Obama And Romney Are Wrong: Outsourcing Is Actually America At Its Best

Forbes ^ | 07/28/2012 | Harry Binswanger

[SeekAndFind]

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are currently fighting over who is the more patriotic. Obama slams Romney for having outsourced jobs to China during his Bain Capital days. Romney punches back by labeling Obama “Outsourcer in Chief.” The latest is that both John Boehner and Harry Reid are voicing outrage over America’s made-in-China Olympic uniforms. “Burn them!” thunders Reid.

Republicans and Democrats strangely agree that outsourcing is unpatriotic, and that the moral and patriotic thing to do is to “Hire American” and “Buy American.”

Well, no. Not in a thousand years. The fear of outsourcing and international trade is economic nonsense and moral blindness. More than that: this anti-profit attitude is un-American.

Despite the ongoing Europeanization of America, America still symbolizes the land of freedom, entrepreneurship, profit-making, above all, individualism.

But collectivism is the premise of “Hire/Buy American”: we are to view ourselves and others not as individuals, but as units of a nation. Businesses are urged to pay more in labor costs, simply to hire workers who are American; consumers are urged to forgo Walmart’s low prices, pay more, simply because the pricier goods were made by “our guys.” This is not rational patriotism, it is not Americanism, it's primitive tribalism.

American individualism means making buying decisions on the basis of economic merit, giving no regard to the nationality or race of the seller. Let’s not hide behind patriotic-sounding slogans. Let’s name things straight for a change: giving preference to American sellers over foreign sellers is the same mindless injustice as giving preference to sellers who are white over those who are black.

Economic nationalism is as morally outrageous as racism. Buying on the basis of nationality or race is the same collectivist evil: judging men and their products by the group from which they come, not by merit.

[rurgan]

Who knows how much it is exactly. China Production is at least 10 times more than is showed in your stats, as this is posted in dollars but China produces in their currency which is undervalued by a factor of 50 as China can pay workers .20 cents an hour. In a free market prices would even out and workers would make about the same . that they don't shows the rate at which China manipulates its currency. Fact is U.S. workers get paid 50 times more than China factory workers but it should be about the same if the marker were free.

FACT is China makes 54% of the world's steel and most of the electronics 9 billion people use. U.S. makes no consumer electronics not even our own.

[3Fingas]

I never called you a traitor. I think I just extended an olive branch and called you a patriot.

I included LOL to try to lighten the mood. I know that you have been conducting a running battle with a few folks in this thread, but I have found a number of your responses informative and have said so.

People are going to disagree on some subjects, but since we are all using this forum, we probably agree on a lot of other subjects.

[Toddsterpatriot]

Who knows how much it is exactly.

You know. You said "their currency which is undervalued by a factor of 50"

Do you have any proof their currency is artificially undervalued by 98%? Or did you just pull that out of an orifice?

In a free market prices would even out and workers would make about the same .

Bzzzt. Wrong. More productive workers make more than less productive workers. That's why 11 million American manufacturing workers can produce more than 100 million Chinese workers and still make more than 50 cents an hour.

[rurgan]

They fail to realize how China is destroying the U.S. and how serious the situation is and are more content in ridiculing, shouting down, and insulting those that are patriotically calling for America first policies. They fail to realize how we need a strong border and how we need to stop the invasion of immigrants, and China products that are leaving Americans homeless and all Americans less wealthy in the long run..

[1rudeboy]

Yeah, it gets kinda’ tough. Someone parachutes-in, early, and sets the tone. It’s the way econ threads have worked here for as long as I can remember.

[1rudeboy]

Nice job cloaking yourself in the anti-illegal immigration cloak, when everyone on this damn thread agrees with you.

[editor-surveyor]

Outsourcing to your enemies is insane.

Trade should be reserved for our ideological partners.

[central_va]

Trade should be reserved for our ideological partners.

I wonder how nice the PRC will be once they've cornered the market in manufacturing?

Once they've done that, armed with trillions of dollars, the only thing that they can convert that fiat money and t-bills into is raw natural resources. They will "buy" or own every tree, crop and mineral in the USA. I wonder if they will let us harvest or will they just ship in coolies to do the work?

[khelus]

The big lie that free traitors like 1rudeboy like to propagate is that it is prohibitively expense to manufacture in the good old USA. At MOST labor is 10% of the price of ANY manufactured good. I used cars as an example to show this.

The larger point is that we are off shoring to maybe save 2 or 3 % on the retail price. The free traitor lie is everything is dirt cheap now, when actually it is only marginally cheaper. When you factor in the damage it doing to the USA is prohibitively expensive. Traitor is a good word.

The word mentioned by a poster below is 'labor arbitrage'. Corporations are chasing the cheapest labor world wide. By cheap I mean low hourly rate, no benefits, horrendous working conditions, no safety considerations for the workers (or consumer) mandatory overtime, and passing the cost of gtoss environmental destruction onto the citizenry at large. 'Guolaosi' is a word coined in China for over-work death.

