[Ditto]

Bump

[relictele]

Outsourcing truism: the lack of IDIOMATIC English-speaking outsourced help - programmers, tech support, etc. - is the biggest and most unsurmountable drawback to outsourcing.

Some of the most visible and biggest companies have had humiliating climbdowns from ambitious outsourcing plans due to the simple fact that their customers couldn’t understand the person on the other end of the phone.

The outsourcing firms themselves like to tout education & training but the sad fact is that most call center staff simply follow a written or computerized flowchart and have no real grasp of the technical issues. In other words, they can’t solve your problem but will spend hours avoiding that inconvenient fact.

[Hegemony Cricket]

Dang - we can’t even produce our own myths now? We have to outsource them, too?

[HaveHadEnough]

From the article:

One of the most obvious falsehoods about job outsourcing is that it raises unemployment. Huh? Since 2001, during which criticism of outsourcing has hit a crescendo, U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs have created 9.9 million new jobs. The current jobless rate of 4.5% is below the average in any of the last four decades.

With this logic, couldn't you substitute "job outsourcing" with "illegal immigration"?

[BGHater]

Yummy, China outsourced food and poison toy products.

More than an economic approach, we should look out our outsourcing of our food products as a health concern that would triumph our economic concerns.

[gas0linealley]

From the article:”A study by two Princeton University economists last year found that productivity gains from outsourcing boosted the wages for the least-skilled workers by 1% a year from 1997 to 2004.”

And the Fed’s target for inflation is 2%. Thus, in those eight years the wages of the least skilled fell by EIGHT PERCENT.(if you believe that the Fed has actually achieved its goal)

You should have added a Dramamine Alert. The spin in that article is making me feel nauseous.

[Fudd]

That's funny. A recent Business Week article said that outsourcing was inflating productivity gains in the economy - especially the manufacturing sector. In a nutshell, the assumptions analysts use to calculate productivity gains are fundamentally flawed.

Sorry I don't have a link.

[gdani]

In reality, outsourcing has created more, better-paying jobs here.

Apples & oranges? I suspect these better-paying jobs are going to different folks than the workers in the manufacturing sector who are actually losing/lost theirs.

[jiggyboy]

Since 2001, during which criticism of outsourcing has hit a crescendo, U.S. businesses and entrepreneurs have created 9.9 million new jobs. The current jobless rate of 4.5% is below the average in any of the last four decades.

LOL comparing today's "unemployment statistics" to "any of the last four decades" is like directly comparing cars of the same era.

For example, when U4, "discouraged workers" (i.e. your unemployment ran out) is not counted as "unemployed", that by itself renders the "official" unemployment number (U3) meaningless.

Oh and don't forget that there's also U5 ("marginally attached workers" (doesn't sound like a good job to me) and U6 ("working part-time for economic reasons" -- i.e., the guy can't get a full-time job).

The ultimate obfuscation is "U6 + wants job now": "not in labor force, but Persons who currently want a job". They're not counted as unemployed, though -- an absolute triumph of government doublespeak.

These are all "improvements" made to the system in the past twenty years or so.

[Paul Ross]

In reality, outsourcing has created more, better-paying jobs here.

What a farcical piece of drivel.

Totally blows off the economic fact of the manufacturing multiplier-effect. Which dwarfs the "service industry" multiplier. What is more consequential is that there are other, vastly more sinister effects which these kinds of propagandists as this one try to overlook, pretend are irrelevant or denigrate.

The fact is when ITT, ILLEGALLY shipped the U.S. defense-contract business of building the highly sensitive "Night Vision" technology out of the country, nominally to be built in Singapore...they were actually transferring the technology and production straight to China.

U.S. Attorney John Brownlee

"There was a lot of illegal activity going on here,'' said John Brownlee, the U.S. attorney in Roanoke. ``The true nature of the harm, you might not figure out until you're on the battlefield.''"

And ITT, knowing all this...they SHUT DOWN THE U.S. production of these key components they outsourced to the PRC.

As reported accurately in the Washington Post at the time...we no longer manufacture those components...and China "has it all".

And they did this all just three months into 2001...three months into this White House's "watch"...after obviously being given the green light to pack it in as a true U.S. manufacturer of our defense needs.

As a consequence of this MINDLESS "outsourcing"...

Assistant Attorney General Wainstein said, “The sensitive night vision systems produced by ITT Corporation are critical to U.S. war-fighting capability and are sought by our enemies and allies alike. ITT’s exportation of this sensitive technology to China and other nations jeopardized our national security and the safety of our military men and women on the battlefield.

[RightWhale]

Context-free headline