Labor and tax arbitrage by multinational corporations hollow out the commons and increase poverty, by design. It's also a significant contributor to problems that cause mass migration: corruption, the decline of public services, and social instability.
But sure, people who go abroad looking for a better life are the bad guys.
https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/the-...lem-is-capitalWhy do companies relocate their manufacturing facilities to other countries? We all know the answer to that: To minimize labor costs. To lower the portion of the company’s revenue that goes to the people who do the work and to increase the portion of the company’s revenue that is reserved for investors and management. This is accomplished by the arbitrage of human desperation. A less desperate and impoverished group of workers is traded for a more desperate and impoverished group who will accept less money and a lower standard of living. In addition to this physical relocation of facilities, big companies routinely pursue the legal relocation of their operations to various tax havens, for the purpose of minimizing their tax payments. Physical relocation takes from workers, and legal relocation takes from the public of the nations that should, under a more common sense definition, be taking in tax revenue from these businesses. Working people get poorer, and the public gets poorer, and the gains are funneled into the pockets of the companies themselves, which is to say the investor and management classes. This is all done quite openly. It is not a secret at all. Apple manufactures its iPhones in gargantuan worker villages in poor countries like India and China and Apple evades tens of billions of dollars in taxes by stashing its money in offshore tax havens and Apple is, not coincidentally, worth close to $3 trillion.
This process of squeezing money from workers and the public and retaining money for a tiny sliver of wealthy people by moving freely around the world is one of the biggest creators of inequality globally, one of the biggest sources of corporate power, one of the things that makes modern global corporations more powerful than governments in many ways. None of this is viewed as a scandal. , Apple is one of the world’s most admired companies. The unfettered flow of capital for the purpose of enriching corporations is seen as the natural order of things.
Now, why do working people relocate themselves from one country to another? For pretty much the same reason. They are seeking opportunity. They are seeking a way to improve their family’s lives. They want to leave a place with fewer jobs and lower wages and move to a place with more jobs and better wages. The process of human immigration is, at its most elementary level, the mirror image of corporate relocation. The difference is the way that these two things are treated. Capital moves freely; labor is tightly restricted. Who does this benefit? It benefits capital, and corporate power, and allows the rich to get richer at the expense of desperate workers. To a global corporation, a pool of poor labor that is locked in by national borders is a convenient thing to exploit. You can move all of your factories into that pool and reap the profits of paying much lower wages and then, if that nation finally develops to the point that workers demand a higher standard of living, you can just leapfrog over to another, more desperate nation and start the process over again. The free movement of capital comes with great benefits, but those benefits go almost exclusively to capital itself.
Last edited by Winehole23; 02-18-2024 at 09:06 AM. Reason: arnitrage isn't a word
Since 2001, the repairs have absolutely refused to provide any reform of immigration so as to keep it alive as an inflammatory xenophobic campaign tactic
the other tactic has been yelling and screaming and claiming voter fraud enough to swing elections, while finding none and giving them the pretext for voter suppression
the repugs to
So
the GOP still wants OPEN BORDERS!
got it!
Republicans figure it beats workin'.
GOP wants OPEN BORDERS!
tee, hee.
Why not?,,,,you democrat s have the bed the last 3 years,,,,now we're just reaping the rewards and stickin' Trump back in the White House in '24,,,,
so GOP = OPEN BORDERS
got it
The house passed HB2 months ago and Schumer killed it in the senate. That bill that came back from the senate wasn't near as effective as HB2 would have been.
what to do when you claim there is an existential crisis at the border
![]()
the one passed by the house was done on party lines with no input from democrats, did not have a single democrat vote. was never going to pass the senate when done that way. you need bipartisan support to get stuff like this done. the senate did just that and came up with a negotiated piece of legislation
that was a racist bill written to satisfy white supremacist amerikkka …
with zero democrat input/say
if the GOP controlled all of the govt- then i guess that bill would be shoved down our throats
they only control one house- barely
and it would behoove everyone if they instead tried to work across the aisle for the good of the country if indeed there was such a life and death border crisis
apparently there isnt - since they ran away as fast as they could when the dems in the senate gave away everything they had ever fought for at the border just to get something done
and of course it really wasnt that bad at the border now was it?
Red team wants nothing done just like with health care.
Nothing.
Just sit and rant about rapists who cross the border.
And how the women they rape still have to have the rapists kids but when the kids actually have to meet real life…. on them.
Maybe. You were ting on the bipartisan bill before anyone knew what was in the bipartisan bill.
That was odd.
Also, is doing nothing at all better than doing something?
It's supposed to be a crisis after all.
A crisis? A month ago Biden assured us the border was secure and there was nothing wrong. It just became a crisis when they finally looked at the polling.
So you'd rather do nothing about your crisis.![]()
...tell it, CC.
Testify!!!
in A right. murder as many russians as possible
Democrats: "We need more funding for Ukraine"
Republicans: "Not without funding for border security"
Democrats: "Here's 20 billion for border security too."
Republican memelords: "The border security bill actually funds Ukraine more than the border!"
DarrinS: "Hey, they're right!"
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