It is one thing for manufacture to be developed in China to slowly raise the standard of living for the Chinese people and to provide for the Chinese market.

OTH US corporations that were turning a profit here outsourced manufacture to neo-slaves in China, shipped the products to the US market under a special WTO accession agreement, all to improve quarterly profits by nano-cents on the dollar.

The result can be found here

[central_va]

Mass exodus to profit by 3rd world wage ‘competition’ is what has killed our ecnomy, not our ‘reluctance’ to enter into new technologies and fields. It was swift and broadly encompassing. Not only was there no time to adjust, not only did it happen to every area of manufacturing and production, but was done in the name of corporate (also meaning our 535 and governmental ‘representatives’ investments) and international money interests, NOT the interests of an American Economy, based on American values and standards of living, and promotion of such.

Now, not only is this continued, but the only answer we hear is that continued nannying is the only answer.... jobs AREN’T coming back and it’s the end of the story. So, expand government, it’s agencies, welfare, and don’t address the real problem; instead, ‘usher in the New America’, dependent upon government.

I won’t buy into that. The real answers are there, and this ‘oh,my.... we didn’t know the Chinese would react THIS way’ slap in the face and threatenings may, just MAY wake all of us up enough to take America back.

[bert]

Actually, the subcontracting is done to enable the companies to have products to sell. Had they not found manufacturing subcontractors elsewhere they would have been out of business. No one would buy their overly expensive products.

The concept of neo slavery is a joke to young workers earning a good living in China making stuff rather than starving in a rural village.

It is called competition.

[khelus]

.. but it seems to me that free trade that involved producing "over there" would be where our guys found it necessary because exporting to meet the demand "over there" became too expensive

One upon a time that what 'globalism' was about. Setting up a branch overseas to supply the overseas market.

... I really do believe that 1) Lenin was right, corporations are useful idiots in that case and ...

Agreed. That is why Marx promoted free trade (i.e. free movement of labor and capital devoid of any consideration of ethics or patriotism) as a means to speed up global communism.

...and 2) Deng implemented a version of Lenin's New Economic Policy (NEP) I have never made that connection, but it makes sense.

... I understand that others see Red China transitioning to freedom and democracy -- or simply just "another system."

It's difficult to believe that China is making a significant move to freedom only 20 years after Tiannanmen Square or when consider religions can only be freely practiced under government regulation. It is easy to see China as transiting to form of fascism. Fascism is after all communism with the pretense of private ownership; one's use of private property is controlled through heavy regulation. Many forget an unholy alliance with big government and heavy regulation is something large global corporations are comfortable with.

[central_va]

Competition between fellow Americans in the USA is good and should be unregulated and promoted. Competition between US citizen and chinese coolies should be illegal. We export wealth and import poverty. Tariff is not a four letter word.

[khelus]

I remember when the issues of “Most Favored Nation” trading status for China and WTO membership were under consideration, I called my Senators and Congressman on both occasions and asked them to vote against both measures. They did not listen to me. They were so-called “free-traders” like so many other confused Republicans then and now.

"The fine print in China's WTO agreement was in an attached document euphemistically labeled an "accession agreement," which gave China status as a "nonmarket economy" and spelled out thousands of details about special preferences for China

[khelus]

“agrarian reformers” LOL Forgot about those words

[khelus]

You realize when someone resorts to insults, snide remarks, and partial truths they have no facts to refute your argument.

[khelus]

RE: "China manufacturing really 50 times greater than U.S."

You reminded me of hedonics. I was looking for an excuse

well if hedonics is good enough to be used to suppress the CPI .....

[khelus]

... or will they just ship in coolies to do the work?

They already are.

Link1

Link2

[khelus]

The system we had prior to say 1970; the way we manufactured, the way we traded produced a super power the likes the world has ever seen. Now look at us. And if you dane question the status quo, even on Free Republic, fascist like 1rudebutt and todds-a-chinese-patriot cannot stand it. They cannot acknowledge that any price has been paid for this foolishness. It has all been good. Right. I wasn't born yesterday. The problem is people born after 1970 think THIS SITUATION IS NORMAL. And even worse sustainable.

This is an interesting point. If one hasn't been around long enough to have seen the change, or isn't willing/able to read about or listen to those who have, you see the current state of affairs as normal.

Sometimes I just have to remember how effective the enemy within has been:
" . . . They are contaminated; they are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind[s], even if you expose them to authentic information, even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior. In other words, these people... the process of demoralization is complete and irreversible . . ." Yuri Bezmenov

[central_va]

This is an interesting point. If one hasn't been around long enough to have seen the change, or isn't willing/able to read about or listen to those who have, you see the current state of affairs as normal.

The evil of the worm-tongue free traders. They know it is wrong, but they don't care.