Overseas jobs hurt on home front. (Gag/Barf alert)

The Patriot News ^ | 12/28/2003 | Edward A Bianchi

[Dad was my hero]

The Patriot News Review and Opinion December 28, 2003

A Bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, a master's in engineering design, a professional engineer's license, 27 years of engineering experience, working for some of the premier companies in America, six U.S. patents.

And no market value whatsoever.

Here I am, 53, supposedly at the peak of my earnings career, when I should be packing away money toward my retirement. Instead I've been cooling my heels for more than a year, and I'm having to think seriously about taking a McJob just to bring in money, and maybe gain health care coverage.

I'm far from alone.

I was speaking to one of my colleagues recently. He told me that, of the people he considers his "contemporaries," he's the only one that is working. Another friend of mine, a world traveler and an expert in his field, has had to take a job at Radio Shack.

It is the same story everywhere. Highly qualified people from every walk of life are out of work, under-employed or keeping their heads down and holding on to their present jobs for dear life.

Is this any way to run a country? It is more than an inexcusable waste of talent and resources. It is more than tragic. It is criminal.

It took the Bush administration to add the term "survival job" to the American vocabulary. Apparently, compassionate conservatives long for the character-building trials of the Great Depression, and are doing everything in their power to bring them back.

They crow in triumph when the job creation numbers turn just positive enough to match the growth of the U.S. population. Never mind that they've destroyed 3 million jobs. Never mind that many jobs that were lost were high-wage jobs with benefits, and the replacement jobs are mostly minimum wage jobs with no benefits whatsoever.

The entire United States of America is being sold down the river for a handful of free-market beans. It is the WalMartization of America. It is the logical result of the fact that no matter what you want, there is somebody in the world willing to work for starvation wages to supply it.

And the business community is loving it. It can't get enough of it. No need to pay a living wage. No need to pay benefits. Government regulations? Pollution controls?

Unions? Hah! Forget about 'em! Take the stuff off the boat and never mind where it comes from.

As long as we're willing to roll over and take it, there's only one way Americans will earn a living wage, and that is by dragging the world up to our level. That'll take some doing, because the typical Chinese worker would have to earn more than 20 times what he is now just to make our minimum wage.

Don't think that there are jobs the Chinese or the Indians or the Russians can't do. Talk to a tool-and-die man. Talk to somebody who builds industrial equipment. Talk to computer programmers. Ask them who their stiffest competition is. They'll tell you it's the folks overseas.

If those jobs are going overseas, what will we have left?

Last year our government ran a $374 billion deficit. Next year we expect to end up $500 billion in the hole. Let me tell you what that money ($874 billion total) could have bought, if it had been used wisely instead of being given away as tax cuts for the rich.

It could have created 17.5 million jobs, assuming each job cost $50,000 to create. It could have built 43,750 miles of highway, assuming each mile of highway cost $20 million, doubling the size of the interstate highway system. It could have built nine international airports, at about $100 billion a pop.

It could have built sewers and water-treatment plants. It could have built schools, and it could have renovated seaports. Or it could have paid for half of all medical care delivered in America for a year. It most certainly could have bought medical insurance for every single American who does not have it.

The Republicans seem to be in love with feel-good economic theories and completely blind to economic results. We have to take America back, if we want to have any America left.

[Dad was my hero]

There are so many problems with this that I hardly know where to start. I'm sure that right off the bat, there is nothing in his home that was made overseas. Obviously he has no understanding of economics to propose some of what he proposes.

If you want to address this with your own response to the patriot news, you can e-mail your letters to editpage@patriot-news.com or fax them to 717-255-8456. You need to keep it to 250 words or less and you must include your name, address and phone number. You can request an "as I see it" column which allows up to 750 words.

This piece is not accessible with a link I had to type it in by hand.

[Luke Skyfreeper]

Obviously, assigning full blame to the Bush administration merits a 'barf.' However, the basic reality is: there are an awful lot of Americans who are suffering like hell economically. Could the Bush administration do something to alleviate the problem? I'm not sure, nor am I sure what the solution might be. But what I am certain of is, they'd sure as heck better try.

