Slashdot Mirror
Outsourcing As A Source Of U.S. Jobs
An anonymous reader writes "The Economic Times, India's leading financial newspaper, reports that Diana Farrell, Director, McKinsey Global Institute during her speech at Nasscom 2004 said that Bureau of Labour Statistics is predicting a job gain of 22m in the US by 2010, against a job loss of 2m, due to offshoring. You can read the full article here."
An Indian journal reporting that Indian outsourcing is good!
HOW'S MY POSTING? CALL 1-800-POSTING
or in dividends to stock holders.
The argument that India will need to import American goods for the growing tech sector and that this will result in even more jobs seems a little specious.
Is the global economy being turned on it's ear? Will the U.S. now be making cheap consumables to send to the IP producing countries in Asia? And why would India not simply start manufacturing the products it needs itself?
lysergically yours
"People don't understand what a great opportunity offshoring is for US companies. Apart from huge savings, it allows US companies to concentrate on their core competencies and the people (in the US) can move on to higher paying, more creative, more value generating jobs."
...
You see, that doesn't quite work when it's the high-paying jobs going overseas. The only jobs that can't are those that require physical presence, and I can only see so many ways to creatively remove a clog from a toilet.
Microsoft delenda est!
22 million more jobs, but how much will the population increase by then? this reduces the increase in employment, so the number 22 million looks a lot more impressive than it actually is.
we lose 2 million engineering jobs, and gain 22 million pizza delivery jobs. Sounds like a great trade-off to me!
Seriously, we can't sacrifice professional jobs for low-level service jobs, even if there are more of them. If we do that, we'll have a rich and poor caste system. Wait a minute...
Even though I am a fan of free trade and offshoring, I found this economist's choice of words disturbing: "People in the US are looking at it as a job issue. They are not economists and therefore, they don't necessarily see the whole picture." Funny, I thought that every human being (even economists) had only a part of the picture. People working in the dismal science should be more humble about what they know versus what they think they know.
I see no examples of these new jobs that they keep talking about. Just about corporations saving money.
:P
Corporations saving money is no guarentee of employment at all -- they could just increase their dividends to attract more investment. They could just increase their CEO's salary.
Even if they do make new jobs, there's no distingishing between wage-slaving jobs against salaried professionals.
New jobs added WHERE, wise guy.
From the article;
She pointed out that the Bureau of Labour Statistics was predicting a job gain of 22m in the US by '10, against a job loss of 2m due to offshoring.
All of these jobs are going to be in the "service sector". It does not say what the quality of those jobs are. Also, even "service sector" type jobs are being exported to india now (programming, call centers).
My prediction - in 2010 we will all be selling hamburgers to each other.
"Would you like to supersize that for just $.39
more??"
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
"She pointed out that the Bureau of Labour Statistics was predicting a job gain of 22m in the US by '10, against a job loss of 2m due to offshoring."
:-/
When have 5+ year estimates ever been accurate in economic matters?
Secondly -
Tomorrow's Jobs (from bls.gov)
http://www.bls.gov/oco/oco2003.htm
"Services. This is the largest and fastest growing major industry group and is expected to add 13.7 million new jobs by 2010, accounting for 3 out of every 5 new jobs created in the U.S. economy. Over two-thirds of this projected job growth is concentrated in three sectors of services industries-business, health, and social services."
Social services? Wheeee.... big money here I come.....
There have always beens some jobs that cannot be outsourced. Even if a telecoms help desk is all foreign they can't outsource service crew off shore. It make sense that with a slow recovery of the US economy (no thanks to bush) that there will be more jobs.
Jobs like DB admin need to be close to the DB and to where the info is coming from to properly administer it. System Analysts and Network analysts must be on site to do their job. Service technicians can't do it from over seas. Web developers can be outsorced but it's almost artistic and cutural gulfs make workign with foreign firms difficult. (Our Firm tried, the indian firm kept trying to use Lime green in their color schemes, no matter hwo often we told them we don't like lime green that).
