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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,'"
While I don't like outsourcing from a consumer perspective (spend four hours on the phone with a Dell "technician" that can't speak English), I think there is a point to be made in the fact that we don't try nearly as hard to sell our crap overseas as foreigners do selling their crap to us. Outsourcing wouldn't be such an issue if we weren't the only people buying our stuff.
Your job gets outsourced? Don't worry. Just upgrade your skills. Eventually everyone will be a CEO!
That's the usual refrain here when outsourcing debates start. In addition to the fact that we can't all be the best and ok but not amazing programmers have to do something for a living, if we don't have the entry level jobs here, who will learn the skills to let them design programs?
And worse yet- there's nothing India wants anymore. Their basic trade theory- trade only what they have in surplus and keep everything else for themselves- serves them very well. I just talked to our dear intern about this- she said the last time she went home to Hydrabad, she thought she had picked out novel and unique gifts- but her relatives already had them all.
Besides- what the hell could we make here to sell to India that China can't make for 1/100th the labor cost?
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
And this disaster of a president is not right on very much. The global economy is a reality. Cheap labor is a reality. No wall, physical or legislative, can hermetically seal the country away from this fact. Mostly, the congress can only hand out special dispensations to groups they expect to favorably vote for their particular party, and will make the situation worse. And make EVERY consumer pay more. Anyone promising to make globalism go away will never be able to deliver and will make things worse for everyone.
At some point, in order for OUR economy to grow, we have to bring the rest of the world up to speed. Most of the world lives in poverty. That has to change.
Of course, until everyone is up to speed, shoving jobs to third-world countries means that developed countries are going to see a LONG period of economic depression. And, of course, the corporations and their CEOs are STILL going to get richer, becaues their labor costs will plummet at the same time their sales increase.
Still, it has to happen eventually. It's just gonna suck for the U.S. and Europe.
Perhaps, but it is a one-way street. If you're a good ol' American, try to go to India to get a job. The US is expected to be an "open" country, but all the other countries that the US trades with are definitely not open, can practice "cultural" or "social" protectionism, etc.
The system is set up to benefit corporations and their wealthy investors. Any other perceived benefits are very much scraps on the floor that the rest of us should be grateful to get. It is not set up to benefit workers, small-scale producers, etc. in any measurable way.
All donations should be required to be anonymous. The only reason to attach your name to a donation is with the 'quid pro quo' expectation that you're getting favors in return for your money. Of course, no politician would ever propose this, because it would absolutely kill donations, which would only be more proof of who works for whom. That, and the media corporations would have an absolute fit. After all, THEY are the primary beneficiary of these insane build-ups in campaign finance war chests.
The inherent problem with campaign finance restrictions is that they can give the incumbent an enormous advantage. Take, for example, the Vermont rules. In certain cases, the candidates can only allocate a few thousand dollars. How is a challenger supposed to mount an effective public relations campaign with that kind of money? Unless the incumbent royally F's up, most people will stick with what they know.
Not true. Some of us take the hit and find something else.
I've seen it from both sides. I've lost a couple of jobs to outsourcing. I also grew up in Mexico in the 50's where protectionism was absurd. American goods which were better made than Mexican counterparts, cost 2-3 times as much only because of tariffs Mexico imposed on those goods. The only people who benefited from that were the sloppy local producers.
Expecting the world to stand still so you can continue a comfortable lifestyle isn't realistic. Sure, you can vote for a pandering politician who'll swear to protect your job. But that's like voting for someone who never did any work in his life so you don't have to work either - not a formula for a better economy.
That'd be impossible to implement. What's to stop me from sending a candidate some very odd amount of money -- say, $6328.41 -- (or better yet, do it repeatedly) and then just mention to them, through some sort of side channel, that all of those "41-cent" contributions were from me, and that if he didn't want to see the tap get shut off, he'd better do what I say. He wouldn't necessarily have to believe me, but I could say in advance that I was going to send a check a week late this month, or something else to prove that I'm behind them. It wouldn't be particularly hard.
