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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,'"
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.
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.
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."
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.
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