Posted on 02/15/2005 6:44:11 AM PST by dennisw
"The Great American Job Sellout By Paul Craig Roberts
Americans are being sold out on the jobs front. Americans' employment opportunities are declining as a result of corporate outsourcing of US jobs, H-1B visas that import foreigners to displace Americans in their own country, and federal guest worker programs
President Bush and his Republican majority intend to legalize the aliens who hold down wages for construction companies and cleaning services. In order to stretch budgets, state and local governments bring in lower paid foreign nurses and school teachers. To reduce costs, US corporations outsource jobs abroad and use work visa programs to import foreign engineers and programmers. The American job give away is explained by a "shortage" of Americans to take the jobs.
There are not too many Americans willing to accept the pay and working conditions of migrant farm workers. However, the US is bursting at the seams with unemployed computer engineers and well-educated professionals who are displaced by outsourcing and H-1B visas. During Bush's entire first term, there was a net loss of American private sector jobs. Today there are 760,000 fewer private sector jobs in the US economy than when Bush was first inaugurated in January 2001.
For years the hallmark of the European economy was its inability to create any jobs other than government jobs. America has caught up with Europe. During Bush's first term, state and local government created 879,000 new government jobs. Offsetting these government jobs against the net loss in private sector jobs gives Bush a four-year jobs growth of 119,000 government jobs. Comparing this pathetic result to normal performance produces a shortage of 8 million US jobs. What happened to these jobs?
Over these same four years the composition of US jobs has changed from higher-paid manufacturing and information technology jobs to lower-paid domestic services. Why?
During this extraordinary breakdown in the American employment machine, politicians, government officials, corporate spokespersons, and "free trade" economists gave assurances that America was benefitting greatly from the work visa programs and outsourcing.
The mindless chatter continues. Just the other day Ambassador David Gross, US Coordinator for International Communications and Information Policy in the State Department, declared outsourcing to be an economic efficiency that works to America's benefit. There is no sign of this alleged benefit in US jobs statistics or the US balance of trade.
Repeatedly and incorrectly, US corporations state that outsourcing creates more US jobs. They even convinced a New York Times columnist that this was the case.
The problem is, no one can identify where the US jobs are that outsourcing allegedly creates. They are certainly not to be found in the BLS jobs statistics. However, the Indian and Chinese jobs created by US outsourcing are highly visible.
On February 13, the Dayton (Ohio) Daily News reported that jobs outsourcing is transforming Indian "cities like Bangalore from sleepy little backwaters into the New York Cities of Asia." In a very short period outsourcing has helped to raise India from one of the world's poorest countries to its seventh largest economy.
Outsourcing proponents claim that US job loss is being exaggerated, that outsourcing is really just a small thing involving a few call centers. If that is the case, how is it transforming sleepy Indian cities into "the New York Cities of Asia"? If outsourcing is no big deal, why are Bangalore hotel rooms "packed with foreigners paying rates higher than in Tokyo or London," as the Dayton Daily News reports?
If outsourcing is of no real consequence, why are American lawyers or their clients paying $2,900 in fees plus hotel and travel expenses and two days' billings to attend the Fourth National Conference on Outsourcing in Financial Services in Washington DC (April 20-21)?
On the jobs front, as on the war front, the social security front and every other front, Americans are not being given the truth. Americans' news comes from people allied with the Bush administration or dependent on revenues from corporate advertisers. Displease the government or advertisers and your media empire is in trouble. The news most Americans get is filtered. It is the permitted news. Many "free trade" advocates also are dependent on the corporate money that funds their salaries, research and think tanks.
Another clear indication that outsourcing of US jobs is no small thing comes from the reported earnings of the leading Indian corporations that provide American firms with outsourced IT employees and engineers. During the recent quarter, Infosys' revenues increased by 53%, TCS grew by 38%, and Wipro was up 34%.
On January 1, 2001, Cincinnati-based Convergys Corp had one Indian employee. Today it has 10,000. Why? Because it can hire Indian university graduates for $240 a month, a sum that is a small fraction of the US poverty level income.
Many Americans think that an outsourced job is an existing job that is moved offshore. But many outsourced jobs are created offshore in the first place. On February 11, USA Today told the story of OfficeTiger, "the sort of young technology company that once created thousands of high-paying jobs in the USA, fueling sizzling economic growth." The five-year old startup business employs 200 Americans and ten times that number of Indians. The company has plans for hiring many more Indians to perform "tech-heavy financial services."
Under pressure from venture capitalists who fund new companies, American startup firms are starting up abroad. Thus, the new ventures, which "free trade" economists assured us would create new jobs to take the place of the ones moved offshore by mature firms, are in fact creating jobs for foreigners.
As a consequence, tech jobs in the US are falling as a percentage of the total. Clearly, tax breaks for venture capitalists are self-defeating when the result is to create jobs for foreigners, not for Americans. Why should the American taxpayer subsidize employment in India and China?
These developments have obvious adverse implications for engineering and professional education in America. The BLS jobs forecast for the next ten years says the vast majority of US jobs will not require a college education. University enrollments will decline and so will the production of PhDs as fewer professors are needed.
As India and China rise to first world status, the US falls to third world status where the only jobs are in domestic services.
This has enormous implications for the US balance of payments. Americans' consumption of manufactured goods is heavily dependent on foreign manufacture, whether that of foreign firms or that of US multinational firms that supply their American customers from offshore. How does an economy in which employment growth is concentrated in nontradable domestic services pay for its imports with exports?
Since 1990 the US has been paying for its imports by giving foreigners ownership of its assets. In the last 15 years foreigners have accumulated $3.6 trillion of America's wealth.
