Once upon a time there was this gigantic corporation that was located in the United States of America. The few executives at the top were paying themselves millions upon millions of dollars in salaries, while the rest of the employees were getting paid a starting wage of $7 per hour and getting fired or laid off at $9 per hour.The Executives looked at their tax forms each year and shook their fists in anger. Their taxes were going right into the pockets of their own employees through programs like Section 8 housing, Food Stamps, Utility Relief programs, and that darned Social Security! "How dare they demand raises when they are getting the money anyway?!" said one board of directors member.
The Social Security issue festered in the minds of the corporate board members and company shareholders. Another board member moaned, "We need to get rid of Social Security! It's cutting into our company's financial growth. If the company looks bad, our stock will go down and there will be a panic selling of our stock!"
Suddenly, the Vice President of the company stood up and asked "So why are we citizens of this stupid country anyway? If we renounce our citizenship, we won't have to pay taxes at all, and we can even lay off our entire team of tax-shelter accountants!"
Everyone in the boardroom cheered, but one member quietly raised his hand and said "We would lose the protection of the US Military."
"That's another thing!" the CEO chimed in, "We only need the Marines at our foreign plantations, mines, and oil fields, we don't need the Air Force, the Coast Guard, and especially Submarines! If we get the government to cut back that part of the military, we could even get a bigger tax break. Once we get the military budget readjusted to enhance protection of our foreign assets, we can move to another country where the terrorists can't reach us. Besides, once the military has an infrastructure in place to protect our assets, it would take them so long to decide to come home that we would have already squeezed every drop of resources out of the foreign property."
So the Corporate board members left the meeting and fanned out across America in search of support for military Base Relocation and Closure (BRAC).
Since the companies were having such a hard time discarding their citizenship to avoid paying taxes, they decided it would be easier to start new companies in China and India, and compete with themselves until they appeared to lose market share with the Chinese when they were really just putting on a show.
The End