Posted on 08/08/2003 7:41:52 AM PDT by samuel_adams_us
Aug. 7, 2003 / 5:32 PM ET Readers on outsourcing: I’ve been corresponding with readers this week about two Newsweek pieces, one on the “jobless recovery” phenomenon and the other on offshore outsourcing. It’s a major hot-button topic, particularly among IT workers, but the mail for the most part has been quite reasoned, if somewhat sorrowful and resigned. A few readers asked some pointed questions:
Name: Marc Hansen Hometown: Seattle When all the Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM software production has been outsourced offshore, and when all Intel factories are completely automated, and when all Home Depot stores have self-check-out lines. ... my question is: Who, in America, will be able to afford the food that the McDonald’s robots cook?
Name: EV Hometown: Annapolis, Md. Where do all of these upper level managers think they will be when everyone has been outsourced? Guess they better learn Hindi or one of the other 18 dialects. You are only a manager if there is someone left to manage.
Name: Daniel E. Platt Hometown: Putnam Valley, N.Y. Sixteenth century Spain was quite rich on gold from America. While they funded the industrial revolution in the rest of Europe, they were largely left behind in the end. Are we doomed to the same fate? Or should we purchase a future at the cost of lower profit margins now?
Rogers replies: All good questions. Here are some personal tales from the trenches:
Name: Toni Klinger Hometown: Massillon, Ohio I am so angry. My husband is 59 and lost his job to Canada four months ago. Yesterday, my sister-in-law was notified that her skip-tracing job was going to India. Hey, no problem, she’s only been with the company for 21 years! I have never been so frustrated in my life. People in their 50s just can’t start over. I hate life!
Name: G. Popsworth Hometown: Dallas, Texas I am struggling with what to suggest to my children for a course of study at college. It is becoming more and more difficult for college grads to find employment. Now with outsourcing rampant, they need something stable for their career opportunities. A small town dentist, doctor or lawyer might be appropriate.
Name: Thela Jinseet Hometown: Clinton, N.J. Here’s my story: I am a journalist for an online publication, and I’m bracing for impact. My employer’s entire technical staff is from India, making up nearly 50% of the employees here. The owners of the company are also Indian and they outsource to a team in India. Our Indian employees are a real bargain because they work ungodly hours: 10- to 12-hour days every day and on the weekends. They are also extremely bright. And it’s for low pay. But there’s more. My husband lost his electrical engineering job four days after 9-11 from a major Japanese company that closed its plant and moved its operations to France. Despite graduating with honors from a top university, it took more than a year for him to find work. And just in time: We had two weeks of unemployment benefits left, which was barely enough to pay for our mortgage. This time, he saw a substantial cut in pay. I am truly frightened after our experience. I am scared to buy another house. (We had to sell ours for his new job.) I am scared to have a baby. We can’t afford to save for retirement. Pensions are a thing of the past. My company doesn’t even have a 401(k) plan or even direct deposit for paychecks. I fear we will be poverty-stricken when we retire at 75. Why isn’t Congress listening?
Rogers replies: There were also some suggestions about what to do:
Name: Bill Hometown: Roswell, Ga. Outsourcing customer service jobs overseas is a double-edged sword. One side slashes the number of jobs that are available to U.S. employees and the other side slashes the income taxes that the federal government can collect. Uncle Sam ends up funding unemployment benefits for U.S. citizens who are denied jobs that have been sent overseas. One solution may be to penalize these outsourcing companies in the form of a negative subsidy so that they can help pay benefits for the unemployed.
Name: Mike K. Hometown: Aurora, Ill. Outsourcing makes for some really profitable companies, but fewer consumers have the money to buy that company’s products. That profit won’t last for long. Remember the big “Buy American” kick back in the 80s? I think we’re on the way to the “Hire American” craze. Find out who outsources and who doesn’t and support those who support America by hiring Americans.
How specifically do you propose to effectively address these issues enough in our lifetimes to counter the subsidies to foreign investment and the non access to markets that American comapnies face. I note Harley Davidosn Motortcycles may not be sold in China becuase they are not manufactured there yet despite being denied ths market which would be potentially very lucrative Harley has overall captured one fifth of the world market.
Protecting the American economy from the bad consequences of overtaxation, over-regulation, and allowing the "lawyer tax" to go unaddressed is not an option that will solve the problems we face.I asm not recommending such pritection I am recommending protection from teh resiults of OPIC, currency manipulations, specific interference in thE Free market of the USA to holD wages down (see H1b and L1 abusues). I am also advocating taht those industries essential for our national defense be given tariff protection. Furtehr i think tariffs should be used as bargaining chips with nations that subsidize theri industries or employ tariffs on Americna goods and services (other things like demnanding in country investment to do busines , non tariff barriers, etc.)
It is no different than not dealing with the real problems in the inner cities, caused by the very high illegitimacy rate and the serious damage done to the family in the inner cities.
Now I will answer that were we losing out to nations that had Free Markets and full civil liberties for their peopel I would accept this. Further I would point out the Sociailist nature of some of these nations taht have such access to our markets. Perhaps osme tariff is justified in order to keep rivers clean arround teh world but I will not argue that point. Since the biggest increase in our trade deficit is due to Chinese imports it really does not wash to argue they are sucgh a non-socialist economy they are legitimately defeating us.
Paul Craig Roberts has chosen to attack a "demon" in free trade rather than deal with the overtaxation, overregulation, and the "lawyer tax", just as Jesse Jackson has chosen his "demon" of racism rather than deal with the sources of the problems in the inner cities and elsewhere.