[Ukiapah Heep]

If the Democrats ever ovecome their hatred for straight white males, they can use this issue to unleash horrors bad enough to make Dale Gribble look like a sissy!

[wiseone]

I’v been in the same boat for years , despite re- training,over 50s are expendable!

Now its critial,as retirement money blown after I had a serious illness,so don’t be so smug!,it can happen to YOU NEXT!

[brbethke]

It could have built 43,750 miles of highway, assuming each mile of highway cost $20 million, doubling the size of the interstate highway system. It could have built nine international airports, at about $100 billion a pop.

Nah. The EPA and its coterie of envirowhackos would never let that much construction happen. It might disturb some minnow or snail or something.

[pissant]

I'm here in the greater Seattle area. I've been in engineering for 15 years. Washington & Oregon suffered the worst downturn in the country (Boeing axed 25,000 +). Yet every Engineer I know, except one, is still employed, and in the last 4 months, busier than heck. So things aren't as the author described "the same story everywhere". The best solution is the one the Bush admin has taken: Less corporate & personal taxation. It will work, as it always has.

[Dad was my hero]

Philosophically speaking, is it the job of the government to interfere with the economy? I know the dems will court the disenfranchised and unemployed and play to others' fears of the same happening to them, but as a conservative and sometimes libertarian, I don't believe the federal government's role is to interfere with the economy. The more often they try to correct things, the more often the economy suffers.

Mr. Bianchi's statement at the end, "The Republicans seem to be in love with feel-good economic theories and completely blind to economic results." is so much BS. I don't see any credentials in his resume on economics.

[Dad was my hero]

Glad to hear the positive side. If you listen to the author (who apparently gets his information from Tom Brokaw and the nightly news) all the engineers he knows are out of work, all the tax cuts went to the wealthy (I got one so I must be rich) and so you must reach his intended conclusion, more taxes will stimulate economic growth.

[Monty22]

"No need to pay a living wage. No need to pay benefits. Government regulations? Pollution controls?"

Moron, pick one or the other.

wtf is this idiot's problem. 'I want 100k jobs, no pollution, AND free healthcare' seems to be the mantra.

I also noticed that he listed 'McJob' and health benefits in the same sentence. This guy has no clue.

[YankeeReb]

The basic problems outlined in the article are fact. The trouble is the author uses it as a hit piece on Bush, and the gratuitous "tax cuts for the rich" line is a dead give away. I don't know what the answers are but Ukiapah Heep has a good point, if the dems weren't so anti straight white male and so full of bile, they could give GW a run for his money. Bush had better start looking at this issue and quit depending on the dims to keep shooting themselves in the foot. It happened to Bush 41, everyone thought he would win hands down after the gulf war, until a used car salseman from Arkansas, with the help of a Texas mental patient snatched defeat from the jaws of victory from the repubs. The war on terror is important, but someone who spent years building a career only to see himself working at Radio Shack in his mid 50s doesn't necessarly care about a possible terrorist attack.

[Dad was my hero]

I know, when I read the article I got so pi$$ed, but I didn't know where to start. He appears to be enamoured with deficit and believes that 17.5 million jobs could have been created at $50,000 each. Apparently he doesn't know much about those pesky benefits that increase the cost of most jobs by another 30% above the salary.

Let's say we use that deficit to create a (hardly noticed) new entitlement of healthcare for all, what happens the next time when we balance the budget? Nobody will mind losing that healthcare benefit because it came from deficit spending. So, they'll happily give it up. Yeah, right!

