Hightower Lowdown

By gollies, America is still an exporting powerhouse. In fact, our corpo- rate chieftains are breaking records for exporting America's most precious goods--our jobs, factories, technologies, and middle-class opportunities.

And perhaps you think that US corporations aren't hiring these days? Nonsense. They added 1.4 million jobs last year alone--overseas. For example, more than half of Caterpillar's new hires in 2010 were in foreign countries. Many more of their next round of new jobs will be offshore since this once iconic American brand has invested in three new plants in China. It already manufactures tractors and bulldozers there, and soon it will also be shipping its design work and technology development to China.

Likewise, DuPont, once proud of its US workforce, has slashed its number of American employees in recent years, while increasing its Asia-Pacific workforce by more than half. Indeed, DuPont no longer considers itself American--"We are a global player," sniffs its chief innovation officer.

Such homemade brands as Coca-Cola, Dell, and IBM are among the multitude of corporations abandoning our shores and our middle class. Of course, they still keep their well appointed headquarters here so the corporation and top exec-utives can continue enjoy-ing all that America has to offer. Calvin Coolidge once asserted that "What's good for business is good for America." That was myopic enough, but today's nar- cissistic CEOs reckon that "What's good for business is good for business, America be damned."

If we are to have a united society, America cannot tolerate such raw selfishness by the privileged few. We can have a plutocracy, or a democracy. But not both.