There's no way you can have anonymity when the people giving the money don't want it.
It would be more practical just to bar donations outright, because at least then the problem is "just" monitoring a politician's finances to see if he's receiving money from an outside source (it's not easy, but it's something that law enforcement is fairly good at), rather than trying to stop the flow of information -- who's sending large amounts of money to whom, which is a relative impossibility.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Corporate donations should be out, as should corporate lobbying.
Corporations will just pay private citizens to make their donations and do their lobbying. This changes nothing. Requiring people to not be affiliated with a corporation in order to influence their representatives means that the corporate employed have fewer rights than the non-corporate employed, which is arguably a violation of equal rights.
"Local funds only" is equally bad. I could easily funnel my money to a local business and have them give it. Its not like the representative wouldn't know where the money really comes from.
Which gets to the only solution that would actually work: the only way to keep corporations from influencing politicians is to remove their incentive to do so.
I see two ways to do this: either you have to pay everybody when you want to contribute, or you have to do so anonymously (so that the politicians don't know who's doing it). Of course, both policies would virtually eliminate honest campaign contributions, which means that either it'll never happen, or people will just give money illegally.
Nobody with that as their election stance would ever go far enough to get on the local news, much less the seat of real power.
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
By that logic, why shouldn't the rich want to keep their higher standard of living by outsourcing our jobs? Outsourcing sucks, but so does the poverty that is prevalent in most of the world. Hopefully things will even out and everyone will be better off.
However, if capital and goods are free to move across national borders and people aren't, the rich can simply play one nation off against another, moving to poorer areas when a region gets wealthier. When a nation becomes poor again, they will move back.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
All donations should be required to be anonymous
I disagree. We should just carry the current system to it's logical conclusion without wasting any more time:
All donations should come with a patch that is sewn onto the politician's clothing, so they look like NASCAR drivers, and we know who gave them money.
And legislation should be clearly labeled with corporate sponsers, like advertising.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
If I don't want a free market, I still get to accept the consequences.
The majority seem to want to. In other words, if you want a democracy, you have to accept the consequences.
I think the majority want jobs that pay the traditionally high American wages, and cheap consumer goods.
Maybe the two are mutually exclusive, and maybe not. If they are, it will be a tough lesson to learn the hard way.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
Either that, or it will be feudalism all over again- the robots will benefit the top 1% of society and everybody else will simply starve to death.
.. the more people benefit.
.. so that means many people now doing service jobs will have to switch to more labor intensive factory jobs.
.. and our life expectancy has increased). Also, look at how much improved the Chinese people's quality of life has become (dont listen to the media, go over there and see the change from just 10 years ago ..I have chinese friends who go back for vacation and i've seen the pictures ..and they tell me how well people are doing over there now compared to 1990's and 80's). India is improving as well though at a slower pace. Yet, you want to roll back the clock on everyone's quality of life and have a labor based economy globally.
So you are against automation too? Or do you want everyone to be forced to work and ban people from automating goods production? Maybe ban the ox and cart too? Think of all the jobs that will create. Hey why are you using a computer? Shouldnt you be writing on stone tablets so that stone quarriers will have jobs?
Without marxism, we have many luxuries undreamed of in the past. Fact is, the greater our production capacity
Look at all the modern things we have cell phones, cable tv, more affordable cars with higher reliability (nowadays cars get 100k miles easily). Air travel is also much cheaper and far more available (a larger percent of the population travels by air than at any time in history etc.) Do you honestly think we have the the labor capacity to produce all this stuff that China's tens of millions and India's tens of millions are producing for our economy? We have "only" a few million unemployed people
The quality of life here has gone up (calling long distance is cheaper, computers are widely available, more people have cars
If you don't believe me that an unfettered free market leads to conditions similar to the world of Charles Dickens, compare the conditions that Dickens writes about in Oliver Twist to the conditions in countries where sweat shops are prevalent. People in those factories work horendously long hours under terrible conditions. And if they raise their voices, they lose their livlihood. They have little or no power to influence the conditions of their lives. They are simply a resource that is to be consumed by a giant machine called a corporation. It's all about power. The ability of the powerful to force others work for almost nothing. It is the antithesis of democracy.
