If we send Congressional stimulus money to off-shore workers, how will that help the U.S. economy?
Interesting article from Business Week:
Reports of deep job cuts at International Business Machines (IBM) come at a potentially delicate time for the company—just as it is hoping to secure money from the federal stimulus package. The company will lay off as many as 5,000 U.S. workers in its Global Business Services unit, transferring some of the work they performed to India, according to media reports.
...
Any job transfers IBM may make to India would occur at a sensitive time, as the recession deepens and as the U.S. unemployment rate climbs. Moreover, the company would be cutting high-skill positions domestically as it and others jockey for new business from the $787 billion stimulus package Congress enacted in February—primarily to help create U.S. jobs.
IBM is no longer an American company.
It hasn't been for quite some time.
According to the article above, fully 71% percent of its workers are employed outside the U.S., mostly in low-wage countries like India and China.
How and why does this foreign company qualify for Congressional stimulus money?
And if we give this money to them, how will it help create U.S. jobs?
It will be difficult to see a company like this seize U.S. citizen money and simply channel it away to its foreign operations, rewarding non-U.S. workers in countries far away.
Yet this is what seems like will happen here.
Barack Obama and the U.S. Congress had problems trying to work around Free Trade agreements when writing the stimulus bill. It is difficult these days for government to do much for the American worker, simply because our trade agreements are engineered to off-shore wealth and little else.
I would love to benefit from one of the new technology jobs that could be created by Congressional stimulus spending -- but it looks like many of those jobs, like all the others, will be going away.