Intel's tax holiday is a sheep in wolf's clothing

[This is a comment I had to make at NPR on March 15, 2011 after hearing a disgustingly self-serving interview with the CEO of Intel, Paul Otellini, by a sycophantic NPR reporter. When I made my comment right after I heard it, there were about five posts; when I returned to npr.org about 11pm tonight to post this to my blog, there were 39 comments -- all of them slamming the falsehood and hypocrisy of the statements by Otellini. It was heartening to see there are a lot of other pissed off Americans out there who are tuned into the economic class warfare going on in our country -- and that they're not afraid to let NPR know about it!]

While I enjoyed most of what Mr Otellini had to say about creating more jobs in America, his remarks about how a 'tax holiday' would help create jobs tipped his hand as a wolf in sheep's clothing -- which I wish the NPR reporter would have pursued.
"A tax holiday costs us nothing!", Mr Otellini asserts; this is wrong. I teach economics, and know full well the disingenuousness of that statement. This is the typical comeon of so many corporations that beg for tax relief, promise much, and deliver little, often pulling up stakes well before the length of time they promised to stay in a community is up; there are many, many examples of this, and it has only become worse as globalization has increased over the years. If Intel truly wants to create jobs in the US, then why don't they invest in the US as they've done in Vietnam over the past five years, where they've invested millions in not only their own factories, but even in schools in those communities. Why? Not out of the goodness of their hearts, to be sure, but because of the cheap labor Vietnam can provide -- and, I would bet, a tax holiday! No, tax holidays are a race to the bottom, and communities should stop giving them!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Community Rights: Still Waiting for its Day in Court

[This is an editoral I submitted March 6, 2017 to local newspapers in time for the Lafayette City Council vote on a Climate Bill of Rights ordinance on the following day.] With the conservative front pressing its agenda across the country, Broomfield's city council hesitating to pass their own fracking moratorium and prevent imminent drilling in its residential neighborhoods, and Colorado's AG suing Boulder Country over its moratorium on fracking, it is high time that the nascent community rights movement raise its head and tell the Colorado judiciary: we are still waiting for our day in court. I am going to tell a story here, a story about how the oil and gas trade representation group, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association, sought, and succeeded, in stopping a potent legal threat to its ability to control Colorado government at all levels; about how justice was not served in a Boulder court, and how the public was fooled into thinking it was; and about some legal slight of
Read more

In Support of Wisconsin

[This is a speech I gave on the steps of the Denver capital building on Saturday, February 26, 2011 to about 1,000 to 3,000 people (estimates varied) who had gathered in response to MoveOn's call for a Saturday protest rally in support of the Wisconsin protests. I was the last of five speakers, and the crowd had been led in some group chants in between the speakers, so they were pretty primed by the time I spoke. At many points in my speech, I had to stop until the crowd's yelling in support had quieted down. It was a brisk, sunny Colorado day, with the snow capped peaks of the Rockies in the distance to the west -- it was a beautiful and inspiring event!] In Support of Wisconsin by Rick Casey February 26, 2011 Hello to all you protesters out there standing in support of Wisconsin! It's a great day here in Colorado to be taking a stand for democracy, isn't it? I want to say a few words today in support of all those brave people in Wisconsin that are also taking a
Read more

An inspiring story....about a dispiriting situation

Last Sunday, December 16, 2018, the Sunday New York Times published an inspiring story, which touches on many themes; you can read it at:  Retraining Workers for New Jobs and New Lives After Prison and Addiction What struck me about the article was: how the twin problems of drug addiction and doing prison time are a common, downward spiral in much of rural America how few public resources there are to deal with it the success of the hero of the story, Tony Simpson, exemplifies a winning strategy to deal with these twin problems that could be replicated elsewhere Basically, Mr Simpson, a local entrepreneur, already successful in another line of business, developed his own plan to help turn around his community: create a company that can export a product (trailers), train local people coming out of prison and/or drug rehab to work in it, and spend money and time -- a lot of money and time -- providing programs of assistance in doing just that. The goal of the program, which
Read more