In the early twentieth century, there was pressure to control the private interests who exploited people for their own gain. Democratically elected governments took power from the private sector. They raised taxes on corporations. To prevent corporations from fleeing to friendlier shores, the flow of money across borders was restricted, and tariff barriers were raised. What followed was a period of unprecedented prosperity in North America and Europe. Money that would have gone to building extravagant mansions for the extremely rich instead went into building roads and hospitals and fire stations. Corporations were prevented from acting badly by powerful governments, who in effect acted as police forces on corporations.
Today there is a move backwards to the mean conditions of the 1800's. Money may now flow freely across borders, and so corporations may flee governments that dare to restrict their activities. Democratic governments are under relentless pressure to lower taxes on corporations, tipping the balance of power away from the public interest and towards the private sector. And so we see the reappearance of Dickensonian sweat shops around the world, in the places where governments are powerless, or in collusion with the private interests. It is in these sweat shops that we see the nature of the corporate machines laid bare. There is no concern for ethics or morality. There is only profit.
I am not arguing against trade. I am arguing for regulated trade, in which democratic governments actually have the power to penalize those in the private sector who act badly. There must be a force to act in the Public Interest in our society, and that force is a well funded democratically elected government.
Well, the thing for me is that we are not responsible for making sure the people in China and India are prospering. I'm not fond of protectionism, but realistically we do need to look after our own people. It's not like people in India are saying "Well, sure, this job is good... but what about the kids in the US?" There has to be some effort to make sure that while we are improving things in the rest of the world, that we're not burning ourselves too badly in the process.
~ Leilah
Hello all:
The U.S. constitution was written to separate the church (quite a powerful force at the time) and the state. This was done wisely to protect each from the other.
Unfortunately, it seems that now, a new power is upon us: the corporations. With enough resources to influence government policies, it is no wonder that the U.S. government has been promoting policies to enhance profit instead of administering social welfare.
For some odd results, this situation rings a bell from the "Communist's Manifesto", a required reading in my undergrad history class. As much as we hate the actual implementation of communism, I must say the pro-business climate is actually matches the early environmental requirements in Marx's work.
I hope Marx is wrong.
Cheers.
B. Pascal
Superbly sums up a lot of what I think about the current world order. For those that will undoubtedly cuss me and the guy above as clueless, I want to be proved clueless, I want to be proved wrong, I want to be proved as just a paranoid nutcase, I truly, truly want to the world to become a better place due to globalisation. The thing is I don't believe it will; making your customers poorer is a suicidal business strategy for all but the likes of Walmart.
Using this political forum, I simply want to apologize to all you left wing nuts and say "you were right". I give up trying to defend anything Bush has to say anymore personally or on-line (not that I've done it here recently).
Between the destabilization / chaos going on in Iraq as the Bush admin. clearly didn't plan or forsee what was going to happen after Saddam, and now the absolute, irrevocable proof that Bush does lie and cover up (in this case, Katrina), it's getting REALLY HARD to get behind the president on anything these days... It just makes the Bush admin look like a bunch of inept, CYA idiots whose guiding principal is cronyism. When Bush opens his mouth, most non-koolaid drinking conservatives should now wonder just what agenda does he have.
BUT, I'm STILL not voting Democratic because (A) they are just as bad as the Republicans, and (B) they very much want to take away the right to persue my hobbies with all the strength they can muster (ie, off-road vehicle driving).
May I suggest that all slashdotters consider this thought? Especially any economists. Read the concept, note it down, then re-read your notes before you go to bed. Upon awakening see if any new ideas have surfaced and respond. OK, here goes.
