'Tax Cuts for the rich create jobs outside the US'

This is a drive-by, and it won't be news to some of you. But it's not a connection that many have made, since it's a series of dots, where the endpoints aren't obviously related.

Ian Welsh says it simply: Tax cuts for the rich create jobs outside the US. And he's right. If you sweeten the purse of the rich, they put money where it will earn. At this point, that's not the U.S. So if you want jobs here, make investment attractive here, or unattractive abroad. Or both.

Yes, that's managed capitalism (but so are bailouts). And yes, that's contra what Bush defined as "freedom" — meaning freedom for capital to move wherever (you didn't think the Bush definition of "freedom" involved real people, did you?).

But so what. You want jobs here, keep money here. Ian Welsh:

If you can build a factory overseas which produces the same goods for less, meaning more profit for you, why would you build it in the US?

Until that question is adequately answered, by which I mean “until it’s worth investing in the US”, most of the discretionary money of the rich will either go into useless speculative activities like the housing and credit bubbles, which don’t create real growth in the US, or they will go overseas.

There are a number of ways this question can be answered.

Then he lists the ways. A good read, highly recommended.

If when you're done reading, the details float away, just remember — every dollar you hand to the rich in this post-Reagan fever to serve them, means fewer Wheaties for Americans.

If we don't stand up for us, who will?