By Alan Joel ——Bio and Archives--October 24, 2014
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"Perdue was not referring to outsourcing as most understand it--that is, the process of firing American workers in favor of cheap labor overseas--but rather a business plan for his former company, Pillowtex, to save some American jobs, as Politifact noted. "There is nothing to suggest he was narrowly moving jobs overseas just to increase profits or give himself a bonus," said Rob Bliss, a finance professor at Wake Forest University in an interview with Politifact. "Moving jobs overseas would have been an effort to make the company more competitive. It's a perfectly legitimate thing to do." Politifact also noted other companies where Perdue worked that did outsource jobs, but said those companies were "in industries where jobs were being lost to both cheaper foreign production--outsourcing--and also to technology and global business trends far outside his scope of control."As for the outsourcing attack ad trying to substantiate, National Review Online called it "seriously hypocritical" since the featured businessman apparently also engaged in outsourcing at his own company. The Atlantic Journal-Constitution gives a rundown here. And NRO noted that "Cato's Dan Ikenson has explained in Forbes, relocating jobs overseas can have as much to do with costs for customers, proximity to supply chains, or interest in new consumer markets as it does with labor costs and profitability." Simply put, it's a stretch to boil down "outsourcing" as simply disdain for the American worker for the sake of profit. But that is what Michelle Nunn wants you to believe Businesses continuously make decisions about where to get jobs and how to keep a company afloat. If the policy here is making it difficult to succeed and compete, or the market and demand has changed, that's not the fault of the business owner. They must be willing to adapt or risk going out of business. Someone as ignorant as Michelle Nunn about basic economics should not be elected to the Senate.
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Alan Joel has been a practicing CPA in NYC for more than 40 years. He loves liberty and writes on the politics of taxes at his popular blog, AlanJoelNY.com