; it’s just a plausible talking point. And the GOP doesn’t care about policy, they just care about generating plausible-sounding talking points (taxes too high, regulations hurting growth), so it’s probably something we’ll get to hear a good amount about if this gets some traction. Anyone have insight on the reasonability of that pushback?
chopper
@balconesfault:
yeah, us feds earn too much. that’s rich. we’re the only ‘big business’ in america that doesn’t outsource it’s jobs. maybe that’s what really chaps the GOP’s hide.
Anonymous At Work
Alternative idea: companies don’t have to release, publicly, this information but their tax breaks/credits increase/decrease based on %-change of US-based employment. Apple has a $500 million tax credit but decrease US-employment by 10%, that would cost them $50 million from that tax credit.
barath
It’s the indirectly part that will complicate matters. Those like Apple already don’t employ many people directly outside of the U.S.
Given that all these companies are great at shell games to avoid taxes, wouldn’t they just create a shell subsidiary in said foreign countries, employ people under those shells, and then not report anything about them?
balconesfault
@chopper: we’re the only ‘big business’ in america that doesn’t outsource it’s jobs.
I suspect that a big reason the Fed avg is that high is because of the successful push since the Reagan era to outsource many many lower level functions to the private sector.
When I drive onto the local military base and see rent-a-cops at the gate providing security …
chopper
@reflectionephemeral:
doesn’t have to be too specific, at least not specific enough to give away any trade secrets or any competitive advantage. just ‘how many of your employees are in the US out of the total. include all contractors. show your work.’
martha
My husband’s cousin, an accounts payable staffer for a major international foods corporation, was just told she would be laid off. Her Wisconsin-based job (mainly dealing with expense accounts, etc.) is being outsourced to India. So, check off another profession that’s “safe”…
chopper
@barath:
well, the numbers would have to exclude those workers who work overseas in overseas markets. you can’t fault apple for having X employees in china who are trying to sell iphones in beijing. some corporations have specific entities in those markets, some don’t. it would have to apply to employees who make/sell/service a product intended for purchase or consumption within the united states.
Mike Goetz
More importantly, isn’t it “ballers/shot-callers” not “ballers/shock-collars”?
slag
Yes. And let’s consistently remind people what Made in the USA needs to stand for. Not necessarily protectionism but rather: a living wage, a balanced work week, a healthy society and environment, etc etc.
schrodinger's cat
One of the drivers of outsourcing is also the stringent employment based immigration system. The temporary visas have strict quotas and the immigrant visas are extremely difficult to come by with glacial waiting times for countries like India and China.
trollhattan
Nanny state! Why does Gary Peters hate America?
Does this dovetail at all with what Obama mentioned in the SOTU about eliminating tax breaks for corporations that move jobs offshore and provide them to those creating jobs here?
The Moar You Know
@balconesfault: Won’t see that happening on bases in the US.
However, overseas locations are a whole different ball of wax.
FlipYrWhig
@Mike Goetz: Jonah Goldberg the other day wrote “shock collar.” It’s meta snark.
chowkster
@schrodinger’s cat: This. If you are in the US on an H1B visa, you are basically slave to your visa sponsor until you get your Green Card. Which can take anywhere between 5 to 10 years.
PGfan
I just read this article last week posted on Washington Monthly:
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/january_february_2012/features/the_myth_of_american_productiv034576.php
It talks about how numbers of employees and profit figures are compiled to create statistics about “productivity” but do not take into account where the employees are – ie. are they here, in China, in India, etc. Thus companies are rated as being ever-more productive when all they’ve done is reduce how much they pay employees – they haven’t actually “improved” anything in terms of better procedures or other measures that we think when think of “productivity”. And further, it creates a false sense that overall things are improving because “productivity” seems to be going up.
Worse, it posits that without that crucial distinction our “leaders”, even with the best of intentions, are led to try things to help the economy that are unlikely to accomplish anything helpful. For instance, the notion of a “consumer-stimulus” package would simply put more money in the pockets of companies with workers overseas, but not do a thing to create more jobs at home.