The outsourcing only spells the end to abundant positions as low level code monkeys. We'll just have to move on and try to adapt like workers did durign the 80's when many manufacturign firms went over seas. There are still a large amount of blue colalr workers despite this, and We'll still have jobs even though an indian firm might be competign with us.
PS: I don't like bush but I'm not a democrat, in fact I'm Canadian. We have more than a vested interest in your prosperity, because it spills oevr here. It does seem liek he's responsible for you current economic slump, by spending so much on defence and offering Tax cuts that the budget won't support. Think more debt. Real soon.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
For one thing India is still at a trade deficit with US. For every job that indians get from US, there is are range of stuff US companies are dumping here and killing local business.
Opening the market works both ways. Deal with it.
Just lowered the taxes of the most filthy rich 5% of the population, got us a $500 billion deficit and compensated for that by dismantling the useless social programs for the poor and old.
Maybe the rich will use that tax-break to create more job and not simply line their own pockets. And maybe those poor slackers on welfare/medicare will die away and stop siphooning money from the well-off, respectable, white protestant heterosexual married people like the rest of us.
Also, to satisfy the cynic in me, remember that these are merely predictions, which are possibly skewed to make the current market look like it'll be stronger, which will in turn (hopefully) make investors and consumers more confident, (hopefully) making the economy stronger.
Lastly, could this also be like George Bush's predictions that there would be approx. 1.7 million new jobs last year, as opposed to the 53,000 jobs lost last year (as reported by CBS news tonight).
"The US" is not benefiting from cheap labor - the benefits a corporation gains from outsourcing is passed mainly to the executives of the corporation through non-salary compesentation (options, bonuses, etc.), and to a lesser extent to the shareholders of said corporations.
The public is benefiting in the short term from the continually lowering retail price of consumer goods manufactured primarily in China.
The long term result is simple - good bye middle class. The growth in the service sector is primarily servicing said middle class, so the service sector dies with the middle class.
As much as I love capitalism, we are seeing its worst side now - as corporations realize they can behave with no morals (as modern society has decided there is no such thing, all is relative), there is no reason to create jobs, take care of employees, etc. There is nothing of concern other than the next quarter stock valuation...
To make it even worse, the modern system doesn't allow executives to benefit significantly from their stock shares until they SELL them (dividends are still overly taxed), so there is no real reason to think about the long term survival of the corporation either...
Add currency trading velocity issues and foreign holding policies for US treasury bonds, and the western economy is getting scary - inertia only lasts so long...
Because it doesn't save money to do that. Salaries are much higher in the US which is why US companies are outsourcing in the first place.
The US product is about $10.5T:year, with about 100M workers earning about $40K:year. The $4T income are less than 40% of the revenue, with the other 60% representing corporate profit and taxes. Since corporations pay so little proportionately in taxes, and capital gains less still, the extra value is taken in corporate profits funneled to the very rich. Some estimates indicate that 15K US households (probably about 75K people, or .001%) own 5% of the Earth's property. The lack of job growth in the US, despite the looting of the Treasury for subsidies to these rich people, once again destroys the argument of "supply side" economics. After the debacle of Reagan's supply side, the last time these unemployment numbers were close to this high (excepting Bush Sr's next-closest nadir), you'd think this nonsense would be rejected. But I guess greed blinds even the survival instinct, when so much loot is flying through the air, without any merit to where it lands.
--
make install -not war
Hey, don't knock toilet unclogging. Plumbers make serious dollars.
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
and they dont count underemployment. I know alot of engineers who are flipping burgers and selling stereos burdened by student loans (which survive bankrupcy!).
Bingo!
The central planners talk of "jobs" as if they were all equal.
Even assuming the numbers claimed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics' talking head are true, what good does it do to replace one lost 6-figure engineering position with eleven minimum-wage, no health plan, burger-flipper slots?