Now what you call Free Trade includes OPIC, 50% tariffs on consumer goods made in America, non tariff bands on American motorcycles, and many other not so free conditions to trade. If you saw my reply to Dugway Duke you would also have seen that this is not the first place I have cited these points. Now clearly tariffs should not be just a tax increase. they should be either revenue neutral or be part of an overall reduction in taxes. Given the current political climate revenue neutral is probably the best we can hope for. my personal choice for a tax to reduce would be the corporate income tax because that would also provide for an enhanced business climate.
They took the easy way out. They are demanding protection from the consequences of bad policy in the past that will only get worse if they are not fixed. They would rather whine about "demons" that make convenient scapegoats as opposed to addressing the real problems that involve heavy lifting. Here we obviously disagree. Because a person is focused on one specific problem harming the USA does not mean they do not wish the other problems addressed. some things I think we can agree that are wrong are things like excessive OSHA regulations or the way the Endangered species act has taken private property rights. You are acussing peoiple of finding demons when they have found problems different from the problems you think are of teh hishest priority. Are you not finding a demon in the "lawyer tax." Are you not finding a demon in over regulation? I happen to agree these are problems that also need to be addressed.
Sorry, but I'll stand by that comparison. If you wish to see it as a slur, I can't stop you, but it only proves my point. Given your whining about the "lawyer tax." I rest my case as to what constitutes whining. Please note I have not called you a traitor because you have not met the conditions to merit that appleation. You have however with your rant about lawyers and regulation earned teh term whiner.
I now will address your comments about the inner cities and all the problems that come from the serious damage done by the high rates of unwed biths and the daqmgae to the Family. Did you oppose teh welfare reform of the 1990's because it did nothing directly to improve the illegitamacy rate? You see regulation and things such as the lawyer tax as the problem taht should be addressed first I see tariffs as a solution to some specific probels that are not necessarily the result of American regulation and you have called the identification of the problem whinig and dismissed the proposed solution.
Let me ask you specifically what would you use to force the Chinese to remove their 50% tariffs on American products? We have already asked several times.
We also have global issues to deal with that relate to trade. We put embargoes on poor little Cuba which can't produce anything we need, but we prop up the evil communist state of China with people chained to machines making crappy schlop that gets sold at Wal-Mart. We didn't do this in Russia, but now we are going to let the Chinese communists buy new tanks and aircraft with our money. What kind of crap exactly is this? Oh, and we are taking american jobs away to do it as well. How freaking evil, amoral can one get than our China policy.
There are a group of americans who don't give a damn about their country. Some of their cheerleaders post here. If they are flush, they don't give a crap if it makes the Chinese flush as well, and it takes a job away from their neighbor. It's all about #1. I think these folks are full of #2.
Everyone, barring the CEO and his immdediate office is headed offshore.
This isn't even a discussion about productivity. If it were, China wouldn't even be on the stage. They are extremely unproductive.
Yet, they get investments where it takes 10 to do the work of one.
Outsourcing is a way around productivity gains, which is the real work of managment. Its not increasing productivity at all.
Then quit and start your own IT business. Then you don't have to hire people from Bangalore.
Then you would be your own boss, directing your economic destiny, where cutting your own business costs may become a factor.
Just like you decided on economic factors to buy a Toyota truck and send the profits to Tokyo.
Exactly. People also forget that the wages for jobs that cannot be offshored will be driven down as larger percentages of workers retrain for and enter those fields due to widespread unemployment.
Yup. I do. I think I have a right to a job. What of it?
These companies have no right to jobs either. I say we disregard all their wants and desires and tax them out of business completely. How about we completely get rid of the capitalist way of life. (sarcastic remark there)
Under a capitalist system I have a right to a job the same way they have a right to sell me a product.
BINGO!!!! This "we will all be charged more" crap is simply wrong in many instances.
1. Strict environmental regulations in the US made doing business impossible.
Hyper-capitalist conservatives love to point that out.
2. In India or China, you can just kick glowing green barrels of toxic waste into a river upstream from a population center. If the Chinese peasants complain, the troops arrive in armored personnel carriers with truncheons. If a toxic release kills 15,000 little coconut-head Indians and sickens 200,000 more, Union Carbide settles with the Indian government for a paltry $470 million that they can dig up from between the couch cushions in the welcome lobby -- all of it going into some Maharaja's Swiss bank account. Third world governments play dirty.
Hyper-capitalist 'It's all about the bottom line' conservatives like to avoid that point.
Whew your reply #232 is full of American hating liberal generalizations. How conveinent for you.
Especially since you bought a truck, where the profits of that sale went back to Tokyo.
Oh yeah BTW, the Japanese also have chemical plants in India and China.
Time for you to destroy your Toyota truck, IMO, to keep yourself pure against that evil called capitalism.
Time for you to shut up, IMO.
Time for you to shut up, IMO.
Huh, I didn't make #'s for my points.
My main point to your reply #232 was your hypocrisy, where you went on a Howard Dean anti-American rant, while earlier in this thread you were beeming about purchasing a Japanese truck, whom also own those evil chemical plants in China and India.
Maybe you should buy a Hyundai. Nope wait a minute they have connections to North Korea.
At the end of the day, maybe you should purchase a Renault.
A french made Renault would be perfect for you, IMO. That way you can drive around proclaiming your moral superiority, while driving in a piddly little automobile.
The same thing that makes most of us think the US has a right to ENACT a tariff; a level playing field. When you play poker with a guy who has aces up his sleeve, you have three choices: don’t play with him; have aces up your sleeve; lose.
We are playing by the rules of “Free Trade” but seem to be the only ones.
So why are we locked onto the idea that we should not want the Fed to impose tariffs when they clearly have the constitutional power to do so? Is it because we are conservatives and believe in as little government intervention as possible? I suggest that this is one of those few times that the Fed should “screw the other guy and pass the savings on to us”. The spirit of capitalism is prosperity and if we address this as a nation (rather than trusting it to multinational corporations) we can benefit as a nation.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.