Trusting Corporate America to not Pull a “Lucy”

President Obama, continuing to stump for messages put forth in the “State of the Union” address, is calling out corporate America for outsourcing jobs. In his recent Saturday morning address, Obama stated, “Government has a responsibility to make the U.S. the best place in the world to do business, but companies have a responsibility to invest in the nation's future by keeping jobs here, hiring American workers and paying decent wages”.

Acknowledging the restrictions placed by ballooning deficits, he also called for spending what can be spent on innovation, education, and infrastructure. With a budget already bursting at the seams, Obama stressed that federal tax credits and innovative financing programs could help to boost corporate bottom lines while pulling workers out of unemployment lines. To emphasize his points, Obama cited his visit Penn State University, where researchers are designing more energy-efficient buildings and Marquette, Michigan which is demonstrating how wireless high-speed internet access can help businesses grow.

One of the issues standing in the way of meaningful government assistance is probably the same reason he’s calling on businesses to step up to a moral obligation to “…set up shop here and hire our workers and pay decent wages and invest in the future of this nation”. The reason would be that congressional budget experts are projecting that the federal budget deficit will be the highest ever on record, topping $1.5 trillion for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30.

He closed by stating, "Our workers will succeed. Our nation will prosper. And America will win the future in this century just like we did in the last".

Just how these lofty goals are going to come to pass remains a bit of a mystery as relying on corporate America to stop outsourcing jobs seems to be like building a foundation out of loose sand. Corporations have been outsourcing jobs for years on the premise that their responsibility is to their shareholders and not to workers from Main Street, USA. Shaming them into moving away from a highly profitable strategy of shedding union and other highly paid employees and replacing them with offshore workers at pennies on the dollar is unlikely to gain any traction either.

The conundrum here is after a decade of rapidly growing deficits, the government is unable to borrow or print enough money to turn things around. It’s now turning to corporate America stressing that it needs to change its ways due to moral responsibility. It’s the same kind of trust that Charlie Brown puts into Lucy to hold the football so he can kick it. That trust never worked for Charlie Brown and it’s unlikely to work for Main Street, USA either.