Repatriate Jobs

In psychology if a child whines and gets attention from the whining it is considered positive reinforcement since the child received the attention he wanted by whining. Unfortunately for the parent they just reinforced a behavior that they would prefer not occur.

Back in 2004 it was thought that it would be a good idea to increase jobs and boost government revenues if we offered a corporate tax holiday. It turns out this is a behavior the government should not reinforce since it cost the government billions in lost revenue and adversely affected job growth. This failure has been documented plenty of times by The Wall Street Journal, The Heritage Foundation, The Christian Science Monitor, The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, and the Institute for Policy Studies, but Republicans have again made it a centerpiece to their jobs bill.

Ironically this idea also runs counter to one of the main talking points I often hear from the Right that corporations need certainty. The only certainty that offering a one time tax break offers is that Republican legislators are certain to be oblivious to their failures of the past and continue to offer the same tired retread legislation and expect different results.

The reality is the multinational corporations have already become very adept at avoiding the tax burden of bringing money back to America. This new legislation just makes it easier.

Instead of rewarding multinational corporations for hiding their money for years we should reward them for bringing jobs back to America. During the 2000's these corporations cut 2.9 million jobs in America while creating 2.4 million jobs overseas. While emerging markets make it impossible to do everything in America during the 1990's these same corporations were able to create 2.7 million jobs overseas and still managed to create 4.4 million jobs in America.

I would be more than happy to offer some sort of job creation tax break for these companies to bring jobs back to America but another tax holiday is akin to giving the milk aware for free, or at least at a very discounted rate. Make these corporations consider buying the cow with smart legislation.

We need a behavior modification program that uses the governments power of taxes as a reward for the behavior we want to see from multinational corporations, investment in American jobs, instead of a reward for the behavior we don't want to see, hiding money overseas until enough votes can be bought for another massive corporate give away.