America has been able to pay for its consumption by giving up its wealth because the dollar is the world's reserve currency. As America's high-tech and manufacturing capabilities decline and its red ink rises, the dollar's role as reserve currency must end.
When the dollar loses its reserve currency role, America will not be able to pay for the imports on which it has become dependent. Shopping in Wal-Mart will be like shopping at Neiman Marcus.
Until recent years, US companies employed Americans to produce the goods that Americans consumed. Employment supported sales, and sales supported employment. No more. By their shortsighted policy of moving US jobs abroad, our corporations are destroying their American markets.
Economists give assurances that the dollar's decline and fall will bring jobs and industry back to the US. Once Americans are as poor as Indians and Chinese are today, the process will reverse. Multinational corporations will locate in America to take advantage of cheap labor and unserved markets. By becoming poor, the US can become rich again.
You might want to ask the economists and our "leaders" in Washington why we should put ourselves and our descendants through such a wrenching process."
--Jerry Leslie Note: les...@jrlvax.houston.rr.com is invalid for email
Will you get off the morality horse?
You said in an earlier post that you would buy the product from whoever makes it cheapest. How is that looking out for the worlds people? Sounds like if somewone made it for free that is where you would go.
I never said you STATED it, onlt that you do.
I do favor government using tariffs to offset the labor cost advantage foreign nations have vrs American labor. And it is true that such a policy would have the effect of raising the price of foreign goods in the US market.
Now you said it again. Government sets the prices by using tariffs in many cases. Goverment set prices. Get it?
But that not the same, nor even close to direct price controls.
LOL, direct? LOL, man take off that hat and quit dancing Mr. Bojangles.
You are truly pathetic.
What you want to call them is irrelevant to this discussion. They are a copout argument having nothing whatsoever to do with it. And as I rightly stated, if you wish to address that issue, it can be addressed without trying to make an excuse for treason of it. But it doesn't belong here.
I repeat, you are a coward. And you haven't a clue about morality.
Now you're just trying to be offensive while trying to skirt the issues. Go read the rules and perhaps take a break if you find the need. Wouldn't want you to get banned for being an irrational, abusive and childish detractor.
Quote: The government places regulations on businesses including minimum wage regulations, OSHA regulations, EPA regulation, Hiring practice Regulatations etc Do you support any of these government interventions?
Also BTW: Name me one country that does practice any of the above regulations at all where their people are not living in a corrugated tin shack and bathing in sewage and die when they are 40.
Should read that "do not practice any of the above regulations"...
It should be quite obvious to any one that government price control means just that government sets the price. Just like Nixon did in the 70's. That is what government price controls means. You can google it if you like. Words do have meanings, I know it is annoying but words do have meanings. I am not a bag of water even thou the human body is 95% percent water. traiffs are not price controls even thou they have the effect of raising prices.
No, Government protects the economy with tarrifs by preventing subversion through dumping. That was the intent of the founders in laying tarrifs and the government supported itself off those tariffs as a result. Our defense from subversion became a strength to profit from. Your approach now is the exact opposite and you call our founding fathers "socialists" by extending such terms to those who do today what they did back then. The argument is specious and fraudulent, to say nothing of beligerant. It is the stuff of communist propaganda. And it comes from the likes of you - claiming conservatism.
See your analogy is lost on me. I didn't put my kid in a daycare center. She doesn't go to a government indoctrination center either.
EPA Regulations have been a joke for years. Catalytic converters were supposed to help the environment by reducing pollution. The dirty little secret is now they don't know what to do with them once they have gone past being useful because they are so contaminated.
Some idiot in the government made it mandatory that we have some stupid additive in gasoline that helps reduce emissions, however this additive has whole new kind of pollution that gets into and poisons the water table.
I think it was P.J. O'Roruke who said it best: "Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys."
They [government] have taken what sounds like laudable goals like food safety and pollution reduction and turned it into a giant money sucking vacuum that can never get full enough.
No I didn't. Cite the post.
How is that looking out for the worlds people?
Buying things from people and providing them work in a mutually beneficial transaction helps both parties. And I didn't bring up the morality, you people did.
Sounds like if somewone made it for free that is where you would go.
I like free stuff, but I have never seen any, have you?
BTW, freedom is moral. Excluding people by force from making transactions that help them is immoral. You want a big screen TV so they should starve because they live somewhere other than here.
No moral person thinks that's moral.
USA circa 1800
No it's not. Do you support minimum wage laws or not Mr big brave keyboard boy?
I'll take my chances with the mods. You have called me a traitor on about 7 posts. You get a big timeout for cowardise.
Insults are a poor tactic in debates, and frowned upon by the mods here. You made a claim and after many posts have utterly failed to back it up. Now you saying you can mind read, and that maybe I didn't state it but in mind I believe in government price controls. Then you call me pathetic? hahahaha, you are a funny guy.
Government sets prices, you can pretend it's for anything you want.
When a tariff is instituted it affects the price therefore it exerts some control over it therefore it is indeed a price control.
Yes, words do have meaning.
ROTFLMAO!
I have backed up everything I said.
If you are typical of the pro control crowd here, you poor guys are out of luck.
Everyone is holding me down. Where's my government guaranteed happiness?
Would you please send me a copy of the document that tells me what I have to charge my customers for a beer at my bar? I do not want to get in trouble with the government price control board.
Please show me where I have theaten to call the mode. I have been at FR for a number of years and have NEVER hit the abuse button. I was giving you friendly advice on how to debate, and warning you that the mods do monitor theads and take a dim view of insulting posters.
No piercings yet. ;)
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