Administration Continues to call Outsourcing Good!

[mburbank]

Treasury chief calls outsourcing a plus for US

By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff, 3/31/2004

Treasury Secretary John W. Snow, in the latest sign that the Bush administration intends to directly defend free trade despite the loss of American jobs overseas, argued in an interview published yesterday that outsourcing ultimately helps the US economy.

Snow told The Cincinnati Enquirer that outsourcing "is a part of trade . . . and there can't be any doubt about the fact that trade makes the economy stronger." The comment echoed those made recently by two of President Bush's top economic advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, and Stephen Friedman, director of the National Economic Council, who also suggested that shifting some jobs overseas would benefit the United States.

[Zebra 3]

A vote for Dubya and his cronies in 2004 is in part a vote against good paying US jobs...For anyone who cares for this subject, I recommend one of the very few relevant programs on CNN, Lou Dobbs Tonight's Exporting America series (http://www.cnn.com/CNN/Programs/lou.dobbs.tonight/).

[punkgrrrlie10]

I don't know about this one. I kind of agree that if we raise foreign tariffs, they raise it on us as well. Bush does have a point (I can't believe I just said that) that keeping trade friendly with foreign nations helps our economy. Keep jobs here, we stop selling things overseas. Outsource, the jobs leave but other countries come in bringing jobs. It seems either way we are screwed and I can't tell which one is the lesser evil.

[davinxtk]

The lesser evil is dealing with tarriffs by supporting domestic businesses and keeping American jobs inside America. It's not like we don't have enough imported employees, we don't need to be exporting jobs. Before anyone tries to call me ethnocentric or jump on me about downing immigration, my family is Irish on one side and Russian and Italian on the other. I'm built on immigrants.
We just have a ton more shit to worry about inside our own economy than trying to prop up those of other countries.

[The One and Only...]

Outsourcing is a plus. I can't blame Dubya for telling the truth.

[punkgrrrlie10]

It would be nice if you actually gave reasons rather than making a conclusory allegation.

As it is, I see outsourcing as exporting middle class skilled labor jobs and leaving room only for food service jobs and professional jobs such as doctors, lawyers and engineers left. Aren't we just basically keeping the poor- poor and the rich - rich?

I'm looking for actual economic consequences for this and does the outsourcing really even out in the long run and not have any real effect?

Do imposing tariffs piss off other countries so that they either block our goods or impose tariffs upon us as well and just reduce the profit of a company which causes lay-offs here anyway?

Will we ever really whole-heartedly support "buy-American" when we as consumers demand the lowest possible prices on our goods?

[kellychaos]

I can't speak for all countries but I've been to parts of asia while in the military, specifically Japan and South Korea. They already have high tarrifs on our products as well as an intense sense of nationalistic pride and, consequently I rarely ever saw any foreign cars on their roads. What I'm getting at is "Is the price of friendly trade a one-sided tarrif skewed to the countries with whom we're doing business ?".

[ziggytrix]

I think the REAL big picture is that outsourcing these jobs lowers costs for big business and helps the rich get richer, and since we are governed almost exclusively by the rich, this is good for everyone (assuming you are rich, the other people don't really matter anyway).

[The One and Only...]

Right. We all know that the third world is incredibly wealthy.

http://www.foreignaffairs.org/20040501faessay83301-p0/daniel-w-drezner/the-outsourcing-bogeyman.html

[ziggytrix]

Who the fuck is talking about third world countries, tangent-boy?

[AChimp]

Teacher work days make OAO antsy, and the starts reading things that aren't there.

Anyways, I don't think outsourcing is bad at all. At least the economy still reaps the benefits of it, as opposed to when your own workers leave like the situation we have in Canada. There's no reason for first world countries to keep manufacturing firmly entrenched within their own borders. Factory jobs are akin to working at a fast food joint.

Only the dumb and unskilled are affected by outsourcing. If a machine can do it, there's no point in wasting a brain doing the task anymore. If there's someone on the other side of the world who will push the same button for a quarter of what's paid here, there's no point in wasting your own brain doing it, and you'll be able to produce things for a hell of a lot less.

