Jobs overseas create wealth for America.
They create wealth that enables people overseas to buy American goods and services...that boosts the value of our companies and their stock.
Of course we have to compete globally with China, India, South Korea and the like.
So..?
Protectionism is a failed idea. Ask the former American steel workers.
Do you think many US investors and pension funds own stock in BoA? If this boosts BoA bottom line it boosts every owner and investor. If not, then they vote out the BoA management or pull their money and invest elsewhere.
American taxpayers are on the hook for providing a navy to protect those foreign assets. Shouldn't China or the Philippines float their own navies and fly their own airforces to protect BoA operations in Manilla?
Since Japan, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Vietnam and S. Korea are our friends, we don't need both the 5th and 7th fleets there anymore. We can send the 5th home and park the 7th in the Sea of Japan off the nork coast.
Come to think of it, exactly what are we "defending" in the M.E.? Is it private property. Are taxpayer dollars being used to defend private property on foreign soil? Shouldn't the free market mavens who enjoy the profits gained on foreign soil just let the local governments protect them?
The day I don't have to spend one nickel to protect a privately own ship at an overseas port from pirates you can talk about "protectionism" but right now the argument falls flat. Right now we're subsidizing foreign operations.
What makes you think the BoA jobs migrating to the PI are the high paying ones? Call centers? What a shame, Susie won’t aspire to a career goal of working in a BoA call center. Maybe she’ll have to consider another career choice.
Jobs overseas create wealth for America.
You misunderstand me, I didn’t say these were high paying American Style jobs. But they ARE/WERE jobs that were being done by Americans. Considering the dearth of jobs available for they former BofA workers to apply for then the likelihood is that they will not be working for some time to come and may end up on Welfare.
Also my own cousin who was a Manager for BofA had to train her Indian replacement before being shown the door and she wasn’t running a call center either. Her odds of getting a job with comparable pay is nil. Especially since she too is in her 50’s.
As she told me “Someday these jobs might come back. But the pay being offered will be nowhere near what they are getting now. And they will have takers for those jobs because hungry people will work for peanuts if that is a an improvement over their current situation.
Now don’t get me wrong, these are prudent business decisions. But they are SHORT TERM business decisions and will help the short term bottom line. But Americans for too long have been looked upon as the cash-cow of the world. Once the GOOD/average paying jobs are GONE then whose citizens overseas is going to be the cash-cow? Who here in America is going to buy the products made overseas? Welfare recipients using government dollars borrowed from other countries at soon to be exorbitant interest rates? What happens when those borrowed dollars aren’t available either? Few or perhaps no Jobs and no Welfare dollars, that makes a bad combination if you ask me.
If businesses and government don’t start looking at the LONG-TERM effects of their decisions then when those effects slam them in the face, they should not be surprised that short-term fixes won’t work anymore either.