Especially if, say, eight of them will be filled by illegal immigrants, two by engin-school grads who never got to engineer, and the eleventh by a former member of the (NON-minimum-wage, WITH health plan) burger-flipper's union, leaving the engineer still unemployed?
Now multiply by two million.
Great for the ruling class. Hell for the workers.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Capitalism works by reinvesting what gets earned. So, it is the best system for keeping things up.
The biggest worry for the economy right now is that big companies, big government and big unions will use people's fear to inact anti-market legislation and muck up positive market developments.
Don't you think it is odd that people are calling the outsourcing of jobs to India a "free market failure." Out sourcing is widening the income gap world wide. It is narrowing the income gap. The phenomenally poor in India are seeing a big jump in their standard of living, while the fat American is simply seeing a slow down in their accumulation of wealth.
If you take the world view that includes both the US and India, you would see that the number of jobs world wide is increasing substantially faster because of outsourcing.
Jesus breakdancing Christ. If I see one more hand-waving post devoid of either fact or theory, I will scream.
Free-trade is a basic tool of a capitalist economy. It has a proven track-record of working (eg: France under Napoleon, the modern EU, the US of fucking A!). There are also lots of statistics that show that protectionist laws save a few jobs at the cost of much greater costs to the rest of the economy. A certain law that protects US textile workers saved 75,000 jobs at a cost of $15 billion a year. That $200,000 that each of those textile jobs is costing is being taken right out of *your* pocket. That's money you could have, but do not.
Free-trade is also the only thing that makes sense in a democracy. People have rights, and it takes a very strong argument to limit those rights. Strong moral arguments give us reason to limit the right of people to commit murder. Strong economic arguments give us reason to limit the right of companies to form cartels. There are no such arguments in favor of protectionism. Morality says that people should hire whom they damn-well please, and economics says that this freedom is best for the economy in the long run. The only arguments we get in favor of protectionism is crap about patriotism, and hand-waving about "the destruction of the US middle class." Two points: One, as a Virginian, I care about as much about a guy in Texas as I do about a guy in Afghanistan. Two, the middle class did just fine when farm work, which was a middle class job, disappeared. They did just fine when factory work, another middle class job, disappeared. They'll do just fine when the programming jobs disappear!
The predictions in this article are precisely those predicted by economic theory. A certain class of jobs will be destroyed, but many more jobs will be created. Such predictions have been borne out numerous times before (NAFTA really didn't cause all American jobs to be sucked to Mexico, did it???) and will be borne out again.
Of course, this is assuming you believe in capitalism. If you'd prefer the stability of a socialist system, then by all means, move to a communist country! I take particular pleasure in saying this --- as a liberal I rarely get the chance to call *other* people communists, but that doesn't change the fact that calls for protectionism are nothing less than attempt to subvert the capitalistic ideals of this country!
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
The reality is that outsourcing is good for the economy over the long run - low paid, low skilled jobs are moved elsewhere, and the economy focuses on new jobs. We've all heard these arguments in terms of blue collar work ("car manufacturing, etc"), yet the demand for information technology workers filled the gap.
The same goes for what's happening now: in the long run it will be good. The danger is in the short run: sudden loss of jobs without the ability to restructure could be damaging.
We only benefit from the cheap labor if we are a stockholder. If we are a working for a living wage we end up losing. Why dont you consider more than a stock index when you think about an economy? Why dont you think beyond basic economics class and think about what is really important to our a country; the citizens not the corporations are what we should be supporting.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
That would appear to be the good news. I think that the bad news is that outsourcing isn't going to last long as a real solution for cutting certian labor costs. Instead, companies are going to realize that it really is dangerous and conterproductive to export too much proprietary data and work to outside firms. Instead of purely outsourcing a job to India or elsewhere, companies are going to put more effort to set up real offices in those countries bringing the foreign workers in-house. It has been going on for a while, but recent progress in telecommunication has led companies to choose quick-and-dirty outsourcing to bridge cultural and political gaps and reap cost savings. As executives become more adept at dealing with the foreign cultures and labor marketplaces (esp. by acquiring foreign executives who understand the foreign places) they will be able to achieve both better cost savings and better overall security by untying their internal organization from traditional geographic divisions. Companies will further embrace doing whatever part of their business "needs" to be done in whatever part of the world they can do it cheapest. It's still globalization, but it's more pervasive than just redistributing production centers and opening new markets to sales. It's re-distributing the locus of control within each company.
