The Year Washington Became 'Business-Friendly'
Robert B. Reich
History will record 2010 as the year
Not that it was all that unfriendly before. Some would say the bailouts of
But for corporate America it still wasn't friendly enough. Before the midterm elections,
So the
There's only one problem. America's big businesses are less and less American. They're going abroad for sales and employees. That's one reason they've showed record-breaking profits in 2010 while creating almost no American jobs.
Consider one of most popular Christmas products of all time -- Apple's iPhone. Researchers from the
Some shows up in Apple's profits, which are soaring.
About
Only about
Even old-tech American companies made big money abroad in 2010 -- and created scads of jobs there.
That doesn't mean GM will be creating lots more blue-collar jobs in America, though. 2010 was a banner year for GM's foreign sales -- already two-thirds of its total sales, and rising. In October, GM became first automaker to sell more than 2 million cars a year in
Meanwhile, back home in the U.S., GM has slashed its labor costs. New hires are brought in at roughly half the wages and benefits of former GM employees, under a two-tier wage structure accepted by the
It's much the same even for America's biggest retailers. 2010 wasn't an especially good year for
But
So when President Obama tells American CEOs our biggest challenge comes from abroad, you've got to wonder. The leaders of American business are already abroad, and doing quite nicely.
Just after the midterm elections, the president's chief economic advisor,
Yes, they're citizens. But first and foremost they're CEOs. And CEOs have to show profits -- wherever those profits come from. Under American-style capitalism, profits matter. Jobs don't.
2010 was the year
Robert Reich, former U.S. Secretary of Labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of the new book "Aftershock: The Next Economy and America's Future."
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(c) 2010 BY ROBERT REICH; DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.