Friday, October 19, 2012

Ever Hear Of Job-Laundering?

       We all know that money-laundering is against the law, as it should be. But what about job-laundering? Now you may not have heard of the term job-laundering, but its where a company or individual takes a company that's viable as is, and sends those jobs offshore. His company makes more profit because labor is cheaper in places like China or Bangladesh. Enough so to even offset shipping.
       But then, he doesn't pay taxes on those profits because the company is making those profits in another country and, presumably, paying taxes there. Or, he keeps those profits in an offshore account so he doesn't pay taxes on it. Sometimes, even if he's supposed to.
       Then you have companies who begin to specialize in helping other companies to do the same thing. Now you can call it anything you want, but it's job-laundering. Some people think unemployment is all about the Great Recession, but most of the problem is that jobs have left and gone overseas or have just become obsolete through mechanization or robotics.
       But when somebody claims they can get those jobs back, in most cases that just can't happen. Even if a company should decide to return to America, it's most likely because they see ways to do the job with fewer jobs. But here's the problem with job-laundering and promising to bring jobs back; when you launder those jobs, chances are they're never coming back and when you promise to magically bring the jobs back, you cause people to think it can be done with no effort on their part. The unfortunate thing is that jobs can come back, but our workers are going to have to be better educated to do those jobs and that's gonna take more effort, especially for older workers and more educational years for young people. K-12 just doesn't cut it any more and this country needs, at least K-14. Assuming we'd like to continue to be a world leader.

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