Free Trade, Fairly Managed

For discussion.

I dont like outsourcing at all but if we do it we should be doing it where it does us the most good. I dont like NAFTA but think outsourcing to Mexico is better than outsourcing to asia.

Mergers, and the Gov's abdication of market maintenance, one of its few legit functions, are the root cause of short-term management which inevitably lead to the chase after low foreign wage rates.
Who will buy the overpriced products of American companies when all the labor is offshored?
College professors and politicians will be their only markets. They better be organic.

That makes sense doesnt it? Then the out of work mexicans can come here and take nonexistent jobs that americans wont do.

yeah im being sarcastic.

I think the major problem is that we don't value the firms and the industries sufficiently. The owner values the firm based on discounted cashflows to him. However the true value of the firm to the nation is the owner's discounted cashflows, plus the employee's discounted cashflows, plus the government's discounted cashflows (taxes), plus cashflows flowing to downstream suppliers of goods and services. The employees and the government's take from a firm dwarfs the owners take.

I think a smart third world country with excess labor could borrow money from the world bank or wherever, buy companies and transfer their production capability to their own country. They can then discount the products and still have raised enough incremental tax revenue to pay back the loan with ease. Every smart third world country should be raiding our business with maximum speed. Especially our export manufacturing businesses, and our technology firms which are the easiest to raid. And I think India and China have figured this out.

btt

outsourcing to Mexico is better than outsourcing to asia

It depends what you are outsourcing. There are a ton of very smart, over-educated, hard-working Asians who are dying for jobs. The same really doesn't apply in Mexico. Mexicans are decent people on the whole, but they don't have a highly developed education system in the sciences, and their basic culture is pointed in other directions.

I will repeat myself the first thing to do is to lift IRS restrictions work with freelancers.

There are a ton of very smart, over-educated, hard-working Asians who are dying for jobs

Wow, my heart just bleeds for them /sarcasm

But what about the very smart, over educated AMERICANS who lose their jobs here when their employers ship their jobs to places like India or China? Would you rather have people "dying" for jobs in Asia or next door to you?

I am a software engineer with a M.S. in computer Science and over the last few years I have personally seen thousands of American lives destroyed by outsourcing to India/Asia. Once these people have lost their jobs they more than not find out that there are no jobs available in their fields because almost every employer in the U.S. is now outsourcing these jobs to India/Asia. This puts us in a peculiar predicament. We cannot find work in our fields, yet we also cannot find lower skilled work because such employers view hiring "educated professionals" as a liability. You see they assume that one day we will find work in our field and then quit our lower paying job with them. The real kicker is that once you have been out of work for some time you begin to lose your skills and IF you ever do get an interview you are usually lacking in the ability to respond to the ad-hoc technical questions thrown at you. I know extremely talented people in my area that are former software developers and systems analysts holding such jobs as a clerk at the Disney Store in a local mall, another one delivers pizza for Dominos!

For crying out loud what are we doing to ourselves? But wait that is just the problem isn't it? Americans can't seem to acknowledge that a problem even exists until it happens to themselves personally. I know that many of you right now are saying to yourselves "Hmmm the job market is great! This guy and those people that he is talking about must be losers in the rock bottom of their professions"

Well, you people can just keep thinking that right up until the point that it happens to you and your family...

Hers is one point that I never hear mentioned and that is the effect that this is having on our children and the future generations of America. When children see their parents and/or neighbors who are college educated professionals losing their jobs and having to resort to minimum wage low or no skilled jobs just to scrape by... well guess what... they lose all incentive to enter those professions and many lose all incentive whatsoever to go to college. This will be a MAJOR problem for this country in the future. If we are going to sit by and ignore the problems of the families whom are effected by this now let us not also sit by and watch the problem that will face us in the future when we have REAL shortages of educated Americans!

The U.N. endorsed dogma of Free Trade and the traditional U.S. definition of Free-Markets are two entirely different concepts. I wish that the rest of you would wake up to that fact. Free-Trade is an idea pushed by the U.N. and it amounts to nothing more than the global distribution of wealth. I thought that most of you people claimed to be against socialist wealth redistribution programs??? Wake up! Also do you remember forced integration with bussing in the 70's? Well Free-Trade is a very similar idea. What is it that global corporations chant? Diversity, diversity, diversity! Well, the bussing idea failed along time ago and this one will too, unfortunately millions of American families will pay the price before that happens!

I dont like outsourcing at all but if we do it we should be doing it where it does us the most good.

We? Who is we?