People lose their jobs all the time. From personal experience I know that it can be hard on a family. But it is not the end of the world.
The other side of the coin is that companies lose productive employees all the time. Often a worker leaves for a better situation elsewhere. It certainly would be easier and cheaper for the employer not to have to replace those people. But businesses learn to cope.
That is the nature of a free market. Do you really want to change it? If so, how do you devise a system that protects existing jobs and still allows workers the freedom to change jobs and careers? How do you protect jobs without also propping up companies that are outdated, inefficient, or mismanaged (but politically well connected)? How do you motivate companies and workers to innovate and to increase their productivity without the threat of competition? And how do you do any of this without handing enormous power to the government?
What worries me is that we might become like France. The French disdain what they call the "Anglo-Saxon" version of capitalism, which they consider inhumane. In France, the government essentially runs the economy, with the protection of jobs a high priority. Once hired, a worker is virtually guaranteed employment. Hence, French companies tend to avoid hiring new workers. One result is that a younger worker may wait years to get a "real" job, in the meantime working a series of temporary jobs or internships—or not working at all. France has an unemployment rate double that of the United States.
Personally, I prefer the Anglo-Saxon model, which is built on such principles as limited government, freedom of contract, and property rights. In short, I prefer liberty over job security.
As I see it, the United States can do five things to improve our competitive position:
(1) Limit government to those functions set forth in the Constitution.
(2) Reduce taxes.
(3) Reduce the burden of government regulations.
(4) Improve education.
(5) Reform the legal system.
These are things that conservatives have been clamoring for as long as I can remember, without much success. The current concern about outsourcing provides us a perfect opportunity to argue for these perennial conservative issues.
Or we can decide to imitate the French.
But free countries don't have to lose vast and critically important, and foundational industries to predatory mercantilist communist empires.
From among the nation's Founders, our Greatest American, as he has been called, Alexander Hamilton (i.e., pen name Publius, among others), pointed the way to our success.
Why not follow him now?