[luckydevi]

Opinions?

[dennisw]

Opinions? .....

It's a heap of dumbass non-reasoning. Very common for slackademics to pontificate to the people who actually make America work and do the heavy lifting.

[CO_dreamer]

I think an Indian author could have written just as good of an article for a much lower price.

[fortaydoos]

"A job is not a good or service; it can't be imported or exported. A job is an action, an act of doing a task. The next time a right- or left-wing politician or union leader talks about exporting jobs overseas, maybe we should ask him whether he thinks Congress should enact a law mandating U.S. Customs Service seizure of shipping containers filled with American jobs. "

No one literally thinks jobs are exported. Setting up straw men, and using stats from 7 years ago, is the best Williams can do?

Does anyone REALLY believe that call centers are moving to India because of TORT LAWYERS? EPA regs? Get real - it is all about cheap labor and bumping short term profits.

[dirtboy]

The statistics for 1996 are:

Which means Williams is using nearly 7-year old statistics, when things have changed dramatically even in the last two years. So he's starting with a mark against him.

And, as much as Williams claims its about government, in the end companies are shifting jobs overseas for one simple reason - because they can. Technology now allows calls to be made from the United States to a call center in Asia without prohibitive long-distance charges and allows the near-instantaneous distribution of information to anywhere in the world with a T-1.

So much of this is a response to technology - but, does the government have to maintain programs, such as H1-B and L1, that accelerate the process? Because there is a certain competitive advantage for a worker in this country, addressing market concerns here, over someone overseas. And those programs negate those advantages.

[dfwgator]

Much of it can be summed up in a phrase: less predatory government and the absence of tort-lawyer extortion.

Also, they don't have to deal with NIMBYs.

[Destructor]

" The next time a right- or left-wing politician or union leader talks about exporting jobs overseas, maybe we should ask him whether he thinks Congress should enact a law mandating U.S. Customs Service seizure of shipping containers filled with American jobs."

What moron came up with this analogy? Jobs are "exported" when companies relocate their operations overseas! This article is flawed on so many levels it's almost complete non-sense.

[warchild9]

Big corporate suits made their money improving the profit line from quarter-to-quarter. If the company dies, they move on to the next, and repeat the process. They are scum, and traitors. Unlike most people on this forum, I have worked higher mid-management, and have the experience to back this assertion up.
The suits announce that they're eliminating millions of American jobs (in the aggregate), announce where they're going, and these jobs then reappear in the Third World where they were honestly predicted to go.
Tens of millions of dollars appear in the suit's pockets, along with more tens of millions in the coffers of politicians in the form of bribes, er, campaign contributions.
The Chinese prepare to take over Asia. India finally profits from the lessons of Western Civilization.
America dies. Parts of it become Mexico; other areas totter on, filled with idiots whose principle concern is sports.
The South continues its resurgence.
And so, history has repeated itself with another big nation.

[Tokhtamish]

What is truly disgusting and shameful about this essay is being a corporate whore ahead of being a black conservative.

When deindustrialization hit America in the early '70s, blacks were all set to follow the Irish and Italians out of the ghetto along the same path they did. But with the destruction of the industrial economy and the end of any substantial need for low and semi-skilled labor that rung of the ladder was destroyed.

An economy without low and semi-skilled stable jobs is an economy in which it is not possible to work your way out of the ghetto. An economy in it is not possible for someone who messed up, who got into trouble, to straighten himself out and get a second chance. An economy in which it is not possible for someone without a college degree to buy a house, be a good husband/father and be able to tell his children that they can have a good future if they follow the rules, work hard, and stay out of trouble.

[lelio]

A job is not a good or service; it can't be imported or exported.

Tell that to the former Pillowtex workers (just to bring up a recent example) now looking for a retail position.

It'd make far more sense for Americans to start attacking the real sources that have contributed to making foreign operations more attractive to those at home.

I agree in that we have to clean up our house, look at harpseal's point on how to do so. It isn't all about raising tariffs on imports, but rather increasing incentives to do the work here. I don't care if you cut taxes to -30%, a worker that's 1/20th the cost of one here will continue to look more attractive.

And plus I sort of like looking at our rivers knowing that we aren't smashing up old computers and dumping the waste into it like they do in poor Asian countries.

[gnarledmaw]

"It'd make far more sense for Americans to start attacking the real source..."

...deviation from a Constitutional tariff system and the implementation of an income tax.

