- Recorder Online - https://www.berthoudrecorder.com -

What price jobs, Romney wants peons

 

[1]

 

To the Editor,

 

 

Improvements in information technology have made it easy and profitable for American corporations to shift jobs overseas to the emerging (BRIC) countries [Brazil, Russia, India and China].

Our two major candidates for President have very different approaches to increasing jobs here. Both approaches will create jobs, but the jobs will be quite different.

ROMNEY: Bring American salaries and benefits down to a level competitive with those in the BRIC countries. Eliminate any environmental, health, and workplace standards that are not required in, say, India or China. As soon we reduce our living standards to this level — and incentivize our “job creators” with another big tax cut — our jobs will come back.

OBAMA:  Increase the number of jobs here by contracting to repair and improve our aging infrastructure. Invest in research and educational excellence, so that our workers will be more innovative and creative than — and can outperform — those in the BRIC nations. Stop rewarding American companies with incentives for moving jobs overseas. Go through our regulations to eliminate those that are outdated or dysfunctional (happening now) — but maintain our high standards.

People in the BRIC nations want what we want. Costs there are rising, and some manufacturing jobs already are coming back. If we can maintain our standards long enough for BRIC to catch up, we won’t need to prostrate ourselves in order to regain jobs. We must not surrender the very things that make us a beacon for people worldwide. For ourselves and others, we must stick to our standards, not surrender them. Hence, I prefer the Obama approach.

Ann Harroun
Loveland, Colorado