Robert B. Reich's Blog, page 79

My Coffee with a Trump Supporter

I finally found a Trump supporter – this morning when I went to buy coffee. (I noticed a Trump...

Why You Really Must Get Behind Hillary, Now

Can we have a word? I continue to hear from many of you who say you won’t vote for Hillary Clinton...

Trump’s Yuge Bamboozle

Donald Trump poses as a
working-class populist, but about his new economic plan would be a gusher...

Yuge Trickle-Down Economics

Donald Trump poses as a
working-class populist, but about his new economic plan would be a gusher...

WHY CORPORATE TAX DESERTERS SHOULDN’T GET THE BENEFITS OF BEING...

WHY CORPORATE TAX DESERTERS SHOULDN’T GET THE BENEFITS OF BEING AMERICAN CORPORATIONS

Apple is only the latest big global American corporation to
use foreign tax shelters to avoiding paying its fair share of U.S. taxes. It’s
just another form of corporate desertion.

Corporations are deserting America
by hiding their profits abroad or even shifting their corporate headquarters to another nation because they want lower taxes abroad. And some politicians say the only way to
stop these desertions is to reduce corporate tax rates in
the U.S. so they won’t leave.

Wrong. If we start
trying to match lower corporate tax rates around the world, there’s no end to it.

Instead, the President should use his executive
power to end the financial incentives that encourage this type
of corporate desertion. President Obama has already begun, but there
is much left that could be done.

In addition, corporation that desert America by sheltering a large portion of their profits abroad or moving their headquarters to another country should no longer be entitled to
the advantages of being American.

1. They shouldn’t be allowed to influence the
U.S. government. They shouldn’t be allowed to contribute to U.S. political
campaigns, or lobby Congress, or participate in U.S. government agency
rule-making proceedings. And they no longer have the right to sue foreign
companies in U.S. courts for acts committed outside the United States.

2. They shouldn’t be entitled to generous
government contracts. “Buy American” provisions of the law should be
applied to them.

3. Their assets around the world shouldn’t any
longer be protected by the U.S. government. If their factories and
equipment are expropriated somewhere around the world, they shouldn’t expect
the United States to negotiate or threaten sanctions, or use our armed forces
to protect their investments. And if their intellectual property – patents,
trademarks, trade names, copyrights – are disregarded, that’s their problem
too. Don’t expect any help from us.

In fact, their
interests should be of no concern to the U.S. government – in trade
negotiations, climate negotiations, international treaties reconciling
American law with the laws of other countries, or international disputes over
access to resources.

They don’t get to be represented by the U.S. government
because they’re no longer American.

It’s simple logic.
If corporations want to desert America in order to pay less in taxes,
that’s their business. But they should no longer have the benefits that come
with being American. 

There’s One Big Unfinished Promise By Bill Clinton that Hillary Should Put to Bed

What can be done to deter pharmaceutical companies from jacking up prices of critical drugs? To...

A Message to Working People on Labor Day from a former labor secretary

Your typical wage is below what it was in the late 1970s, in terms of what it can buy. Two-thirds of...

THE REALITY OF FREE TRADE DEALSFree trade is figuring...

THE REALITY OF FREE TRADE DEALS

Free trade is figuring prominently in the upcoming presidential election. Donald Trump is against it. Hillary Clinton has expressed qualms. 

Economists still think free trade benefits most Americans, but
according to polls, only 35% of voters agree. 

Why this discrepancy? 

Because
economists support any policy that improves efficiency and they typically
define a policy as efficient if the people who benefit from it could compensate
those who lose from it and still come out ahead. 

But this way of looking at
things leaves out 3 big realities. 

1. Inequality keeps growing. In a society of widening
inequality, the winners are often wealthier than the losers, so even if they
fully compensate the losers, as the winners gain more ground, the losers may
feel even worse off. 

2. Safety nets keep unraveling. As a practical matter, the winners don’t
compensate the losers. Most of the losers from trade, the millions whose good
jobs have been lost, don’t even have access to unemployment insurance. Trade
adjustment assistance is a joke. America invests less in jobs training as a
percent of our economy than almost any other advanced nation. 

3. Median pay keeps dropping. Those whose paychecks have been declining because of trade don’t make
up for those declines by having access to cheaper goods and services from
abroad. Yes, those cheaper goods help but adjusted for inflation, the median
hourly pay of production workers is still lower today than it was in 1974. 

So
if we want the public to continue to support free trade, we’ve got to ensure
that everyone benefits from it.

This means we need a genuine reemployment
system – including not only unemployment insurance, but also income insurance. So if you lose your job and have to take one that pays less, you get a portion of the difference for up to a year.  

More basically, we’ve got to ensure that the gains from trade are more widely
shared.

Standing up to Apple

For years, Washington lawmakers on both
sides of the aisle have attacked big corporations for...

After Trump

I recently got a call from a political analyst in
Washington. “Trump is dropping like a stone,” he...