The USA should safeguard its people from troubles anywhere in the world. Therefore I suggest that the USA should keep and nourish in the USA some minimum, perhaps of 20-30%, of the industries that are outsourced. This would not be entirely cost efficient because its not as purely efficient an economy that eternally chases the lowest price. Take for example if a considerable amount of international steelmaking capacity goes away, then we should have sufficient capacity to supply the minimum level. Another example might be like maintaining a mimimum level of heating in the winter to kind of survive - like 45 degrees. Here we are not looking for comfort but survival. Flu vaccine is another area that would need to be supported. In the 1970's we had (I believe) 24-26 companies that manufactured flu vaccines. Now we have four which is barely enough today to supply and protect from seasonal type A viruses. I guess Malcom Gladwell's "Tipping Point" might provide another perspective of how to picture the minimum level needed.
This would also turn the 'just in time manufacturing' on its head because a minimum amount of raw materials and goods would have to be kept in the pipeline. Of course employment and many areas of the economy would be affected.
Here is an off topic suggestion is to make slashdot more like the better blogs are with insightful and thought out comments rather than what we typically see. Perhaps rather than react to stories (i.e. current mode), slashdot could request think pieces on various ideas then we could comment on these.
Thanks,
Jim Burke
Personally, I think all businesses should be co-ops. It would be a nice solution to the wealth distribution problem if executed properly.
While I do contract Perl work for my main income, I also operate a small town computer repair service. I've grown this side business over the past 3 years into a decent little business. I've taken the time and effort to build a solid reputation, and as a result I have a sizable chunk of the computer repair service in the town and the surrounding area. In fact, my main competitor keeps trying to offer me his business. I don't bother buying it, because I am gradually absorbing his business anyway(he has horrible people and repair skills; he essentially got by for years because he was the only game in town).
I've had several kids asking me for a job. If I were to hire one, I would have to train them, schedule appointments for them, and introduce them to my customers. They could easily go and start their own business. Instead, they want to benefit from my hard work and investment. Which is fine. But I won't give them partial ownership over the business I grew. If we can come to an agreement as to what would be a fair wage for their services, then we can work together. If not, given that we have a free market, they are free to compete with me, or to find other employment.
All that is necessary for the triumph of good is that evil men do nothing.
"If you're okay with children starving in China, then it's fine to oppose this leveling."
I'm not exactly sure why, because India and China failed to control unsustainable population growth, that the rest of the world needs to destroy their economies and economic well being to insure they are well fed. Economics is in reality a form of warfare. Sometimes a rising tide raises all boats but most of the time there are economic winners and losers. The U.S. was the big winner in the 20th century. It is poised to be a big loser in this one, at least for the vast majority of its people, while its top 1% will probably continue to do very well. In this brand of warfare there really is no reason why U.S. workers should aid and abet their own destruction to insure the "Chinese" are well fad.
This isn't really about insuring China and India are well fed anyway.
The bottomline at work here is there is a global economic elite, less than 1% of the world populations who are rich and getting richer. In the last 30 years many powerful communist party members in China abandoned socialism, for Fascism, and are entering the ranks of this elite along side the long established rich in the U.S. and Europe.
This elite embraces and loves globalization. They have the capital and the ability to invest it anywhere in the world where it will yield the greatest return on their investment. By contrast working people have limited resource and they can't just invest in the new economic hotspot in the world like China. If their nations economy craters they get to starve.
Its a basic axiom of capitalism that labor cost is one of the basic factors in profitability. In the past trade and physical barriers allowed labor costs to diverge in different regions. The U.S., Japan and Western Europe could have high wage rates and a good standard of living because they weren't competing head to head with people making a few cents an hour in Asia. A key barrier that allowed this was that it was expensive to ship goods between nations both because of tarriffs and the cost of hand loading and unloading ships using longshoremen. The WTO has dismantled the tarriffs, at least in to the West, though they still seem to thrive in places like China blocking Western good going there. Shipping costs plunged thanks to container shipping. Communications costs disappeared thanks to fiber optics and computer networks.