[joesnuffy]

12/27 Dan Norcini - "The Chilling Truth Behind the Demise of the American Software
Industry"

"The Chilling Truth Behind the Demise of the American Software Industry"

http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/Summary.pdf

……. is written by Norman Matloff, a professor of computer science at the University
of California, Davis, and details the loss of American jobs in the computer software
programming field. Within this essay is contained the chilling sentence:

Due to a combination of H-1B, L-1 and offshoring, the American software developer will
become extinct within the next few years. The percentage of new programmer jobs
going to H-1Bs and L-1s has shown a sharp upward trend in recent years. The
Commerce Dept. says 28% of the programmer jobs during 1996-1998 went to
H-1Bs;17 the Federal Reserve Bank gave a 50% figure for 1999;18 and my very rough
calculations, based on an attempt to piece together different types of data,
suggest a figure as high as 90% for 2001. Jon Piot, COO of the Impact
Innovations Group, even estimates a precise date at which the "extinction" of the
American programmer will occur—2006.19 Given the flurry of current activity in which
many American programmers are being laid off and replaced by H-1Bs/L-1s, that
date may need to be revised to an earlier one.

• I am using the term American to mean U.S. citizens (native or naturalized) and
permanent residents.

In particular, he deals with the H-1B and L-1 programs which allow American companies
to hire foreign sources of labor. He also details occasions in which Americans have
been humiliatingly forced to train their own foreign replacements. It is a particularly
distressing read to learn how the quest for the next quarterly stock price
enhancement has resulted in an entire industry thumbing its collective nose at native
born workers all under the umbrella of government approval bought and paid for by
campaign contributions to politicians who have sold out their own constituency for the
sake of political power and prestige.

The essay is well documented and professionally written.

In all honesty, I must say Bill that I came away from reading this article with a terrible
sense of foreboding and an increased cynicism in regards to our current political and
corporate leaders who appear intent on mortgaging the nation's long term future for
short term political and/or financial expediency. Here is another line from the essay:

Prominent members of Congress publicly admitted that they were forced to
approve the H-1B expansions because of industry campaign contributions.

Regardless of my personal feelings on the matter, the economic ramifications are
alarmingly quite clear. The permanent loss of quality, high paying jobs both in the
manufacturing and now the service sector our economy, will result in the following:

1.Americans who have seen their jobs either outsourced abroad or lost to foreign
replacement workers will either be forced to dramatically alter their life styles or
resort to increased levels of personal indebtedness to maintain that which they
have grown accustomed to. Those who choose to downsize will sell higher
priced homes and look to move into more modest housing crimping the sales of
high priced homes. This should result in prices for upper scale housing falling in
relation to small and mid sized housing. Those who choose to maintain their
current lifestyle, will go deeper into debt until they accrue such unsustainable
levels of indebtedness that bankruptcy becomes their only viable alternative.

2.Those who have trained for what were once thought of as the securest of the
secure positions in the modern workforce, now find themselves with a set of
obsolete job skills. The remaining positions available for them are positions at
decreased salary levels or the unwelcome alternative of low-paying retail sector
jobs out of economic necessity. The excess labor pool available of these
displaced workers will result in downward pressure on wages in all fields in
general. This is perhaps the area that the all wise sentinels at the Fed are
observing as they continue to speak of "deflationary pressures" in the economy.
More Americans competing for a shrinking quality job pool is not the recipe for
long-term robust and sustained consumer spending especially if such spending
occurs as the result of further indebtedness. Add on top of that, rising prices
for tangible goods such as crude oil, gasoline, heating oil, natural gas, copper,
and services such as medical insurance costs and local and state taxes and the
ingredients for a horrendous squeeze on household budgets is in the cards for
most Americans.

3.The loss of these high-quality, relatively good paying jobs will result in
decreased tax revenues for both state and federal coffers. A taxpayer once
bringing home a salary of $65,000/year will pay far less in taxes now that he
works at Wal-Mart for $9.00/hour. Again, to quote the good Professor Matloff:

By official data, currently more than 100,000 U.S. computer programmers6 are
unemployed. Many more are underemployed, working in nonprofessional jobs such as
bus driver, real estate appraiser, and so on. The un- and under-employed easily total
several hundred thousand workers. Meanwhile 463,000 H-1Bs are employed in the
field, as of 2002.