Here's some predicitons: The biggest U.S. export for a while is going to be culture. Foreigners who want to work for U.S. globalized companies in their own countries are going to have to work in many ways within western cultural frameworks and they will bring that culture home to their families and neighbors. The U.S. dollar will continue a long, slow decline in (relative) value, as will the Euro, eventually. This is a natural result of the strengthening of competing currencies of the foreign nations which will be supplying the new, eager middle-class labor forces. As more countries follow India's example of embracing western culture and education, they will gain a share in the job market.
Hopefully, as western culture (particularly the English language and the values of capitalism) become more pervasive, people will also break down political barriers. It all does seem a long way off, but almost certainly the 100 years of the 21st century will witness more and faster changes in the human landscape of the world than the 20th, due to the interconnectedness of the world (think about, for instance, that probably for all of the next 100 years, people will be able to make a phone call or send email anywhere in the world instantly. In 1900 this was hardly even a dream.) and the continuously-increasing pace of technological advance. Probably third world nations will not disappear, but wealth and poverty are likely to be distributed more evenly (geographically, anyway) throughout the globe. That is, after all, what we're ultimately worried about in out own small way. We (all) want the opportunity to make ourselves useful and prosperous. It's just going to take some suffering and upheaval before things equalize. Buckle up.
Why, yes it did.
Good piece here
>If you'd prefer the stability of a socialist system, then by all means, move to a communist country!
Logical fallacy here. You are ignoring other solutions like better economic planning and fixing the problems our policies have done.
Good piece at the nation here: Lets not forget that free trade is largely an illusion when farmers keep getting subsidized and when social safety nets, wages, and the environment take a beating in the name of 'free trade.'
All of this antiglobalization and anti-free trade banter drives me up the wall. The trend of outsourcing and globalizing IT jobs is about the best possible example of free trade I have ever seen, because the jobs being exported actually do have labor standards and do dignify the population; and it is very good for America.
Take some hypothetical math here. Say there are 100,000 U.S. Programmers making about 80,000 dollars a year (with benefits and business side social security tax). That's
80,000 * 100,000 = 8,000,000,000 dollars a year.
Now imagine, aggregated, U.S companies via outsourcing eliminate those jobs (so-called creative destruction) and instead pay 100,000 indian folks an average of 20,000 a year.
100,000 * 20,000 = 2,000,000,000 dollars a year.
So, for 2 billion dollars Indian programmers are delivering the exact same amount of business value as the 8 billion dollar American programmers.
The end result? Well, at first, 100,000 less American jobs, and 6 billion more dollars for our "evil" corporate masters.
Yes some of that money will go to the clever executive who thought of the idea. Yes some of that money will go (gasp!) investors, who probably include many of the readers here.
And where will the rest of that money go?: to investment; to research; to newer jobs, etc. This is the inexorable march of progress here people. Can I predict what those new jobs will be? Of course not. Otherwise I would have already thought of it. But someone will drive innovation. This is all about a more effecient allocation of resources.
Undeniably, it sucks for those 100,000 programmers. There are a lot of hidden costs to creative destruction, soceital costs that do not show up in GDP numbers (family and emotional distress, for one). But those people, like lots of other people have, will have to reinvent themselves, to discover new talents, to retrain. In the end, it will be good for the country, and the world, as a whole. I mean, I'm sure it sucked for typewriter makers when computers gained popularity, or for horse farmers when the car was first mass produced, but for the whole soceity the creative destruction of those jobs was a good thing.
