JOBS: Where have they gone?

The most recent example of corporations transferring American jobs overseas came in this morning's news. GM is putting their global electric vehicle production facilities in China - right along with their technology transfer. The significance of this disaster, in case you missed it, is that GM had the global monopoly on the Volt technology. This technology is being hailed by all automotive experts as the best path to electrification of the automobile, and we're in the process of handing it to China. (Yes, folks, that's the GM that was bailed out of bankruptcy by the America taxpayer.)

That America's Job Suicide mission continues is also exemplified by General Electric moving its Medical Technology Division to China.

WE HAVE A PROBLEM.

Let me restate that: We have a problem and it's a doozy. At what point does a corporate transfer of technology, investment and jobs to another nation, constitute disloyalty to our country? Is the United States still a nation state? Do other nations really need spies when American corporations give away or sell the very things that provide the United States with a comparative advantage in international trade? Does corporate profit trump national allegiance?

Given man's apparent proclivity to weaponize every invention or bit of knowledge, what constitutes critical technology? In the event of conflict between nations, on what side will these corporations place their loyalty? Does the U.S. government have any obligation to use its military might to protect the privately owned foreign investments of American firms? Do displaced and unemployed Americans have an obligation to fight to restore the investments of corporate America's foreign investments in the event of their nationalization by a foreign power? Is this relativism gone berserk?

Is it possible to be "just a little bit loyal" to your own nation? Is it possible to be just a little bit pregnant? Have our mantras about patriotism become just another opiate of the masses? Do corporations now sit astride the world with spurs ready to be driven into the flanks of working people everywhere? Is it possible for our nation to be non compos mentis? In plain English, have we gone completely NUTZ?

J. ALBERT ROWE

Coeur d'Alene