Thread: A Greater Threat Than Terrorism: Outsourcing

http://www.americanpendulum.com/2010/04 ... n-economy/

A Greater Threat Than Terrorism: Outsourcing the American Economy
18 April 2010, 2:18 pm

By Paul Craig Roberts — <
Nothink economists assume that new, better jobs are on the way for displaced Americans, but no economists can identify these jobs. The authors point out that “the track record for the re-employment of displaced US workers is abysmal: “The Department of Labor reports that more than one in three workers who are displaced remains unemployed, and many of those who are lucky enough to find jobs take major pay cuts.

Counterpunch.org—Is offshore outsourcing good or harmful for America? To convince Americans of outsourcing’s benefits, corporate outsourcers sponsor misleading one-sided “studies.â€

I disagree with much of this position paper. It is too easy to foolishly go the other way and overly restrict outsourcing and imports. We are also forgetting the extent to which other countries have outsourced to the United States. There have long been American multinationals who sold services or product which are based on foreign innovation. Americans did not invent banking or insurance, steel or the car. The first successful plane produced by Boeing was designed by a Chinese engineer. When it is put as hyperbolically as this "A Greater Threat Than Terrorism: Outsourcing the American Economy" it is not difficult to concede the other side.

Richard ... what planet do you live on? (sorry... I should not have used that pharse). I was a well paid IT professional for over 30 years. Then came the flood of Indians that were paid half what I made and did not know the profession any where close to my knowledge but, they came by the thousands... that's right … by the thousands. I sat in an Oracle class with several. I asked one where he learned his Oracle and he said that all of them were fresh from college and were learning the IT industry here in the US. That is against the law. The job market got so bad I was forced to retire at 62. That was not my plan.

Does selling a product equal out sourcing? Only if the person making the product took a like job from another person in the country that purchased the product. It is the replacement of the job that counts... not the product.

If Boeing wants to make a product that was designed by someone in another country, it has no effect on outsourcing unless you are talking about the designers in the US. Boeing built the product here in the US with US citizens. Those wages allowed people to save money, send their children to school, and God forbid... they were able to take a vacation. Now Boeing sends the very highest of high tech … the wings of the new Dreamliner to China to build and has run into many many problem and in the next decade China will take that skill and build a passenger plane to compete with Boeing... How smart of Boeing. It just goes on and on... I think you should start to think of the American worker and not how we can build the middle class of other countries on the backs of the American worker.

My husband is a mechanical engineer. He used to travel to repair big robotic machines in aerospace and automobile plants.

Now, after 2 years of unemployment, he is making less than half of what he made repairing dirty machines in small sweatshops. One guy at a shop said he is making less than when he started 17 years ago.

People need to look at the domino effect, for every worker laid off there are many, many local businesses suffer as well. No one is immune, they are even outsourcing lawyers to India now.