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President Defends Global Outsourcing
mytrip wrote to mention a New York Times article discussing President Bush's trip to the Indian subcontinent. There, he urged Americans to welcome global competition for their jobs. From the article: "Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip, strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods ... 'The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable,'"
You're singing the same tired refrain that we've been hearing for the past 30 years.
Year Real GDP (billions of 2000 dollars)
1970 $3771.9
1971 $3898.6
1972 $4105.0
1973 $4341.5
1974 $4319.6
1975 $4311.2
1976 $4540.9
1977 $4750.5
1978 $5015.0
1979 $5173.4
1980 $5161.7
1981 $5291.7
1982 $5189.3
1983 $5423.8
1984 $5813.6
1985 $6053.7
1986 $6263.6
1987 $6475.1
1988 $6742.7
1989 $6981.4
1990 $7112.5
1991 $7100.5
1992 $7336.6
1993 $7532.7
1994 $7835.5
1995 $8031.7
1996 $8328.9
1997 $8703.5
1998 $9066.9
1999 $9470.3
2000 $9817.0
2001 $9890.7
2002 $10048.8
2003 $10320.6
2004 $10755.7
Detect a trend?
GDP is a pretty damn poor measure of economic peformance. GDP is a measure of aggregate economic activity, with no description of how that economic activity (income) is spread out amongst the population. Not to mention that it doesn't show how income is produced - is a service job at Wal-Mart as good for our economy as a job at GM producing cares? There are far more problems with using GDP as your golden measure.
What has effectively happened in our economy- and you probably know this considering you spat out a trend from 1970 to 2004 is that real income per person has remained fairly flat. In other words, the economy has grown but the normal worker has not seen the benefits. Go read Krugman over at the NY Times. Or better yet, read the source material Where did the productivity go? which describes what's happened to our economy.
You should damn well listen to the refrain and understand the numbers - something is going seriously wrong in America. The middle class is falling apart under increasing costs (college, health care, no pensions) while the absolute top has received nearly all of the benefits of outsourcing, increased productivity, and the last thirty years of economic growth.
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