So “where employees ARE” is a big deal on a number of fronts.
Steve
Gary Peters is the first Democrat to represent that part of suburban Detroit since before WWII, and maybe longer. He got screwed in redistricting and now has to deal with a competitive primary and a new constituency. He is a good, smart Democrat and someone deserving of progressive support in my opinion.
maya
Of course, they were driven out by the US Govmint’s ruthless and unfair tax rates vs no taxes at all. Ronmey,Inc, now running for president, must also be one of those evil multinationals. What else explains his Grand Cayman, and Swiss Christmas Club accounts? This is the key: conservatives were successful at negatively branding “Liberal”, same tactic should be used with “Multinational”. Make it a dirty word thru repetition. Should be especially easy with firms like Halliburton who’s HQ is now flying under the flag of a Mooslim nation.
fasteddie9318
This bill is a great idea, and I look forward to its quiet, undignified death in committee.
Steve
@barath: You could easily draft the law to require that the reporting include subsidiaries. The trickier issue is overseas contractors as opposed to subsidiaries. Having said that, the decision of whether to contract work out is a significant one, and I don’t think many companies would start assigning work to a contractor simply to avoid this type of reporting requirement.
schrodinger's cat
@chowkster:
If I understand it correctly and I am no immigration lawyer can’t you port your H1B to another sponsor?
schrodinger's cat
Consumer spending is one of the big drivers of the US economy. If everyone but the 1% become too impoverished to spend on consumer goods. The aggregate demand would shrink and that would be catastrophic for the economy. The Republicans are eating the seed corn. Idiots.
Zifnab
Why would you burden our blessed job creators by requiring them to disclose how many jobs they create? This is just another job destroying bureaucratic measure intended to deliver government data-cheese to undeserving economist slackers. If the data was important, the free market would have provided it.
gene108
Stupid bill.
How do you categorize jobs Americans “lost” to outsourcing.
Is the Ford dealership in London, England part of this? They are owned by Ford, but employ foreigners.
I generally support Democrats, but this sort of grand standing crap is counter productive and pointless.
The friction in the labor market and demand for employees in some sectors and surplus in others isn’t going to be addressed by taxing off-shore profits (that were already taxed by the foreign country) or bills like this.
Investment in science and education is greatly needed. Work needs to be done with high school guidance counselors, so they better understand how to steer kids to available jobs. This would probably require (gasp!) more money in education budgets, but I digress.
There are bigger things to do than pissing around with this sort of thing.
WaterGirl
@Zifnab: OT, but I have been wondering whether zifnab25 is still you, on a mobile device for instance, or if it is someone else entirely.
schrodinger's cat
@gene108: Are you saying that the current unemployment is all caused by friction and not by the contraction of the aggregate demand?
Your solution about investment in education is a long term solution, right now we need an expansionary fiscal policy since the interest rates are close to zero, monetary policy is in effect useless. US corporations are sitting on trillion dollars of cash right now and tax policy is one of the ways the Government has to affect the behavior of corporations.
fasteddie9318
@gene108: Counter-productive how? While you’re right that it’s difficult to know which jobs have been outsourced and which simply have to be located overseas, what’s the harm in making this information public? In the example you cited, I’d love to know if Ford, which, sorry and fuck them for suggesting otherwise, benefited quite a bit from the GM and Chrysler bailouts keeping their suppliers in business, is creating jobs here or not. There’s no possible way that these companies don’t already have this information internally, so what’s the problem with making it external?
KG
Intriguing idea. I suspect that one of the arguments will be that it’s a regulatory burden and that if people really cared, the market would have dictated that companies provide this information. Total bullshit on both counts, but I can hear it coming already.
Relatedly, this is one of the condrums of libertarianism, and something that separates libertarians from glibertarians… The entire idea is based on everyone having access to perfect information (and being able to analyze said perfect information) the problem is, there is an incentive for actors to not provide perfect information in many cases. The only way you can get disclosures is through disclosure laws, which means state action. A libertarian recognizes this and understands that laws like this may be necessary and have to be enforced. A glibertarian looks at this and screams “free market bitches!”