In any case, this is the best possible outcome from the development of a large educated populace in India. We are utilizing their resources, rather than competing against them. A worse scenario, from the American perspective, are the Indians out-innovating us and driving entire American businesses out of business in the global marketplace.
Schrock.
As a European independent consultant/developer contracting to a range of clients in the SME and similar sectors I've seen absolutly no impact from outsourcing over the past few years and I'm still scratching my head trying to figure how it could.
The problem is that for my clients the idea that they could develop any system specification sufficently precise to give to an outsourcing company is frankly ludicrous. For example I've been writing a medium sized clothing hire program for a client for the past 6 months. This sounds like an ideal 'specify and hand out to india' project, except that the client really didn't have much idea what they wanted when we started beyond 'we want a hire program', 'here's an old DOS based-system that does something like' and 'we have these bits of paper'. The amount of iteration, exploration, respecification and general systems analysis that has gone on from then is frightening, but hardly unusual. In the process I've crawled though virtually every aspect of the business and even sat in with them on visits to their suppliers, associates and clients. You can't do that from india.
Now, of course I've considered splitting the work by doing the systems analysis myself and subcontracting the rest to india. However because of the iterative nature of the process that's not really feasible, plus the relatively small size of the project would mean setting up overheads etc would negate the cost saving. Some might say that the development process shouldn't be iterative but I should insist on completing and signing off a full spec up front, but while that could be done it wouldn't lead to satisified clients, and my clients do have the wit to realize that.
The same goes for all my clients. I simply don't see how they could replace me by outsourcing to india because they simply don't have the analysis skills to do so. The only way I can see it happening is with a larger 'software' house who can scale by having multiple projects which they outsource for, but do the analysis work here. Trouble is it's difficult to see how the additional overheads of such a company could compete with my almost complete lack of them.
Now, having worked in big business IT a few years ago (financial & manufactoring sectors) I can see how outsourcing would work there because the analysts developed tight specs which were then handled by the programmers - obvious candidates for shipping offshore. Even their though I distinctly remember when I reached analyst (and even analyst/programmer) level that I spent large amounts of time walking around manufacturing plant and talking with people to understand jobs I was adding IT functionality too worked. In fact doing what I do now to some extent, but on an intra-company level.
So, I'm not disputing that development jobs can be outsourced, but surely because of the human interaction needed for much analysis and development work there is a natural limit as to how far it can go and result in satisfied clients. Also, because the use of IT increases all the time in breadth of penetration into the business environment I'd postulate that the general trend for work will be upwards - although there will be a natural impact while the pecentage of work that can be done by outsourcing reaches it's natural effective level, and this impact will be sever in some areas of developer employment but non-existent in others.
Trust me, I'm normally one of the most vocal opponents of protectionism. However, beyond a point, you simply have to drop ideology and adopt a more pragmatic position. The loss of so many jobs overseas without a new industry to replace them (and right now there really isn't one) will seriously weaken our country.
And regarding the analogy - a better one would be to consider import of raw materials. The government has a long history of imposing tariffs on foreign sources of raw materials when they threaten the health of our domestic industries. Well, right now companies are "importing" the tech support services of foreign employees and are undercutting the domestic supply, and I'm willing to suspend my anti-protectionism leanings and support some manpower tariffs in the name of stabilizing our economy until there's another industry to transition all the extra workers into.
*shrug* As I said, I don't like it when the government interferes in the economy. I just don't see a better option in the near future.
Microsoft delenda est!
And then you have the nerve to repeat this supply-side bullshit--look how much the stock market soared when Clinton raised taxes on capital gains! The taxes on capital gains have to be incredibly huge before they start to matter--people will invest if an investment makes money, they won't invest if it doesn't make money--taxes on the profit made will have little effect on this.
On the other hand, taxes on labor have a very direct and simple effect on jobs. Corporations have to pay more wage taxes for every additional employee they hire IF they choose to hire that worker in the United States. Wage taxes and the lack of a nationalized health care systems (an exponentially increasing cost our employers are also expected to pay for, unless workers do without) are incentives for factories to move to either completely undervalued countries (India) or more progressive countries like Canada, which currently has a fantastically booming economy.
