[tannedNerd]

I feel like if US companies are proven to off shore jobs they should take a massive tax hit the same year. Like you are required to pay 5 years worth of the salary of the job you off shored into unemployment or retraining funds.

[syntaxing]

Funny you say that because this was part of the NAFTA agreement (I know this agreement doesn’t apply to India). I knew engineers that went to college with sponsorship from this agreement when they were laid off as technicians from off shoring due to the agreement. This absolutely should be the status quo.

[passion__desire]

If there are global markets for products, they should be global markets for employment.

[elashri]

There is no global tax system so you don't have this effect you think you have.

[creato]

The global market for tech products isn’t that much lower friction than tech employment. India has a lot of tariffs. China has the great firewall and the “local partner” shakedown. US has export controls of many high tech products.

[passion__desire]

Tariffs may reduce volume slightly but not margins. I doubt Apple is selling it's devices at a loss.

[bee_rider]

Companies outsource because they think they can find better workers in another country (where better is some combination of better skills, lower compensation, or harder working). Fair enough. We should welcome that kind of competition, it makes everyone better when we fairly and do our best.

They also outsource because they think they can take advantage of lax labor and/or environmental regulation in other countries. We should impose tariffs to level the playing field when countries don’t have these sort of regulations.

Competition keeps us honest and innovating, it shouldn’t be avoided, it just needs to be fair and non-exploitive.

[WalterBright]

Protectionism doesn't make an economy more prosperous. Quite the reverse, it makes an economy uncompetitive.

[cryptonector]

I used to think so, before I understood that we live in a mercantilist world economy. I still think protectionism would be bad in a less distorted economy, and I think it's bad in as-distorted an economy as ours (because people who are subjected to pressure are more likely to be adaptive and dynamic), but it's harder to make the case, don't you think?

[WalterBright]

Protectionism means you're protecting inefficient industries. In a global marketplace, this means industries in other countries will out-compete yours.

[cryptonector]

What I meant is that in mercantilist world you do have asymmetrical protectionism, and that has real-world effects that require more thought than simply standing by the free market position, because it's not a free market even if you try on your end.

[WalterBright]

There are no perfect free markets. But the closer you can get to them, the more beneficial they are.

Protectionism hurts yourself just like trade sanctions and embargoes hurt the other guy.

[Daishiman]

This just really isn't true empirically.

What ends up happening is that countries cannot jump start industries that are already established and competitive in other countries. For countries to get into the renewable energy game, for example, they need to subsidize local industry and put a good bit of government capital on the line to the get to a point where they're productive at globally acceptable levels.

Countries don't need to pick _the_ cheapest products from around the world; getting good-enough local work that provides high value-add and keeps foreign currency reserves from going overseas is something that's objectively preferred by most of the global population. Most people are most definitely willing to accept +/- 15% cost of living changes in order to live in places with good employment and quality tax-funded services and infrastructure over having cheap imported crap.

[coolspot]

Usually they out-compete yours because they burn coal and you have to buy solar, they commute in packed trains while you drive tesla to work, they live in tiny apartments, while your house has a backyard and frontyard.

[WalterBright]

Protectionism is not a fix for comparative advantage. Regardless of the motives for protectionism, it will make your economy less competitive and less prosperous.

[Apocryphon]

The East Asian Tigers being a major counterexample:

https://hir.harvard.edu/the-east-asian-miracle-where-did-ada...

It's basically Ha-Joon Chang's whole deal-

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Samaritans:_The_Myth_of_Fr...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/hajoon-c...

[kozikow]

That would be very easy to circumvent.

You can describe effectively the same software engineering job in a way that sounds completely different. "close a project" of the old team, etc.

[coldpie]

I think you'd get the same result with a lot less overhead by just increasing corporate taxes a fraction of a percent (or just enforcing our current tax laws better) and making vocational training schools tuition-free.

[zitterbewegung]

Assuming they pay their taxes and this is how we have to enforce it by a lawsuit which costs the government more.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/11/irs-says-microsoft-owes-an-a...

If the corporate tax would increase then it might be cheaper to litigate.

[dougSF70]

Microsoft about to swallow a $25bn+ tax hit.

[mpclark]

Ow! That's nearly half an Activision...

[lotsofpulp]

Should California impose massive tax hits to businesses that move jobs to other states?