Posted on 03/05/2016 8:09:09 AM PST by syriacus
We hear terrible things about outsourcing jobs--how sending work outside of our companies is contributing to the demise of American businesses. But in this instance I have to take the unpopular stance that it is not always a terrible thing.
I understand that outsourcing means that employees lose jobs. Because work is often outsourced to other countries, it means Americans lose jobs. In other cases, nonunion employees get the work. Losing jobs is never a good thing, but we have to look at the bigger picture.
Last year, Nobel Prize-winning economist Dr. Lawrence R. Klein, the founder of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, co-authored a study that showed how global outsourcing actually creates more jobs and increases wages, at least for IT workers. The study found that outsourcing helped companies be more competitive and more productive. That means they make more money, which means they funnel more into the economy, thereby, creating more jobs.
I know that doesn't make it any easier for people whose jobs have been outsourced overseas, but if a company's only means of survival is by farming jobs outside its walls, then sometimes it's a necessary step. The other option might be to close its doors for good.
You’re okay with whatever position he takes regardless of what it is? Is that what you mean?
The Law of Comparative Advantage held fast for centuries, and America would not have propsered if it hadn’t. But Ricardo based his argument on an assumed immobility of capital, and after technology removed those barriers, it needs to be re-considered. Most economists now think in terms of competitive advantage rather than comparative advantage, which for example means, the US competetes through increased productivity and innovation rather than cost by encouraging Asia to produce the world’s supply of microchips but having firms in the US who are the best at applying them to create high=value solutions. Apple would be an example of this, where the company creates much greater value for it’s shareholders by outsourcing non-core activities like electronic assembly.
What Trump calls “smart trade” provides an incentive for companies like Apple to outsource that work to US companies at a competitive price.
Our economy was better when we exported rather than imported.
That’s the way it is, was, and ever shall be. An exporting economy means jobs and a higher standard of living. Only the rich praise the non-existent advantages of an importing economy.
We don’t have free trade. We have unilateral disarmament.
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Well said!
The problem is that we cannot all be IT workers.
That aside, Trump is addressing an important issue and we need to be more realistic about it. We are in a global labor market whether we like it or not. And in a lot of ways we are (or have been) better off because of it because of cheaper consumer goods. The flip side is not pretty BUT there is always a flip side to everything.
We are always going to have lower skilled workers. The utopia that both the right and left push of an educated workforce virtually ALL working high skilled, higher paid jobs (relative to the rest of the world) is just not realistic.
For one thing, there are smart talented motivated people everywhere on the planet. A certain percentage of them will make/take up the high skill jobs whether they live in the USA or not.
And we also have to face up to the fact that we are only like 5% of the world’s population. So, even if 1% of the rest of the world’s 7 billion population are educated, skilled, talented and motivated ... that 700 million people who are serious competition for the same type of people in our country. Even if 50% of our population is highly educated, skilled, talented etc, the numbers are not on our side.
Unless we close up shop and become isolationist like N. Korea.
I get a kick out of all the Trumpeteers who dismiss Trump for statements made directly by their guy and not disputed by him.
But something a candidate (not theirs) did 20 years ago is absolutely a fact and can’t be changed. I’ve never seen such hypocrisy.
Just a historian.
Trump made people feel good about outsourcing.
Now he makes people feel bad about outsourcing.
Today he criticizes DC.
When he’s president he’ll tell us he’s in charge of DC, so “listen up.”
Trump’s proclamations are all timed to transitory feelings.
He is no different than other demagogues.
You are right. That's the whole point.
(Which seems to have gone over the heads of most of the rest of the posters.)
We can all chuckle humorlessly about this when Trump begins running our lives from DC.
I wonder who will admit they voted for Trump?
Where will all their anger be directed when their guy is in charge?
Need lots of people to stock those shelves and to train those foreigners in our technology and know-how to make the products.
Yes!
Trump has a track record of talking out of both sides of his mouth.
People refuse to admit that that's a bad quality in someone you want to put your trust in.
Imagine Trump keeps telling someone in a burning building to jump into his arms. But he keeps running from one side to another.
Not much of a hero, even though he keeps shouting, "Jump into my arms."
Not much of a role model for our kids, either.
I read an article earlier this year (in the Atlantic? Or Politico perhaps? I can’t remember where) written by a man who wrote blog posts for Trump U, after he read Trump’s books and watched several interviews with him to get a feel for his style. The posts weren’t really written by Trump himself. For a while, Trump didn’t even have anything to do with them, according to this man. However, after the writer unknowingly criticized one of Trump’s businessman friends in a post, Trump began reading and approving the posts behorehand. I wonder if Trump actually had anything to do with this particular post.
Forked-tongue Trump has told us that,
If they were afraid to tell him, that's a whole new problem.
Trump is ginning up anger over something he doesn't see as a problem.
i.e., Trump lies to his supporters.
I agree that domestic laws and regulations have played a big role in moving “the action” overseas.
He's had all sorts of failed businesses.
Trump is a wheeler-dealer.
It's OUR money and lives he will be gambling.
Someone who uses so many superlatives seems more than a little out of touch with reality.
Who will be his economic advisors?
It’s strange.
“If outsourcing is okay, why it Trump telling his supporters that it is bad? “
Cmon — he wrote this like two years ago, you can’t hold him to that!!
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