It's just a natural progression, much like how the Industrial Revolution put Farmer Brown and the village market out of business. The service sector is taking control of the economy, and service industry jobs require just happen to require a brain. Revenge of the nerds. :)

[ziggytrix]

No way chimp, it's more than just manufactuing jobs. Any job that can be telecommuted is a viable target for international outsourcing. That's a huge chunk of the IT sector, and it will include more and more jobs as telecommunications grows.

[Zebra 3]

Only the dumb and unskilled are affected by outsourcing...Revenge of the nerds.
That's simply not true anymore. Outsourcing can be found in many sectors including ones where nerds are found.

[The One and Only...]

As it is, I see outsourcing as exporting middle class skilled labor jobs and leaving room only for food service jobs and professional jobs such as doctors, lawyers and engineers left. Aren't we just basically keeping the poor- poor and the rich - rich?

My reply was to this. The third world, which clearly benefits from outsourcing, is not affluent.

[AChimp]

Don't lecture me on the effects of outsourcing. I'm 3/4 of the way to an honours computer science degree. Lots of IT-related jobs are being moved to Asia and India.

But you know what? The kinds of jobs that are being moved there are the grunt work. Let them slave away coding routine applications. Eliminating those kinds of jobs only opens the door for NEW types of jobs here for developing new ideas and new innovations. The only catch is that you have to be willing to adapt, change and learn new skills for the rest of your career.

The IT jobs that are being outsourced don't belong to nerds. They belong to the thousands of people who flocked to the industry with huge cartoon dollar signs in their eyes, all of them taking a 20-day night school course in web design and reading MS Word for Dummies. The nerds own the companies or work in R&D.

[Zebra 3]

As it is, I see outsourcing as exporting middle class skilled labor jobs and leaving room only for food service jobs and professional jobs such as doctors, lawyers and engineers left.
Engineering jobs are being outsourced as well.

[punkgrrrlie10]

As it is, I see outsourcing as exporting middle class skilled labor jobs and leaving room only for food service jobs and professional jobs such as doctors, lawyers and engineers left. Aren't we just basically keeping the poor- poor and the rich - rich?

My reply was to this. The third world, which clearly benefits from outsourcing, is not affluent.

Does it really benefit them when they are paid a slave wage, most likely not given benefits and again,..how does this benefit our own country other than the fat cat CEOs who are paying out less for labor and some of the major stockholders of that company?

[AChimp]

Most foreign workers producing stuff for Western countries are hardly paid slave wages. Yeah, they could be paid better and be given some benefits (there is always room for improvement), but it's not like they are barely subsisting.

The charity plea isn't very practical ("The working conditions are horrible! You can't pay them $1/hour to do what you pay an American $5/hour for!") :rolleyes You also can't go into a developing country and start paying workers ridiculous amounts of money in relation to what their own currency is worth. You would do way more harm than good.

This thread is going off-topic now. >:

[kellychaos]

Don't lecture me on the effects of outsourcing. I'm 3/4 of the way to an honours computer science degree. Lots of IT-related jobs are being moved to Asia and India.

Most of my computer science classes right here in the good ol' U.S. of A are half-filled with asian or asian-american students. Nothing wrong with that, just an observation. I don't know if, as a culture, that reflects their work ethic or just a natural affinity to math and science. Geez, I hate to generalize like that, but it is rather consistent and overwhelming.

And as far as slave wages in foreign countries, it's all relative. What we consider a slave wage may be a living wage over there. And on another point, I understand the "trickle down theory" and how it behooves us, as a society, to allow the rich to get richer as we all benefit from it ... blah, blah, blah ... but it seems like countries with little to no middle class where the rich are very rich and the poor very poor (i.e. middle eastern countries) are none too stable. Just sayin'.

[punkgrrrlie10]

oh yeah trickle down worked great during Regan.

[Zebra 3]

...And on another point, I understand the "trickle down theory" and how it behooves us, as a society, to allow the rich to get richer as we all benefit from it ... blah, blah, blah ...
The "trickle down theory" is also known as pissing down on the poor, blah, blah, blah...

[The One and Only...]

Jesus, you people don't even understand what "trickle down" refers to.

"Trickle down economics" are a term used to criticize supply-side economics, often used by leftists. It has nothing to do with free trade policies.

[ziggytrix]

And you don't understand what it's like to look for work in today's economy, so get a job or shut the fuck up. ;)

[The One and Only...]

THAT'S NOT BECAUSE OF OUTSOURCING!!!

Would you at least read the article that I posted?