Steve
@gene108: Why does Ford own the dealership in London? They don’t own their other dealerships.
Rafer Janders
@balconesfault:
I suspect that a big reason the Fed avg is that high is because of the successful push since the Reagan era to outsource many many lower level functions to the private sector.
Exactly. The federal government doesn’t employ many janitors or cafeteria workers or stockroom employees or cashiers or waiters etc. etc. Federal jobs tend to be more higher-level, often requiring at minimum a college degree or even higher. Consequently, the “average” federal compensation will be higher. On the other hand, virtually all federal jobs top out at a level that would be quite low for comparable jobs in the private sector.
For one example, a Supreme Court Justice makes about $215,000 a year, about what a fourth year associate at a major NY law firm makes. If any of those Justices were partners at a firm, or in-house counsel at a bank or large corporation, they’d command at minimum at least $1mm a year and often much higher.
Matt
Apple, in particular, keeps this kind of stuff secret because they keep everything secret—they see no need to give competitors more information than is absolutely necessary.
But if this passes, you’d find that the vast majority of jobs Apple has outside the continental United States are in retail, sales, marketing, and management. I’m not sure if Apple still manufactures anything in its Cork, Ireland facility, but everything else is done via contractors like Foxconn (so notorious of late). Almost all R&D is done in Silicon Valley at or near company headquarters.
I believe that people working in Apple’s retail stores worldwide account for more than half of Apple’s current worldwide headcount. If it’s not more than half, it’s pretty close to half.
pseudonymous in nc
@schrodinger’s cat:
In theory, but it’s not easy, especially if your original sponsor wants to fuck you over. Most H1-Bs — even ones in high-end positions with six-figure salaries — are pretty much tied to their original sponsor until they adjust status and get a green card.
SpotWeld
Since a huge majority of these large companies don’t actually hire thier forgien labor directly, but rather contract them though a 3rd part out-sourcing agency. I’m not sure how this this bill could be effective.
Large Company A, contracts smaller Comapny B to do a certain task. Comanpy B sets up a labor pool and maybe subdivides the tasks and contracts those out furhter to smaller companies. 5 steps down the line, the outsourced labor sits. But there’s a nice big piles of paper and red tape making sure that that labor is never seen as “forgien employees”
In the case of the London car dealership, that probably get’s left off the map as under a little cluase that exhempts reporting of “wholly owned partnership frachizes”
Mnemosyne
I’m not sure how useful this bill is actually going to be since, as other people have mentioned, the major outsourcing seems to be going to contractors like Foxconn and not “real” employees.
I know that the Giant Evil Corporation I work for has some outsourced labor (accounting people in India) but also has jobs that genuinely need to be done overseas, like marketing and distribution of products in specific countries. You can’t run the rides at Tokyo Disneyland with employees in the US.
Mnemosyne
I guess the utility would be in seeing who’s a genuine multinational (ie a company that does business and has offices in multiple countries) and who’s a US company trying to save money by outsourcing their labor. But I’m still not sure this bill would get you there.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
That’s not what I’m saying.
We need another New Deal level of spending to get us out of this economic mess we’re in. We need funding so the 1,000,000 public sector employees laid off, since 2009 could be hired back (we should have made sure these mass lay offs never happened, but with Republicans…there’s not much you can do).
I just don’t see this bill addressing the above issues.
@fasteddie9318:
You just stated why this bill sucks. How do you categorize foreign employees as essential to foreign operations versus those that are outsourced?
Because large firms probably haven’t segregated their IT systems to have this sort of data ready at a click of a button and therefore it’d take time away from someone’s day / resource that could be better allocated.
Also, I’m guessing, if this became law, it’d be little more than a footnote in the 10-k forms.
Unless an interest group wants to trumpet this a footnote in the 10-k form to high-heaven, it will just be another compliance issue firms have to deal with that doesn’t address management abuses towards labor, environmental problems or other things that have some use for society.
Also, too look for foreign workers to be classified as contractors and not employees, if this happens to reduce foreign employees subject to his reporting requirement.
gene108
@Steve:
Picky, picky…maybe the person, who mentioned Tokyo Disneyland being run by Japanese folks is a better example…
I think folks got my point.
