Jim Hightower - The Corporate Abandonment Of America

[Guest guest]

>

> THE CORPORATE ABANDONMENT OF AMERICA

>

> by Jim Hightower

>

> 8/9/2004

>

> Something major is taking place in our country that

> corporate chieftains

> don't want us talking about: Jobless creep.

>

> It's no longer blue-collar families that are seeing

> their jobs hauled

> offshore to faraway havens of low-wage production.

> Now it's hundreds of

> thousands (and soon to be millions) of well-paying

> white-collar and

> high-tech jobs that are being shipped overseas by

> America's wage-busting

> CEOs - and joblessness is creeping quietly but

> relentlessly upward,

> ensnaring families that previously thought they were

> solidly entrenched in

> the upper reaches of the middle class.

>

> CEOs are paranoid about any public discussion of

> this explosive movement,

> but internally they giddily exult at the prospect of

> essentially abandoning

> our country and its middle-class in order to fatten

> their profits on

> foreign workers. IBM, which is leading the way, even

> has coined a corporate

> euphemism for moving more and more of its

> white-collar jobs out of the

> country: " Global sourcing. " The rush is on. A

> Microsoft executive has

> instructed department heads in this software giant

> to " Think India " and to

> " pick something to move offshore today. "

>

> This is deliberate job destruction, but it is also

> much more - it's an open

> assault on America's middle-class and on America's

> unifying social ethic

> that " we're all in this together. "

>

> Corporate executives and their apologists say that

> this is simply the

> immutable workings of the market and that, after

> all, the CEO's sole

> responsibility is to enrich the bottom line of top

> shareholders, with no

> obligation to an American middle class.

>

> Fine... but if CEOs have no obligation to us, why

> should we feel any

> obligation to them? As they separate themselves and

> their corporate

> fortunes from the well-being of our families,

> communities, and country, we

> should begin to separate them from the special tax

> breaks, enormous

> subsidies, regulatory favors, political privileges

> and all other advantages

> they've gotten from us.

>

>

> ----------

> " The White-Collar Blues, " New York Times, December

> 29, 2003.

> " Bracing for the Blow, " New York Times, December 26,

> 2003.