Posted on 09/08/2004 3:36:00 PM PDT by Destro
Posted on Sun, Aug. 22, 2004
Business books: 'Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas'
"Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas," by Lou Dobbs (Warner Business Books, 208 pages, $19.95)
Look out, Silicon Valley! Bangalore, India, is gaining on you. Some folks in India even believe that their country's version of Silicon Valley has already surpassed its California counterpart as a center for high-tech employment.
In his new book, "Exporting America," CNN's Lou Dobbs shows how strongly that belief is held in India with a headline from the Jan. 6, 2004, issue of The Times of India: "Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore."
The story under that headline, Dobbs writes, bragged that Bangalore has 150,000 information-technology engineers compared with 130,000 in Silicon Valley. Dobbs believes that that story can't be written off as merely nationalistic exaggeration.
"India is only one of the many countries benefiting from the exporting of American jobs. But it has also been one of the most aggressive in pursuing professional-level jobs, from medical technicians to software programs. American companies have been all too happy to answer India's siren call of educated English-speakers willing to work at some of the world's lowest wages," Dobbs writes.
General Electric's Capital International Services, Dobbs points out, was one of the pioneers of outsourcing domestic operations to India. The company, Dobbs writes, employs 1,300 at its four centers in India and says it saves about $400million annually by not having Americans do those jobs.
"The people there write software; they review invoices and insurance claims; they do market analysis. CIS also offers its services to other American companies looking for outsourced resources," Dobbs writes.
Although India lags behind other Asian countries in manufacturing, it has a leg up, according to Dobbs, in the service sector and is a magnet for some of America's highest-paying jobs.
"There are programmers all over the world, but the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs) are turning out thousands of these programmers a year. They are men and women who are well-educated, speak impeccable English, and are thrilled to make $10,000 a year," Dobbs writes.
GE, as Dobbs makes clear in abundant detail, is only one of many companies outsourcing high-tech and professional jobs to India and other parts of the world where wage expectations are lower. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Early in the book Dobbs delivers a broadside against the general trend of shipping jobs offshore. He says it is undermining the American middle class, putting Americans out of work, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.
Dobbs, whose views on shipping jobs offshore have been under continual attack by advocacy groups and consultants for multinational corporations, takes the view that corporations who send jobs offshore are firing their own customers, because American workers will eventually find themselves unable to purchase the goods and services being exported back to America by American companies.
"India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I've asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions," Dobbs writes.
- Cecil Johnson,
Knight Ridder Tribune
That's too bad.
They'll be paralegals or public prosecutors.
he invented the electric toothbrush? you are kidding me right, this is an example for invention for the next technology wave in the USA?
Remove the regulations or modify them the make the United States a more attractive place to do business. Dobbs would like more government regulation of the business world to force them to stay in the US. Dobbs should look in the mirror if he wants to see who is part of the problem. If Kerry is elected expect the business environment in this country to worsen and even more jobs to go overseas. As an example the democrats approach to US energy and environmental policy alone has off-shored whole industries and created potentially devestating impacts in electric power generation and distribution.
no, many will be litigation attorneys.
and believe me, once this wave of lawyers moves into the economy - there will be zero chance at ever having tort reform. the variety of lawsuits, and the settlements needed to fund all these attorneys - will materialize. things that we laught about today, like settlements from McDonalds - will be a reality in 20 years.
A top mechanic at a Mercedes dealer, makes $80K a year.
I know one...I think he makes more than this!
Education, health care, government, and military jobs provide a nice wage for those employed in them --- but they are all supported by the government --- if the government cut funding, those jobs collapse.
Taxpayers here are maxed out --- not many can afford a dime more in taxes yet the health care, education, government, and military need increases --- they all need more money so where will they get it?
UNITED WAY: More than half of Los Angeles County's working-age population cannot read a simple bus schedule or fill out a job application... Developing...
If you want on or off my offshoring ping list, please FReepmail me!
Remove the taxes. If Americans had no income or social security taxes or workman's comp taxes to pay --- then Americans could work for far less money. A Chinese guy can work for $.25 an hour because it's not paying for a huge government like we have, they don't have 12 years of education to provide all their citizens, they don't have to support a military like ours. The average American pays so much in income tax, social security tax, medicare tax, state and local tax, sales tax --- often exceeding 8%, property tax, and all the odds and ends taxes like vehicle registration tax, gasoline tax and so on --- how much of our money is left for us to use?
I looked at my Social Security statement (the one that shows ho much you've reported to earn over time) and it showed that I was making between 18-25k during the young years of my life.
Now at 32, I make much more because I worked long enough, suckling on the nipple of this corporation and that until I had the skills (which I was paid very little for) to start my own business.
There is a problem in the understanding of manufacturing. It is a complex multi-dimenssional process involving R&D, Proto-typing, productio, assembly, warehouse operations, channel and retail marketing, distribution, sales, accounting, customer service, and more. Each one of these individual functions is essential to the process.
Enough of my B-school lecture, but you can't say that we're losing manufacturing jobs as a blanket statement. You might say we're losing assembly jobs or some other component, but to be a product company (and the US has some damn good product companies), you have to do all of these funtions.
You didn't read anything but the first article you came across, right?
Typical for someone who doesn't like having their bubble burst.
Good Luck Lou. You are the only guy at CNN I actually occasionally watch!
with the level of college debt a person needs to take on to get an engineering degree, who would do that to get a $40K job, and then have a career competing against foreign labor?
Not if the companies are incorporated overseas.
I would like to see how that jurisdiction would pan out.
In the past, offenses were handled intra-country, or due to the political situation, it was by diplomatic means, and something tells me it will be the same in 20 years.
I saw all I needed to see - the toothbrush pioneer, sure, he's right up their with Bell, Hewlett and Packard, Henry Ford, and all the rest.
We should ban all outsourcing. No outsourcing pony express to the telephone. No outsourcing ledger books to the computers. No outsourcing of US mail services to e-mail.
If you can't adapt, you will die. We are in a period of economic change much akin to the technological changes of the past, and those who fail to adapt will look up one day and realize that the pony express just doesn't ride any more.
almost all our elected officials are lawyers - they won't destroy their own industry when they are making the laws.
I got a college level education as a Data Systems Technician in the US Navy. I paid for it with my service.
Well, the smart money was on all the college students who just graduated after attended night and week-ends (such as myself), paid as they went via my own money, corporate pittance sent my way, and the record low interest rate (lowest in 40 years), and that's how you do it.
I did it for me - I didn't do it because I expected the big bucks - I honed my experience as I learned.
I also didn't enter a field I hated strictly for the cash. Now that would really stink.
totally different.
losing a job to technology, as is happening in manufacturing, is a natural progression of investment to improve productivity. even china is losing manufacturing jobs to this.
the tech jobs the US is losing - aren't being automated out of existence, they are simply being sent somewhere else. in fact, US tech comapnies are growing employment - just not in the US.
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