Kyle
While he’s putting together a smart bill to address corporate taxes (that sadly will die a lingering death) he could add:
(i) Accrual of income tax liability for all income, regardless of whether it was earned in the US or overseas. They can defer payment of the accrued tax until the profits are repatriated, but the liability accrues interest beginning in the year it was earned; (ii) Limit payroll expense deductions for each employee to X times the lowest paid employee’s salary. If a corporation wants to pay it’s CEO $100 million a year, let it, but it gets a deduction only for the limited amount. That would put downward pressure on CEO salaries, and upward pressure on the lower salaries.
Zifnab
@WaterGirl: Oh yes. It’s still me. I have Zifnab25 as my mobile and Zifnab as my normal. :-p Not entirely sure why I did it that way, but I’m too lazy to change it now.
fasteddie9318
@gene108:
Seriously? Disney couldn’t tell you at the click of a button how many people it employs in Japan versus how many it employs here? Apple? That beggars belief. What would take time away from an HR resource that could, somehow I guess, be better allocated would be the inevitable attempts to fudge the numbers. I like the idea in theory but get that, in practice, it may not be worth a whole hell of a lot. You got me there. I don’t get why, either way, it’s worth raging against, particularly since, again in practice, it’s a mortal lock to die in committee.
Well, if it doesn’t solve all the problems plaguing mankind, I can see why it’s not worth the bother. Seriously, though, I see no evidence that this bill was drafted at the expense of a bill dealing with any of these real problems. The fact that the Democrats aren’t doing enough for labor or the environment, among many other things, is its own issue.
gene108
@chowkster:
Slave making a $100,000…if that’s slavery, I’ll take it…
H1-b is more restricting than a Green Card or citizenship, but it’s not slavery.
Please don’t throw around words like that.
There are protections for H1-b workers in labor law that requires minimum salaries be paid.
@pseudonymous in nc:
I’d chalk the lack of portability of H1-b’s to Obama. The USCIS has really put the screws down on wanting to see “all your papers”, compared to Bush, Jr. and Clinton.
From talking to folks at USCIS some of it has to do with counter-terrorism to make sure foreigners aren’t running around in the country.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Lots is done to finagle corporate (and individual) behavior through the tax code.
I’m just not a big fan of taxing foreign profits again, because you are basically double taxing a company, since they’d have paid taxes to the foreign country, where the profits are earned.
gene108
@Kyle:
One way to curb CEO compensation is to change accounting rules and have the total executive compensation count as an expense.
As it is, stock options don’t get fully expensed on the income statement and the value of stock options – the major part of CEO compensation – is a disclosure on the annual statement, with little financial impact on the firm.
There was a big fight in the 1990’s about this and even Congress got involved on how accounting standards should resolve this (Congress sided with business, go figure).
a.j.
lol @ “shock-callers.” Doug your next sig should be “Shock-collar DougJ”
les
@gene108:
Potentially a problem; but readily solved by crediting taxes actually paid to foreign jurisdictions. There’s no reason to double tax; states (work in one state, live in another) all do this. But there’s also no reason to pay a couple of percent in a tax haven, and so avoid the (on an effective basis) ludicrously low US corporate rate.
fasteddie9318
@gene108:
Wouldn’t making foreign taxes deductible accomplish the same thing without allowing companies to “relocate” to the Caymans and avoid paying any taxes at all?
PurpleGirl
@balconesfault: I’d rather have the median income amount and not an average.
The Moar You Know
@gene108: It’s called “payroll”. That data is ALWAYS available to anyone who has a payroll system, which is every business ever.
I can have the location of every one of my people broken down by nation, state, and city and delivered to my desk in less than five minutes.
The idea that producing these numbers is some kind of onerous burden is ridiculous. I can tell you at length about what processes are legally required that are burdensome and unnecessary. This would not be one of them.
les
@gene108:
This, and tax ’em to the CEO on receipt. The fucking tax code is so rigged for the top end it hurts. While corps get away with f’n ridiculous accounting rules to under fund pensions for workers, and then default when it’s convenient.
schrodinger's cat
When in doubt blame Obama, he is great punching bag for both the right and the left.