Since Congress has shown no appetite to restrain its profligate spending habits, look
for the federal budget to continue to balloon out of control.

4. Businesses caught between customers experiencing downward wage pressures
and rising input costs for commodities due to inflationary pressures created by the
Fed's loose money policies and the recycling of monies from current account deficits
with nations from abroad that make their way back into the U.S., will continue to
experience a loss of pricing power and will watch profit margins be squeezed. With
the loss of purchasing power, consumers will require deeply discounted sales to
induce them to part with their money.

All in all, things do not look rosy in the future for the U.S. economy as a whole no
matter what the hype and spin that the elitists wish to paint with. If consumer
spending is the engine that drives the U.S. economy, I cannot help but to believe that
this engine is beginning to run dreadfully low on gas. The scenario that races across
my mind's eye in light of the above, is one in which the U.S. Dollar continues to plumb
new lows in the process pushing gold to new and loftier highs.

Dan Norcini

December 26, 2003

Dan is a professional off-the-floor commodity trader residing in Texas and can be
reached at dnorcini@earthlink.net with comments.

[Agnes Heep]

He should become a prostitute. Good pay, and you can set your own hours.

[JLAGRAYFOX]

We have a saying in New York, "s--t happens"! This guy along with wailing Democrats and useless union leaders just doesn't get it! There are no more jobs for icemen or knife sharpners, etc. The Pennsylvania Railroad, Pan Am and Eastern Airlines are history! Things happen. Jobs come and go as our economy and lives changes. New industries arise and others go by the wayside because they are no longer profitable! That's capitalism! If you want socialism, vote for Howard Dean and the "traitor/treason" Democrat Party. I have no pity for those weak sisters that moan about their lost jobs. Get your butt in gear, go out there and get yourself moving! Unless you change, life and job opportunities will pass you by!

[Dad was my hero]

Well, he used many of the tag lines from the evening news. The one about 3 million jobs lost is both true and false. Yes, the economy lost about 3 million jobs since the Clinton recession began, but it has also gained about 2.75 million jobs back since Bush implemented his policies. Jobs are a lagging indicator of economic growth since most employers watch their orders (or business changes) to see how lasting new sales are before finally bringing on new employees. Sometimes through shifts in the economy, you have to move to where the jobs are, that could be his problem, not willing to relocate. I can tell you this, one problem that comes across to me is that he exhibits a real entitlement attitude and if it comes across in interviews, he is dead in the water. Just my opinion.

[humblegunner]

Yes, Virginia, there are no jobs.
It's been rough as hell for some of us, but Americans still get the boss jobs.

[pissant]

Apparently, the author has not looked at the stats regarding personal income, which has been rising in Q3 & Q4. He also doesn't bother looking at housing starts, construction spending, factory output, etc, etc.

Somebody is buying these new homes. Someone is spending big bucks on remodels to allow Home Depot & Lowes to continue there phenominal growth.

Folks, realize that the US economy is exceedingly dynamic. Losses in one sector will be made up in another if the fat hand of regulation is loosened.

[Dad was my hero]

Hey, wait a minute, are you telling me that I should start looking to get out of the buggy whip manufacturing field rather than continue to press my legislators about the continued plummeting sales of the horse-drawn buggy? I want protection!

Those pesky horseless carriages, they'll never catch on!

[InShanghai]

Great keywords! I agree that there is plenty wrong with this guy's thought process...

If he really has six patents, and the rest of those credentials under his belt, he should be able to come up with a way to create his own method of supporting himself. Engineers are not trained to whine, moan, and complain about problems. They're trained to logically identify, work through, and create viable solutions to problems.

He's confusing the fact that he cannot find a job with politics. Besides, with an attitude like his, who would hire him?

I, for one, believe that just having the opportunity to control my own future is what makes America a great country. BTW we've got the same hero!

[Dad was my hero]

Thanks muchly for the kind words. ;^)