Are Multinationals good for America

It seems that the multinationals have lots of money to invest. It seems that a lot of their investment since 2000 has been overseas given the reduction in jobs in their U.S. plants. The decline in the U.S. dollar makes U.S. exports cheaper so that may help a bit but even so U.S. labor will no doubt be battered even more as capital can move easily around the globe looking for the cheapest labor.

Mandel, Michael. 2008. "Multinationals: Are They Good for America?"
Business Week
(28 February): pp. 41-51.

41: "the top 150 U.S.-based nonfinancial multinationals, which include
the likes of
Hewlett-Packard, Pfizer, eBay, and Sara Lee, had more than $500 billion
in cash and
short-term investments at the end of 2007."

41: "Figures collected by the Bureau of Economic Analysis suggest the
multinational
sector has in some ways been a drag on the U.S. economy since 2000.
From 2000 to
2005, the last year for which full data are available, U.S.
multinationals cut more
than 2 million jobs at home, even as employment in the rest of the
private sector
grew -- and there's no sign the trend has significantly reversed."