BethanyAnne
@Zifnab: and more importantly, do you have a copy of Zork on your mobile? :)
schrodinger's cat
I think it depends on your sponsoring company, from what I have heard the Indian BPOs are among the worst abusers.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
Yes, that must be why my friend was unable to port her HB-1 to another company and had to return to Singapore in 1998 — because of the Obama administration.
Black, Gold, and Wet
This is a stupid bill, and reflective that they don’t know how companies set themselves up internationally.
If you’re company Foo Inc, and you decide to set up an outsourced company in China, you create FooChina JV, a joint venture that’s a Chinese company that you fund and own. The employees of FooChina believe they’re employed by Foo Inc, but they also know that their paycheck comes not from Foo Inc but Foo China JV, a legally distinct entity from Foo Inc.
This is done for a lot of reasons, such as local laws (China requiring any business in China being majority-owned by Chinese citizens), tax implications, and even consumer protection. For example, Google China is a separate company set up to ensure the Chinese government couldn’t subpoena Google Inc for data (Gmail in particular).
Now, in fairness, a more interesting approach to this bill would be to detail how much money was spent in Country X and how much money was received by Country X. But it won’t be anymore revealing to jobs leaving the US (e.g. Apple spends $X million in China but earns $Y million in China from sales of its stuff)
balconesfault
@The Moar You Know: Won’t see that happening on bases in the US.
Wrong – but it’s not high end Blackwater types. Instead it’s the same rent-a-cops that your local gated communities employ – Barney Fife’s who didn’t make the cut with the local police force.
pluege
better have some pretty intricate and tight language about what constitutes an employee or they can pass all they legislation they want, but all they’ll prove is that nearly all of the employees of US corporations are red blooded Americans living right here on the exceptional soil of the land of exceptionalism.
Its a fact that corporate lawyers and lobbyists get paid a heck of a lot more than the Congressional staffers that write the laws for the bloated flotsam to put their name on (without understanding what’s in the legislation) and push through Congress. Don’t be looking to be getting the intended results out of this one if something sounding like it even passes.
gene108
@Mnemosyne:
I’ve dealt with H1-b’s, since the late 1990’s. I know how things have changed. Your anecdote doesn’t change the fact fees, documentation needed and everything else is tighter under Obama.
It’s harder to transfer H1-b’s now than it was in 1998. The increased fees discourage employers from sponsoring new H1-b’s and the higher chance of rejection of a new petition means, you stand a chance to lose the several thousand dollars spent on the new petition.
@The Moar You Know:
I don’t work at a big business. The folks I know, who do always gripe about new systems being put in to integrate different department IT systems.
Figured it’d be an issue to compile it across multiple departments, countries and regions, since not all IT systems get integrated in an MNC.
@schrodinger’s cat:
Yup, that’s true. They really squeeze work out of people. Keep employees salaried, so they don’t have to pay for mandatory OT employees have to work.
But that’s the way things are moving. It’s cheaper for business to outsource work that doesn’t add value than keep it in-house.
Most any non-revenue generating function falls into that category.
Why employee janitors, when you can hire a cleaning service?
Why have a huge IT department, when you can outsource to contractors, when you have projects to deploy?
For better or worse, some things can be done more efficiently, if they get outsourced to specialized firms.
My cousin works for Unilever in India. He told me they’ve outsourced a bunch of stuff to Indian contracting companies. No big benefit in terms of wage savings, but not having to keep the infrastructure and associated employee costs around is a big savings for them.
Companies aren’t going back to having things in-house.
gene108
@schrodinger’s cat:
Statement of facts isn’t punching Obama.
It’s much harder to get an H1-b now than it was under Clinton and Bush, Jr.
Is that good? Is it bad? Depends on your point of view, I guess.
@fasteddie9318:
I’m not sure, if this is what you are referring to:
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/bustaxstats/article/0,,id=96337,00.html
On the consolidated financials of MNC’s, they can deduct the foreign taxes paid against U.S. income.