[Euro-American Scum]

Opinions?

It's typical rhetoric from the center-right on this subject. Williams is a mouthpiece for his compatriots who have grown fat on government incentives to go offshore with their business, not to mention millions of $ in bribes from third world countries to do the same.

The corporate suits who facilitate this exodus have no interest in this nation beyond filling their pockets. They have no identity with America. They have no code, and no soul. And neither does Walter Williams.

[Princeliberty]

He has a very valid point, but he also missing the point.

Were we can make great gains in trade is with other
rich nations like in Europe and Japan and the key
to doing that is reducing taxes, spending and regulation.

However, he misses the point that "right wing"
opponents of NAFTA and GATT don't want general
protective tariffs. We are all for Free Trade
with other industrial nations, its this
open door with slave labor nations like China
that is the problem. We need tariffs on
goods form those type markets to offset the
slave labor advantage of China.

[maui_hawaii]

A job is not a good or service; it can't be imported or exported. A job is an action, an act of doing a task.

The author is full of crap no matter how famous he is. A job is a service. That is exactly what it is.

[LibertyAndJusticeForAll]

Walter Williams is using statistics from 1996 to base his argument. Talk about misleading, this is downright dishonest.

Here are last year's deficits (2002):
http://usembassy.state.gov/tokyo/wwwh20030221a2.html

Western Europe -89,218 157,080 246,298

Pacific Rim -215,005 178,561 393,567
China -103,115 22,053 125,168

http://money.cnn.com/2003/02/20/news/economy/trade_deficit/
"For the third year in a row, the greatest trade gap, by country, was with China, $103B in 2002.
February 20, 2003: 6:46 PM EST
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. trade deficit unexpectedly jumped 10.6 percent in December to a record $44.2 billion, as the ravenous U.S. demand for imports continued to grow and exports slumped, the government said Thursday."

"Trade Deficit Provides China With More Than Economic Advantages"
http://www.tradealert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=864

"China Trade: High Time for a Change in US Policy"
http://www.tradealert.org/view_art.asp?Prod_ID=874

[jimt]

As usual Walter is right.

Tort lawyers dramatically increase the price of insurance. Our non-productive goobermint at all levels spends more than half of national gross income. The alphabet soup agencies continually find ways to hamstring and bankrupt businesses.

Outsourcing overseas makes all those things somebody else's problem.

There is a trend in business to "concentrate on your core competency", which tends to make businesses single level as opposed to vertically integrated. Our customers used to do for themselves what we now do for them. And as we don't do it at cost, any profit we make used to have been theirs. Added to that is the fact they once controlled their own destiny and priorities - now they don't.

American management has become a wasteland of butt kissers and petty bean counters. I could save money on heating if I lit a wall on fire, one at a time, and controlled the blaze. Unfortunately pretty soon I wouldn't have a house left. Same thing with the "core competency" clowns. Their focus will be so narrow and their operation so "streamlined" that any jackass can compete with them.

So it will be with idiots providing "customer service" from India.

So far the replies on this thread seem to be more emotional than factual. How about trying to deal with the arguments?

[Voltage]

I guess whipping businesses until they pack up and leave wasn't so good an idea after all.

Maybe a 'Berlin Wall' would work...yup...need to try that.

[comnet]

Free Trade is not Free

[meadsjn]

The statistics for 1996 are:

Is this article from 1996, or is WW trying to pretend that his writings in 1996 were the universal timeless gospel truth, or is WW pretending that nothing has happened to our economy since 1996?

A job is not a good or service; it can't be imported or exported. A job is an action, an act of doing a task.

I would like to see Walter Williams explain how a job is not a service. Is a "service" performed only by some elite member of society, like a licensed manicurist or attorney or bureaucrat? Just what is the economic difference between a laboror who contracts for x amount per hour or per task, and a professional services provider who contracts for x amount per hour or task?

It does seem that in the recent few years, some of my former favorite economists have become the elitist monsters they previously chastized in their articles.

Land, labor, and capital are still the resources that make an economy work, but there is no place in a civilized world for the attitude that the humans who make up the labor part are as expendable as the dirt and rocks.

Throughout history, that kind of elitist attitude has led invariably to events like our revolution against England, and to the French version where people's heads fell right off.

Maybe that is what it will take for the Free Traitors to see the light.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Come over here, Chihuahua.

[HiTech RedNeck]

You, too.