Bottom line: there has been no economy in the history of the world that has been able to withstand long-term trade deficits. It's great to save money on Indian labor, but unless we can find something else for American workers to do, unless we can find something else to export, then it doesn't do either the world or America any long term good. If you save 58 cents by outsourcing to India, hey, great, that's 58 cents more for the American economy. If you just spend the whole dollar on American labor, that's a whole dollar spent in the American economy.
Food, clothing, and appliances are a small part of poor and middle class people's expenses, and outsourcing and mechanization is primarily reducing the cost of these goods.
The biggest expenses tend to be housing, medical, and auto. For the heavily in debt, you can add in credit cards. Housing and medical are skyrocketing while auto is rising more modestly. Funny enough, to take advantage of low prices in large stores like Walmart, you need a motorcar, which will, in all likelyhood, cost you more than all of your spending at said stores.
If you really want to help the working class, break up the pharmaceutical and medical cartels and push for subdividing our oversized houses and building affordable housing to get rents and property prices under control. Reducing auto expenses would require a massive overhaul of our cities and infrastructure, but the benefits would be massive.
Walmart could push the cost of food, clothing, and appliances to $0 and in several years rising health, housing, and auto costs will eat that all up.
I think Slashdot is blowing the whole economy thing out of proportion because it has adversely affected the tech sector. If you'll all remember, we were riding high for 4 or 5 years on completely inflated stock prices, endless supplies of venture capital, and completely crazy business plans with no hope of producing profit. The market corrected for these problems and we're back where we should have been today if we continued the same level of growth as we had 5 years ago. The only reason it seems horrible is because 25 year olds fresh out of college can no longer expect to make $75k/year making web sites. Boo friggin hoo. Many people work their entire lives in their profession and never earn more than $45k/year. Quit crying about it and acting like it's some personal tragedy that your 4 year degree doesn't automatically entitle you to a 6 figure salary anymore.
More to the point... American dollars go to India, and there are only two things that can happen:
1. They spend the money on American goods
2. They just keep the money
Case 1 is a wash, and Case 2 (which never happens), would be wonderful... we could just keep printing dollar bills and never have to work. Unfortunately, when we import goods or services, the other countries want something in return.
America is prosperous largely because it's a huge free-trade zone. Imagine if people in Massachusetts complained about imports of cars from Michigan, and passed a law that said you had to buy a car made in Massachusetts, so that jobs wouldn't be lost to low-cost labor in Michigan. Or suppose Massachusetts insisted that Michigan adopt all of Massachusetts' labor laws. Would the people in Michigan want that? Would the people in Massachusetts want to drive cars designed in Brockton?
Or another example... suppose a state complained about all the computers "imported" from California or Texas, and insisted that any computers in be made and designed in the home state. Who would be hurt by that? People who can't afford expensive computers, that's who. It doesn't happen, nobody even suggests it, because it's freaking brain-dead stupid.
Some states make certain products, other states make others. Free trade among states reduces income inequality among states, and allows us to be peaceful neighbors.
Well said. I would like to add, that the boom made a lot of people *think* they could do technical jobs when in fact they were underqualified.
In my last job, (yes, I found a better paying job in this down economy) I interviewed countless wannabe techies trying to find someone to do rather simple stuff. Most people who came through the door were underqualified and wanted too much money.
If people in Massachusetts were trying to maintain their standard of living, and Michigan were a country where major killers were things like starvation and dysentary, I would see no problem with banning car imports from Detroit. All of this outsourcing is serving to do one thing; balance the economies of the U.S. and India/China. They gain, and we lose.
Wealth, on a national level, is determined not by what you have, but what you can produce.
We could redistribute every penny of current American wealth equally around the globe, and within a short period of time, the same order would redevlop, the same nations would be prosperous and the same nations would be poor. The Soviet Union had an incredible stash of natural resources, and a very educated and capable population, but they were piss-poor because they insisted on taking five dollars' worth of materials and labor and using them to produce two-dollar shoes.