If they bring the money back to invest in U.S. operations, they get taxed on that income, since that income was not subject to U.S. taxes before.
El Cruzado
A couple comments:
1) The vast majority of Apple employees are US-based. Now, as for the companies that Apple contract to build its products (where the 700k come from), very few are.
2) Supposedly changing jobs while on a H1B isn’t terribly hard (no need to renew the visa, just give the department of labor a notification). I never tried while I was on one and know no one who did it, but it would be interesting to know how it works, generally speaking, in practice.
Mnemosyne
@gene108:
That’s not what you said, though. If you had said that the entire HB-1 process had become more difficult under the Obama administration, I doubt too many people would have argued, especially since a lot of us fall into the camp that thinks HB-1s became far too easy for companies to get under Clinton and Bush and are glad that they’re more difficult now. You specifically said that they were less portable because of Obama without indicating that you were talking about the entire process.
You know you have to be specific around here, because people will always nail you for incomplete information.
Mnemosyne
@fasteddie9318:
Sure, they could tell you how many, but that number is worthless for these purposes unless you can somehow tease out how many Disney jobs in Japan were outsourced for cheaper labor and how many are there because they’re part of the Japanese market.
Did a ride operator at Tokyo Disneyland take a job away from someone at Disneyland in Anaheim? How about a marketing person in Japan? Or a consumer products representative? Should they have some finance functions there, or should it all go through Accounts Payable people in the US?
Or, to make it even more complicated, if all you have is an aggregate number, how do you tell the difference between someone working at a Disney factory in China making toys for the US market and someone operating a ride at Hong Kong Disneyland? One of those jobs is the result of outsourcing and the other one is not, but how do you tell the difference?
Kiwanda
I think this ought to be germane to campaign finance. Foreign nationals cannot make campaign donations. Even accepting the ridiculous fiction that corporations are people (my friend), why should a multi-national person be regarded as a U.S. citizen?
SiubhanDuinne
@balconesfault:
Heh. I just got a WaPo alert that House lawmakers just voted to freeze their pay, and pay of congressional staffers and civilian federal employees.
Schlemizel
Worked for Target for a couple years – they have an Indian subsidiary and they bring a couple of thousand Indians here on work visas so you are not going to see a big number from them. My guess is there is a lot of that shit at other companies too.
Schlemizel
@El Cruzado:
I worked with a great guy at Target who is here on an H1-B. He was very scared when he knew that gig was going away because he has a family here & they do not want to go back. He had to find not just another employer but one that was willing to help him get the transfer. A lot of the body shops are good at doing this because they have done it a lot.
Cain
@martha:
I’m sorry to hear that..
It seems to me that we should be able to outsource executives to India and China as well. I mean, won’t they also manage for cheaper as well?
Mark
I don’t see the point of this bill. I’m an immigrant and I work for a big (12000) high-tech multinational headquartered in the US. Almost all of our customers are headquartered in high-cost foreign countries (Europe, Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Canada.) We have high-salaried employees in those countries to support those customers. The company also acquires technology or design teams abroad and transfers the technology to the US. Never been able to find enough US-born employees, though we used to hire foreign-born engineers who had moved to the US, so their jobs were here. But the Bush administration turned that tap off after 9/11, so we had to expand overseas operations.
Also, too, Apple has 1+ million people working for them in China, but Foxconn wouldn’t get counted by this bill.
schrodinger's cat
Other than your assertion I don’t see any proof for this statement. Can you back it up with data
mclaren
Since essentially every job in America not involving some local hands-on application, like plumbing or hairdressing, is either in the process of being offshore or will soon be offshored, look for giant corporations to fight this law tooth and nail.
Within a generation the only jobs left in America will be jobs like “dog groomer.” Even the gardening and the house painting will be done by robots.
mclaren
@Cain:
You don’t need corporate executives.
Use crowdsourcing to replace the executives. Better results, zero expense.
Lord Omlette
Humble request to have “shock collars” added to the lexicon.