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
Sorry, missed this.. little overgeneral aren't we. People who don't have an income can't just up and move now can they. You want to throw everyone into your special box after writing them off and throwing them to the dogs for profit and act like it's normal. It is not normal - nor has it ever been. It is normal in this society and others for people to lose jobs because businesses close or trim jobs. But closing whole profitable facilities and moving them over seas to engage in dumping against your home market for higher profit - subverting the market and making it impossible for companies in the home market to compete... In Washington and Jefferson's time, you'd already be hanging from a yard arm. So, spare us.
Think we were just over that ground..
"yall can bump and high five all you want, but you are KILLING the USA with your unrestrained greed."
Where do you get this unrestrained greed crap. I import palm oil from Malaysia, and export to them (so far) 60 American fast food franchises, which makes me 4 to 1 ratio in cash and jobs coming back into the USA. Furthermore, I agree with you about China. I have been there many times. They are NOT our friends, and never will be. I travel all over Asia, and know alot more than most FReepers do about their economies, and their attitudes toward the US. A lot of what you say is true. Hey, how bout that? But not all of it.
No, it's treason. The result is subversion of our market - running Americans out of their own market using dumping. In this case the dumping is the wage rate - not the product rate and the endpoint is the same. It is treason by definition.. whether intended or not.
Could be but I am still having troble deciphering...
The question still stands, Did NAFTA cause unemployment to rise? Yes or no?
The HB-1 visas should be strictly limited to specialized and vital fields like medicine. I have no problem with an Indian nerosurgeon or Japanese skin graft specialist working on an H-1, but there is NO excuse for issuing these visas for jobs that educated Americans could fill. For example, I have two freinds, one an Indian and one a Canadian, who both work in the field of Architecture on H-1 visas in NYC. There are no doubt many capable and qualified Americans who would love to have a prestigious arctitect job in Manhattan, but two jobs that would be available have instead gone to foreigners. The H-1's original purpose was to fill positions only if no American citizen could be located to do the job, but it has morphed into a huge guest-worker program for deadbeat Eurotrash and Indian twentysomethings. It is not out fault that their Third World and socialist ecomonies are lousy places to work.
Treason, as I understand the definition, is subverting gov't and not private industry. Is it bad for the economy? Yes. Is it bad for the American people? Yes. But it's still legal until they pass a law against it.
Ack it is ANTI-HYPERBOLE MAN
My opinion on the HB1 visas are this. It started out innocently enough(govt program) and has morphed into
a sham, where Americans earning 65000 a year, are being replaced with 30,000 Indians who hold the same acedemic credentials.
trea·son Audio pronunciation of "treason" ( P ) Pronunciation Key (trzn) n. 1. Violation of allegiance toward one's country or sovereign, especially the betrayal of one's country by waging war against it or by consciously and purposely acting to aid its enemies. 2. A betrayal of trust or confidence. [Middle English, from Anglo-Norman treson, from Latin trditi, trditin-, a handing over. See tradition.] [Download or Buy Now] Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Main Entry: trea·son Pronunciation: 'trEz-&noun Function: noun Etymology: Anglo-French treison crime of violence against a person to whom allegiance is owed, literally, betrayal, from Old French traïson, from traïr to betray, from Latin tradere to hand over, surrender : the offense of attempting to overthrow the government of one's country or of assisting its enemies in war; specifically : the act of levying war against the United States or adhering to or giving aid and comfort to its enemies by one who owes it allegiance —trea·son·ous /-&s/ adjective
..covers a lot of ground. Betrayal of trust or confidence, giving aid and comfort to an enemy (subverting one's own economy in aid to china, etc), From the French etymology, betrayal, attempting to overthrow the government (of which subversion of the economy would be a part), Levying war is not limited to bullets - trade wars are just as damaging and damage to the nation by Bin laden included a strike at the heart of our economic sector. Yes, it is treason - by the very definition and in more ways than one.
Yes, tis I, able to convey myself over sizable buildings in less than two bounds, more powerful, relatively speaking, than a rapidly traveling train...
Look at the history of the railroads,for example. The types of people who were engaged to lay track were replaced time and time again by different groups,the last being the Chinese.
In regards to manufacturing jobs and coal mining,as each new immigrant flood came in,the older groups were displaced,shoved out,and replaced by new workers,for less.
Large department stores were also notorious for displacements as well; not to mention the fact the owners and upper managements' pay was so much higher than those who worked for them,that you would be amazed!
Have you never heard of the HAYMARKET RIOT?
In Washington and Jeffersons' time,the Industrial Revolution had not come to these shores,but slavery was well entrenched.And it would really help you,if you knew at least a little history!
I wouldn't have been hung at all;that's just what you wish you could do to me. You want to silence those who can easily refute you.
If someone doesn't have a job,but refuses to do anything about getting,demanding that a job come to him/her and/or that the government should demand businesses to provide a job with a good salary and great benefits...that's SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM and most unAmerican!
There ARE IT jobs out there.Those who don't have one and want one,but refuse to do something about getting one,have only themselves to blame. The same holds true of any other kind of job.
Are you insuinating that Government intervention into the Free Market had unintended consequences?
I am shocked I tell you, shocked!
It isn't even "unpatriotic"!
You have to look at the legal definition as put down in the Constitution...
Treason. A breach of allegiance to one's government, usually committed through levying war against such government or by giving aid or comfort to the enemy. The offense of attempting by overt acts to overthrow the government of the state to which the offender owes allegiance; or of betraying the state into the hands of a foreign power. Treason consists of two elements: adherence to the enemy, and rendering him aid and comfort. Cramer v. U. S., U.S.N.Y., 325 U.S. l, 65 S.Ct. 918, 9327 89 L.Ed. 1441. See 18 U.S.C.A. § 2381. A person can be convicted of treason only on the testimony of two witnesses, or confession in open court. Art. III, Sec. 3, U.S. Constitution
OK I just snorted Long Island Iced tea right up through my nose on that one...
LOL
I said it "may be" unpatriotic. I'm still undecided on the issue of whether a company should/can be judged by the same standards as an individual. For instance, one job I had, they told me -- very clearly -- "we're like a family here." But they weren't like my family at all. Members of my family would loan me money, let me crash on their couch, sober me up when I got drunk and help me deal with emotionally unbalanced girlfriends with tendencies toward violence...
: ) Please name me one govt program instituted in the last 40 years that did not come back to bite us all in the A$$!
Start with Lyndon's "great society" welfare program.
And,as I have repeatedly said,there is NO reason,no reason at all,for American IT workers to NOT having well paying jobs today.There is a glut of jobs,well paying jobs,out there,begging to be filled.
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