As the opening to his re-election campaign, President Obama’s rousing State of the Union address laid out a vision for a renewed American social compact, one in which hard work and responsibility offer everyone a decent life. It was a stirring message, aptly crystallizing the central theme of the 2012 campaign: Does our economy work for everyone? Or does it just work for the lucky, wealthy, or unusually talented few?
One of the reliable applause lines in the speech – and in politics more generally – was about saving and creating American jobs. The President assailed American companies that “outsource jobs” and “avoid paying [their] fair share of taxes by moving jobs and profits overseas.” President Obama is absolutely right on that latter point: it’s time for American corporations to stop shirking their tax responsibilities through complex accounting and putting subsidiaries in tax havens like the Cayman Islands. In fact, as I wrote in a recent blog post, Congress’s latest desire to give these corporations a “tax holiday” to repatriate profits to the United States is both economically foolish and morally unacceptable.
As for outsourcing, though, I have a problem: I’m not sure that I believe in such a thing as an “American job.” Of course, I believe in the literal fact that there are jobs in the United States, that they are primarily filled by American workers, and that they are at companies with headquarters in the U.S. But, at a broader level, I worry about the notion of “American jobs”: it suggests that the United States has a moral claim on these jobs, that workers in other countries who do work that was once done by Americans are not entitled to that work.
[ Above: Steel plant by Flickr: LibraryArchives ]