What we see today and what Bush is really saying is, that multinational corporations, and wealthy capitalists embrace globalization. It is great for them. In particular its causing a dramatic drop in labor costs to them and capitalism thrives on low cost labor.
The thing they continually gloss over is that this means that in nations where labor costs are high, those workers are mostly doomed unless they have or can acquire skills that justify a premium salary. They will either hit unemployment or their will be constant downward pressure on their incomes. People now in the middle class will be pushed in to poverty. In fact this is already happening in the U.S. The number of people living below the poverty line is increasing dramatically in recent years. The U.S. economy still appears prosperous because most of its big companies are globalized so they are still making lots of money, so the DOW and Nasdaq do just fine, as they slowly dispose of their expensive U.S. work forces and reap big gains from low cost foreign labor. Unfortunately their U.S. work forces are being quietly destroyed in the process.
Its really easy to see where this ends. The U.S. is going to end up where it was at the beginning of the 20th century. There will be a small number of very wealthy people, doing very well, and a huge body of desperately poor workers, barely making enough to survive, working in dismal working conditions if they can get work at all.
The ruling elite which really is George W.'s only constituency will still be very comfortable and very happy. They have money and they can keep making money
@de_machina
The amount of goods and services that a person can afford per hour of labor has been steadily increasing. Your average middle class worker now can afford more food, more housing, more automobile, and certainly more consumer electronics than he ever could.
... Yeah, there are exceptions, you CAN probably start a little web design buisness, or open a video or music shop, or a resteraunt for less money... or possibly even a super highly specialized item... but you are NOT going to be manufacturing a consumer product in the U.S. for less than a couple million - and that leaves out the vast majority of Americans from opening a buisness. That means less competition for big buisness., etc.
Confirm this for yourself. Find out what the average wage was 30 years ago or 40 years ago. Look in an old catalog, and look at what someone could purchase with their wages then, and compare it with average wages and what they can afford to purchase now. Aside from things like big screen TVs and computers that obviously we can afford more of now, we can now afford more clothes, more lawnmowers, more washing machines, more sofas, etc. We can afford to eat out more, purchase more pre-packaged/advertized food products. People can now afford better housing. People can pretty much afford much more of everything.
You do understand that cheaper goods = higher income, right? There is no difference if a shirt cost $10, and you make $10 an hour, or if a shirt cost $5, and you make $5 an hour, right?
Americans today are the wealthiest people in the world, living in the most wealthy period of history. This is undenyably the truth.
There is something to be said about the so called gap between the "rich" and "poor", but a better way to describe it would be the gap between the "Richest", and the "rich". It is true that the richest group of people have seen their real consumption increase much faster than the middle class or poor. And unlike a lot of people, I would fully agree with you that disparity between the rich and the richest is undesirable. It would be much better to see income increase evenly amoung all people.
But this disparity doesn't have much to do with foriegn trade. It has more to do with the minimum capital required to do buisness in the United States. 50 years ago, lets say you wanted to open a buisness, let say a small factory that machines parts. Such a buisness would be fairly easy for a middle class person to start. But not so today. The cost of OSHA compliance, compliance with local/state/country/federal enviornmental laws and hiring the experts, lawyers, to ensure compliance, insuring that you comply with all the non-enviornment local/state/country/federal laws, ensuring that you meet all the conditions that your workplace is handicapped accessible, making sure you are not only in full compliance with the 75,000 pages of tax laws, but that you can prove to the IRS you are in full compliance... making sure you are an "equal oportunity employer" (this wouldn't be so bad if it was simply banning discrimination, but it is thousands of pages of rules and regulations that can be quite counter-inuitive, and you are going to have to hire a lawyer to deal with them), and lets not forget the cost of liability insurance, because people in America love to deal with them.
Basicly, you are talking a cost of several million dollars to start a significant buisness in the U.S.
