McCain to Pay Companies to Ship Jobs Overseas!!!

Well, that's what the ad I saw this morning from "The One" basically tried to get us to believe.

I made a connection this time, though (and this was before I had coffee) ...

The ad showed a bunch of people losing jobs that were being shipped overseas. Then threw up the verbage on the screen that McCain wants to give tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas.

First of all, they're playing a little game here... Technically, it's true. McCain wants to cut taxes to companies across the board. Since companies that "ship jobs overseas" are also companies, they, too, would get the tax break. (The ad's purpose is to lead you to believe that companies "shipping jobs" are being treated specially and rewarded for this behavior. And "The One's" campaign howls about dishonesty from McCain.)

Same goes for when they talk about tax cuts for oil companies. Oil companies are companies. An across the board tax break would give them a break as well.

But the ultimate argument here is .. why are these companies shipping jobs overseas? Well I'll guarantee you it's not because they're not paying high enough taxes. It's because operating in the U.S. is too expensive. Why is it too expensive? For one thing, we have the second highest corporate tax rate in the world. Plus there are matching payroll taxes that companies have to pay (yup, the taxes you see on your paystub aren't the only taxes being paid on your salary). Plus labor unions jack the price of labor up. Lawsuits because you don't have your quota of female purple-polkadotted people working for you. We're so rich and spoiled over here that we won't take less than a certain amount of money to work. People in India and elsewhere would kill to make half the money we do.

So how in the world do Democrats think keeping taxes on companies high or making them higher is going to keep jobs here in America? High taxes make it more expensive for companies to operate. Keeping them high or raising them will only enhance incentive to ship more jobs overseas.

Cutting them... cutting them just might make it less expensive to operate in the United States, decreasing the incentive to ship jobs overseas.

It's not a question of punishment and reward. Well at least not the way in the Democrats frame it. They frame a tax cut as rewarding the behavior of shipping jobs overseas. It's the opposite. Lower taxes reward companies for keeping their operations here.

And it leaves the choice up to them, no coercion necessary. It's called incentive.