The US has lost millions of high-paying jobs to off-shoring over the past ten years–everything from manufacturing to IT to engineering. The current BLS prediction for the highest-growth job fields over the next decade is all service jobs–retail clerks, ‘hospitality’ (aka waitressing and bartending), medical services/billing, accounting, teaching and nursing. This isn’t the job picture of a cutting edge country–it’s more on the level of a banana republic counting on tourist dollars.

The tax incentives for off-shoring need to go away, of course. But former Reagan Assistant Treasury secretary Paul Craig Roberts has also called for a VAT tax on corporate profits based on country-of-origin. Companies with domestic content would be exempt; companies with high amounts of foreign content would pay a high VAT. This would be legal under our current trade policies, and since it applies to corporate profits and not as a tariff, it shouldn’t affect prices.

Needless to say, most republicans HATE this idea. But that’s why we have to do it. A nation of waiters and clerks can’t support a first-world infrastructure and an innovative society.

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