Many people work their entire lives in their profession and never earn more than $45k/year.
Uh, buddy? That's a problem. How can anyone expect to pay off education debt, raise a family, and retire comfortably without burdening an already-crippled social security infrastructure if we begin to accept the notion that a $45k salary after 35 years of service is "normal?"
I'm not saying they should be making 6-figures either, but I am saying that in our culture, it is impossible for a family to live comfortably on $45k/year perpetually, while trying to put 2.5 kids through college and save for retirement. It can't be done.
Now, if both parents want to work and bring in that kind of money, well then it becomes possible, but if both parents are working, who's raising the kids? A stranger. And THAT, my friends, is a huge part of what's wrong with society today. THAT is why your kids won't listen to your or respect you.
But I'm getting off-topic.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
so there is no real reason to think about the long term survival of the corporation either...
Quite so.
I've often thought the capital gains tax rate should be very high initially and very low in the long term. Something drastic like exp(-time/5 years), for example.
The main objective being to motivate shareholders and executives to think of the company's long term best interest and not just jack up earnings by cutting maintenance, R&D, selling the family jewels, etc.
One worrying development is just how much executives are motivated to sacrifice a company's long term health in order to meet earnings estimates put out by the Wall Street analysts.
If there were a similar way to make politicians or the public fiscally-minded, too, it would be nice. Something along the lines of "your share of this year's federal deficit is going onto your VISA card on April 15" would help shape things up in a hurry.
Your choice: pay more taxes, spend less, or lock yourself into an onerous debt. Most politicians are only too happy to give people less taxes, more spending and retire before the debt comes due.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
This is true. By sending out jobs overseas, we actually gain jobs. We are giving jobs away to ourselves!!! By the same token, When we give breaks to large corporations and rich people, it is the average people who benefit!
Also, by killing people in Iraq, we are actually improving their lives.
The high end jobs pay about $11,000 a year in social security and medicare taxes (counting the employer half of the contribution). 3.3 million of these will off-source to locations where no tax is paid, just as the boomers are retiring.
The argument you've made basically boils down to "we've seen this before and it didn't hurt us". However, your assumption that we have seen this before does not seem accurate. In the past we've seen exportation of unskilled labor, mostly factory jobs. The argument at the time was that we will retrain and become more skilled and a higher quality workforce than other nations, which will in turn raise our standard of living. However, now we're seeing job loss in white collar educated positions. How can you tell someone who has a PhD already that they need to retrain? that they're not educated enough? As such, it's hard to say this is not the beginning of a long downward spiral, where the money at the top of the paradigm begins to shift to other nations over the long run. You may make the case this is good for world stability as a whole, but I'm not so sure it's good for citizens of the U.S..
I should have noted earlier that I also agree that it's hogwash to suggest that trade creates jobs. It does, however, lead to lower-cost goods, which benefits the lowest earners.
Unfortunately, the person who lost his $20K job knows he lost his job, and the 2 million people who subsequently saved a dime on their shower flip-flops don't even notice the savings individually. But when we tried protectionisom with autos in the 70's, the point was made much more clearly. At the time, import quoatas meant that it cost $4K to buy a $3K Toyota. The alternative was to buy a $3500 Chevy, which at the time were a pieces of shit. And average-income folks got pissed. Yeah, workers were happy in Detroit. But only in Detroit.
Wait, let me get this straight.
First she says that companies save $.58 on the dollar in outsourcing - then states that this goes to the investors. How does that benefit workers?
Then she states that India consumes goods as a result of their increased wealth. Ok, so I lose my job as a developer but I can always go to work in a factory to produce goods that will be shipped to India for consumption?
Oh wait, that won't work because all of the factory jobs are now in Mexico.
Good thing that that investor has his extra pocket change. Maybe he'll drop it in my cup on the way by.