The Great American Job Sellout

google groups ^ | feb 2005 | Paul Craig Roberts

[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

[1rudeboy]

Real GDP has been declining for some time and private sector jobs along with it.

OMG LOL
Where do you come-up with this stuff?

[Toddsterpatriot]

Real GDPIQ has been declining for some time

Among some posters here.

[1rudeboy]

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?

Is the bar serving cheap imported beer that is costing us our high-paying domestic brewery jobs? Is there a fellow named jbsb standing outside and yelling that the government needs to protect those jobs by placing a tariff on the imported beer, and thus controlling the price that bar can charge its customers?

[Toddsterpatriot]

What is: "Communism works, it just hasn't been tried by the right people, yet."

He shoots, he scores!!!

[1rudeboy]

After reading that kind of stuff, I can only shake my head in astonishment.

[Jimbaugh]

I am a software engineer and the companies just don't want to pay.

They would rather take a degree from the University of Bombay which is also a restaurant instead of Americans with practical knowledge.

Most of the best Americans I have worked with have no degrees and really hate the educational system.

I hope these companies go to India. In five years they will all be out of business.

[Protagoras]

This one should have really had you astonished.

To: Protagoras
Minuim wage, labor needs some means of protecting itself from capitalism, personally I would favor collective bargaining over minuim wage, but since collective bargaining is all bbut dead in the USA I suppose minum wage is better then nothing. But I do have mixed feeling about it.



350 posted on 02/15/2005 3:01:47 PM CST by jpsb
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 341 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

[1rudeboy]

This entire thread is an entertaining read. I especially like the parts where it is suggested that the government should intervene in the market to protect us from (corporate) fascism. What a hoot.

[Toddsterpatriot]

This entire thread is an entertaining read. I especially like the parts where it is suggested that the government should intervene in the market to protect us from (corporate) fascism.

And the funniest part is when these guys still insist that they're conservatives!!

[1rudeboy]

Sometimes I get the impression that folks from Ralph Nader's organization post here. If true, imagine their amusement.

[InterceptPoint]

This is the one issue that the dems have that they can gain traction on. My question is why are they not using it?

Because the all have gardners and nannies.

[Protagoras]

This entire thread is an entertaining read.

I particularly liked the pseudo intellectual guy who calls those who disagree with him traitors and says they are guilty of treason. Then cries to the mods when he is rightfully described as a coward for doing so on the net. He says it's namecalling. LOL

Lots of people on this thread and site have served their country in the armed services and some even been wounded in battle. Some were fighting for freedom. They must be pleased to be called a traitor by this hero.

[1rudeboy]

Whose Trade Organization?
A Comprehensive Guide To the WTO

By Lori Wallach and Patrick Woodall
Published by The New Press, Distributed by Norton

Globalization affects our lives every day in myriad ways – often for the worse. Yet, as this eye-opening exposé documents, the current terms of corporate-led globalization are not inevitable, merely one option being imposed by the powerful, secretive and profoundly undemocratic World Trade Organization.

Here is the definitive guide to the WTO. It reveals which WTO terms have led to U.S. job losses, the race to the bottom in wages, unsafe food, attacks on environmental and health laws, and burgeoning international inequality. Want to know why the WTO attracts passionate protests all over the world? Public Citizen advocates Wallach and Woodall carefully document the WTO’s nine-year track record with riveting case-by-case accounts. And, trade is the least of it: this book shows how the WTO chills government actions to fight sweatshops, make life-saving drugs available, and protect endangered species- and even limits our elected governments’ ability to maintain policies on everything from meat inspection to media concentration.

[1rudeboy]

“The staggering deficit total [$617.7 billion in 2004] and its details – that the richest country on the planet is a net importer of advanced technology products such as computers and vehicles, while specializing in exporting scrap metal, soy and hides and skins; or that the U.S, is poised to become a net food importer – are what frame the looming CAFTA fight, because CAFTA is seen as a referendum on a decade of the NAFTA-WTO trade model,” said [Lori] Wallach.
Source:Public Citizen

Sound familiar?

[Toddsterpatriot]

Sound familiar?

That's spooky!

[1rudeboy]

That "traitor" thing is getting old. But try going back and reading those comments while humming "America the Beautiful." [chuckle]

[Toddsterpatriot]

Whose Trade Organization? A Comprehensive Guide To the WTO
By Lori Wallach and Patrick Woodall

I'm waiting for the sequel by Alan Tonelson and Pat Buchanan.

[1rudeboy]

There's been a hold-up. Messrs. Tonelson and Buchanan insist on using U.S.-only printing stock, while Ms. Wallach and Mr. Woodall will accept nothing but 100% recycled.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Software is only something we use in my business, we don't develop it.

[tm22721]

Where do you come-up with this stuff?

http://www.kitco.com/ind/Puplava/feb152005.html

Please note that I said "real GDP" has been declining not 'reported GDP'.

BUMP