Let me start with saying that I sypathize with every person that lost his/her job. That is hard. That sucks and if ever I could do anything about it, I would.
Also I appreciate open mind shown in USA. Most fair and impartial country on this earth. Perhaps I would not get such a fair audience anywhere else in the world.
Now let me tell you the other side of story.
There was a soft drink company called Thumbs Up in India. When the economy opened and Cocacola arrived, they tried to buy the company. When the company refused, Coca cola just baught all their products and sent to warehouse, and kept them off market shelves for a while, so people would forget them. Result? Evantually the Indian cold drink company gave in. Coca cola changed the taste of that product. It sucks now. Now it's all Coca cola.
The same thing happened to many many Indian companies. At many places, American companies did not need to play games. American products were far superior than their Indian counterparts. Obviously people switched to American goods. GM and Ford, losing here, are having time of their life in India. Because old Indian cars sucked compared to GM and Ford offerings.
Many Indian companies were closed, Indians lost jobs as well.
But evantually things stabilized, and bingo, actually turned upwards. Call centers, software outsourcing, people started seeing benefits.
And now people in USA are complaining. Perhaps many of the jobs lost did not belong to USA. They were just borrowed from India. I know I sound like Satan to your ears, but you should see the whole picture.
People in India switched to USA companies because for almost same price, they offered better quality. Now companies in USA are switching to Indian labour, because it costs much less for the same skill level.
Just a list of few Indian companies went bankrupt or got kicked in 1990s- Premier Automobiles, Murphy Television, Thumbs up cold drink. Can't remember more of the top of my head. But there are a lot.
Military equipment producers, OIL companies and such are having time of their lives in USA. Why not ask them to share their profits before blaming Outsourcing?
Dude, this is just other side of capitalism. Face it. You can't just have benefits of something and but not face disadvantages.
And I have strong faith in future of USA. This country thrives on innovation. Evantually Americans will figure the way out and in the process bring a whole new era. The same thing happened at times of Japanese auto makers, at times of South Asian electronics manufactures, the same thing will happen about cheap Chinese goods and about Indian call centers.
And don't throw that list of non USA companies owning USA companies. 53% rubber products? You guys fucking own GPS.
"So if you want less population growth, what's happening in Asia right now is good news, not bad news."
There isn't anything good about whats happening in Asia now unless you are profiting from it. Industrializing 2+ billion people, giving them cars, freeways and modern amenities is going to drain the planet of resources and destroy the environment barring major breakthroughs in things like steel and energy production. Sure maybe as they urbanize they will reproduce less but the gains from lower population growth are "out there" while the turmoil that will come from this massive industrialization of so many people is going to hammer the world in the near term which is all that matters to me.
The U.S. pushed this affluent industrialized life style excess to its limits in the last century with a much smaller population. If India and China do it, which they are, the results are going to be cataclysmic.
As for me being happy about China controlling their population, well its pretty much already too late for my lifetime.
"Don't get too attached to your preconceptions about the power elite and class war. As long as you frame it that way, you're perpetuating the problem, not solving it."
I have no clue what you are trying to say here. This is such a vague statement its not something that can be countered. I suspect you are doing what most people do when the subject of class warfare comes up. Deny it and make out like the person that raised it is a crackpot. It is the beauty of modern class warfare that the ruling elite has managed to con workers to such an extent that workers deny it exists or is happening or they suffer because of it. In effect working people have unilaterally disarmed and the rich are laughing all the way to the bank. They can sucker dumb workers in to voting for people like George W. and his faux Republican friends using wedge issues and fear mongering, and then George W. and friends screw them coming and going economically which at the end of they is the one issue that really matters.
If you want to see understand the Bush administrations attitude towards workers you need to look no further than Elaine Chow, the Labor secretary. Her family are relatively recent emigres from China, and they made their fortune on container shipping from China to the U.S. She is a poster child for making money by outsourcing American jobs to China. She is openly contemptuous of American workers and she is the LABOR SECRETARY.
@de_machina