It’s a pretty sad commentary that Microsoft CEO Steven Ballmer has to explain basic economics to our “leaders” in Washington. In an interview, Ballmer notes that his company would end up shipping jobs overseas if taxes get raised on foreign profits. And you can bet Microsoft won’t be alone.

“It makes U.S. jobs more expensive,” Ballmer said in an interview. “We’re better off taking lots of people and moving them out of the U.S. as opposed to keeping them inside the U.S.”

Obama on May 4 proposed outlawing or restricting about $190 billion in tax breaks for offshore companies over the next decade. Such business groups as the National Foreign Trade Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Business Roundtable have denounced the proposed overhaul…

In a roundtable discussion today, Ballmer, Symantec Corp. Chairman John Thompson and the heads of smaller companies such as privately held Bentley Systems, an Exton, Pennsylvania-based maker of engineering software, said such policies would hurt domestic investment, reduce shareholder value and increase the cost of employing U.S. workers.

Ballmer said that, while the Obama proposals would preserve expense deductions related to research and experimentation costs, the overall deduction limits for companies that defer tax on foreign profits would raise the cost of employing U.S. workers. Fiduciary responsibility to shareholders would require Microsoft to cut costs, he said, meaning many jobs would be moved out of the country.

So what happens? President Obama and the Democratic Congress raise taxes on companies and not only do prices for consumers go up but jobs are shipped overseas. It’s an easy principle to understand — President Kennedy understood that lowering taxes increases tax revenue — but our “leaders” don’t actually care to learn. They just want the money upfront for special interests.

And what happens to the markets?

Ballmer estimated that higher taxes under the proposal would reduce profits for companies that comprise the Dow Jones Industrial Average by between 10 and 15 percentage points.

“It’s just a question of how much will the Dow come down,” Ballmer said. “It’s not about companies anyway; we’re talking about shareholders.”

I honestly don’t think Obama cares at this point. His administration has already proposed or backed many policies that have or will hurt our economy. This is just the latest.