Posted on 04/26/2004 12:11:06 PM PDT by Willie Green
The issue of whether U.S. multinationals will continue to export American jobs to cheap overseas labor markets is critical to the well-being of millions of working Americans and, I believe, the future health of our economy and society. Advocates of unbridled free trade first defended the practice of shipping American jobs offshore by saying the practice wasn't widespread and few jobs were lost to outsourcing abroad. Then the University of California-Berkeley last fall revealed that as many as 14 million American jobs are potentially at risk over the next decade. Then the advocates of exporting America claimed that outsourced jobs would be replaced by high-value jobs. Instead, the economy has lost millions of jobs.
The Bush administration, corporate America, business groups, and their surrogate think tanks contend America must be able to kill U.S. jobs and move them to cheap foreign labor markets in order to be more productive, more competitive, and even more innovative. How competitive are our great American multinationals in the global marketplace? We now have a half-trillion-dollar trade deficit, and our surplus in services is falling like an anvil (one most likely not manufactured in the United States). We're exporting jobs senselessly and importing debt held by foreigners that amounts to $3 trillion--and is rising fast.
Smoke and mirrors. Outsourcing advocates, including many in the Bush administration, are now trying to change the language of the debate, and they've introduced a new term: "insourcing." They claim that the jobs created here by foreign companies counterbalance those outsourced to cheap foreign labor markets by U.S. corporations.
(Excerpt) Read more at usnews.com ...
Keep outsourcing jobs to the best value performer on Earth, and American corporations will have unprecedented growth and opportunities. Enough to employ even some of the cretins on this thread. Although I would have very few of you on my own staff - you are mostly losers with a capital L.
Marx, viewing the USA of our 1860s ancestors, saw the biggest threat to his plans. Unlike the hellish industrializing areas of Europe, the USA was well on track to undermining the one situation where Marx' ideas might take root; the true Conservatives of that day were increasingly setting forth the conditions which would give rise to workers with wealth, and, an educated and empowered middle class. This bulwark, from the late 1800s until the late 1900s, made the USA into the world's impenetrable fortress of freedom and the font from which such ideas might flow freely across the globe.
The Communists had other plans. All the while, they put in place, incrementally, mechanisms by which the American fortress might be breached. Starting with the anarchists, evolving through the Red Diaper Babies, and reaching full force via the destruction of the resolve of the Baby Boomers, the Communists never stopped trying to undermine the USA's winning combination of Judeo-Christian values, a sturdy work ethic, and, our love of country. But the quiet war did not stop there.
At the international level, the Communists reached their point of maximal opportunity at the close of the Second World War. By tricking the USA, and its Western allies, into international structures, seemingly utopian in nature and ostensibly created to prevent great war, the Communists had set into motion a series of processes which would ultimately provide the route to achieving two key goals. The first goal, taken without modification from Marx, was to seize the means of production. The second goal, was to speed the implosion of the winning combination of spritual values, work ethic and patriotism mentioned earlier. From these structures would emerge GATT, WTO, NAFTA, and, the present infatuation with Communist Red China.
Now here we stand, and the clock reads 1 minute to midnight. The Communists have seized the means of production. The American psyche now places profit ahead of God, country and morals. We can barely defend ourselves against terrorists and rogue nations, and have given up on any meaningful defense against great powers who want to destroy us. The Right, not only in the US, but throughout the West, is fragmented and is not in any way robust; our single unifying principle is opposition to the Left - but look inside and you will see many unwittingly manipulated into doing the bidding of the Communists. The time is short. This may be the last generation to know an America we would recognize as a nurturing land. Our future is not assured. Conquest by those who hate us is possible if not probable. There is no strategy, only pale platitudes and sound bites. A rocky road lies ahead. Prepare for battle at our thresholds, and unthinkable sorrows across the land. And most of all, pray to God for mercy.
Sometime in the next century we won't have any jobs left to outsource-including high tech. jobs, you know the ones we're giving away.
ninenot responded: But IIRC, the mini-mills don't make steel from ore--only from recycling scrap. We NEED the ore-to-steel mills, if only for national defense purposes.
and asked: You don't expect PRC to send steel to us for tanks, do you?
Agreed, the mini-mills work from scrap. I'm not equating the technology but rather the management practices. Running for protection puts off the inevitable unless the company also works to make itself and efficient and effective producer. I want to see measures that will improve the industry and not just protect it. The recent case of the shotgun wedding between French pharmaceuticals Sanofi-Synthelabo and Aventis to thwart Novartis's attempted acquisition is an example of protectionism that I believe may be the death of the French pharm industry.
How can I tell? Because you're posting.
Now be a good girl, and start READING:
"The job market, which has a major impact on confidence, appears to be gaining strength," she said. "The percentage of consumers claiming jobs are hard to get is now at its lowest level since November 2002, and more consumers expect this trend to continue."
The four fallacies of protectionism: (1) Limiting imports saves jobs (2) Limiting imports keeps U.S. wages from falling (3) Limiting imports saves American companies and American industries (4) U.S. National security requires protection of industries needed to fight a war Protectionism is based on POLITICAL premises, POLITICAL logic, and it COMPLETELY ignores economics.
In fact, all of your assumed positions, rather than the propositions you attack, are fallacies. Let us just take the converse of your fallacies, and state your implied contentions. Your positions are by far the greater fallacies:
(1) Unlimited imports means unlimited U.S. jobs.
(2) Unlimited imports means wages will rise, not fall.
(3) Unlimited imports save "American" companies and "American" industries.
(4) U.S. National Security requires no industries to fight a war. The stuff just magically appears, or we can always buy it from China.
REPLY: As you can see, without even stretching for 'reductio ad absurdum' restatements, your free-trade thesis self-destructs. Particularly when you have the temerity to dispute, without aknowledgement, Adam Smith's own caveats on free trade. And we need to remind you, that but for the political freedom and other constitutional protections afforded by our Nation, there would be none of the economic freedoms which you apparently worship above all. Freedoms which can only be provided by a NATION. A nation you are profoundly unconcerned about protecting. Don't cry to me when the NEXT nation the U.S. becomes eliminates your property rights along with all the other rights.
Conclusion: You are Extremely Fallacious, or perhaps a Fallacious Extremist, or even an Extremely Fallacious Extremist.
I do not believe that Mr. Dobbs' article argued against "insourcing." I believe that one of his points in the posted article was that many jobs classified as being created by insourcing were existing jobs; i.e., the foreign entity bought an existing company with an existing payroll. You used the phrase "by any accepted economic metric." Does that mean that you reject the source of his information?
I am seriously interested in this debate over insourcing vis-a-vis losses due to offshoring. If you have sources that dispute the "existing jobs" argument please list them. Thanks.
There is a synergy you are oblivious to. Without the big integrated mills, we can't make the steel from raw ore. The small mills mostly just use old iron stock and recycled steel, and can't make steel from raw ore. Hence they don't add to the overall supply without massive imports of feed stock from other nations.
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