Posted on 09/08/2004 3:36:00 PM PDT by Destro
Posted on Sun, Aug. 22, 2004
Business books: 'Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas'
"Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas," by Lou Dobbs (Warner Business Books, 208 pages, $19.95)
Look out, Silicon Valley! Bangalore, India, is gaining on you. Some folks in India even believe that their country's version of Silicon Valley has already surpassed its California counterpart as a center for high-tech employment.
In his new book, "Exporting America," CNN's Lou Dobbs shows how strongly that belief is held in India with a headline from the Jan. 6, 2004, issue of The Times of India: "Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore."
The story under that headline, Dobbs writes, bragged that Bangalore has 150,000 information-technology engineers compared with 130,000 in Silicon Valley. Dobbs believes that that story can't be written off as merely nationalistic exaggeration.
"India is only one of the many countries benefiting from the exporting of American jobs. But it has also been one of the most aggressive in pursuing professional-level jobs, from medical technicians to software programs. American companies have been all too happy to answer India's siren call of educated English-speakers willing to work at some of the world's lowest wages," Dobbs writes.
General Electric's Capital International Services, Dobbs points out, was one of the pioneers of outsourcing domestic operations to India. The company, Dobbs writes, employs 1,300 at its four centers in India and says it saves about $400million annually by not having Americans do those jobs.
"The people there write software; they review invoices and insurance claims; they do market analysis. CIS also offers its services to other American companies looking for outsourced resources," Dobbs writes.
Although India lags behind other Asian countries in manufacturing, it has a leg up, according to Dobbs, in the service sector and is a magnet for some of America's highest-paying jobs.
"There are programmers all over the world, but the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs) are turning out thousands of these programmers a year. They are men and women who are well-educated, speak impeccable English, and are thrilled to make $10,000 a year," Dobbs writes.
GE, as Dobbs makes clear in abundant detail, is only one of many companies outsourcing high-tech and professional jobs to India and other parts of the world where wage expectations are lower. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Early in the book Dobbs delivers a broadside against the general trend of shipping jobs offshore. He says it is undermining the American middle class, putting Americans out of work, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.
Dobbs, whose views on shipping jobs offshore have been under continual attack by advocacy groups and consultants for multinational corporations, takes the view that corporations who send jobs offshore are firing their own customers, because American workers will eventually find themselves unable to purchase the goods and services being exported back to America by American companies.
"India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I've asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions," Dobbs writes.
- Cecil Johnson,
Knight Ridder Tribune
Dobbs can't be a Socialist because Free trade = Marxisim.
Actually he isnt Dobbs is a paleo-con much inline with Pat Buchanen.
No, no no!!! It's all GREED on the part of employers, don't you understand that??? Workers are NEVER greedy! ;^)
Apparently only in health care ---- even providing free health to foreign citizens who don't wish to build up their own health care systems, and education --- we still have to provide kids 12 years or more education with free lunch programs, and the military --- Americans go go off to do the dying that other people don't wish to do and the American taxpayers will somehow have to come up with the money to pay for all this but have no jobs that bring in money.
So Ok we should keep jobs that went to indians anyways. Fine, nonody will argue the fact that outsourcing sucks, but its a two way street. Protectionism at home will invaritably result in protectionism against us. Which means companies like Toyota and Honda wont build plants or other companies wont invest here because of rules setup to punish America for protectionism.
Bump for later.
Well --- at some point we're going to have to outsource taxes. Without manufacturing jobs, we will produce nothing to export --- Americans will have to import just about everything they buy. All the health care and education and social work jobs (service industry) are tax money users unlike manufacturing which are tax money producers. Who will pay the taxes that supports health care, education, welfare industry, and the military?
The Administration apparently isn't concerned about that.
As long as the transnational corporations can operate in a tax-free global environment, the rest of us, including our government institutions, can eat dirt.
FITZ! Do you read history? Is that not what happened to the Athenian Delian league? When Athen's allies were forced to pay tribute? Or to the Roman republic where slave labor made Romans unemployable creating the imperial welfare state that needed tribute to live?
We have shown that as a people we can not spend less on ourselves nor do we have the ability to raise revenue to the level of spending our politicans insist we need (and we confirm by their election).
In our lifetime we may be seeing the world pay America a "protection tax" collected by our Marines, whether they like it or not.
Doesnt Dobbs tout these same company's in his $$$ private newsletter?
I tuned him in on my XM radio last night, and it was the same schpiel, over and over.
Would he rather we be Germany with 32 hour work weeks, 20 percent unemployment?
And yet, if I had invested in "Dobb's Portfolio" of companies he hates for outsourcing, my 401(K) would be looking mighty fine and my dreams retirement fulfilled. Afterall, I'm not dumb enough to believe 70 million workers can be supported through the labor of 35 million.
Trade off? My generation.
Keep outsourcing.
you are making Dobbs point - what American can live on that wage?
Gee, Lou, maybe we'll all be investment class, local suppliers, and then creative suppliers.
Small minds have small visions, I guess.
yes, but who invents? lawyers? public school teachers?
engineers invent, and the field is collapsing, so which americans will be around to invent? none.
invention will come from the places where engineers are employed, and investments in new technolog are being made - and that's not in the US anymore.
And the jobs that were exported to the U.S. from abroad? Send em back. Get on it. Fart n start. ASAP? Ha
A top mechanic at a Mercedes dealer, makes $80K a year.
no one in the US is going to get a master's degree in engineering to make $40K/yr. no one.
all of my techie friends - are piling their kids into law schools.
Engineers aren't the only inventors - just the most richly rewarded ones.
Google John Osher.
An ex-plumber who created three companies.
so name some technological innovations made by lawyers, or real estate agents?
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