What are the pros & cons of "Out Sourcing" our Jobs to other countries?

[GingerSnaps]

I can't think of anything positive about outsourcing. Negatives are that it leaves us without jobs for people that do not have a degree. Quality in products are poor and supply side issues are another issue aren't they?

Can someone explain why outsourcing is good or bad for our country. I can't see why it would be good for our country and I am having a debate on this with a couple of right wing sisters in my economics class.

[billyoc]

1. Best thing about outsourcing:

You get to laugh at the red states that are the most devastated by it, if you live in a blue state.

Worst thing:

You have to send them even more welfare than before. :grr:

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

2. The Economic Jerk Offs are missing a salient point:

By destroying the middle class, they are destroying the consumer class. They are destroying a mighty economic engine on the alter of their greed. They are destroying the people whose spending created them.

This is terrible for their long-term health. But greed never looks at the long-term.

[annabanana]

7. Just watch today's "news" shows....

If you're not out there, getting hopelessly into debt or spending those last 2 nickles in your pocket.........why, you're missing all the fun!............you might just as well not exist!

(You are un-American and are DISAPPOINTING the retailers)

[Julien Sorel]

39. Indians and Chinese and Thais

all consume, too.

[Hippo_Tron]

46. I was about to argue that with my fiscally Republican friend...

Of course he was drunk so he went to wander off somewhere. His dad owns several restaurants and doesn't feel that his dad's hard earned money should go to social programs to help the lazy, nor should he have to pay his employees a higher minimum wage because then he'd have to fire some of them. He says that Bush's economic policies, particularly the tax cuts have helped business flourish. I was about to tell him that Bush's economic policies may look great for your dad now, but just wait and see how many people can afford to eat at your dad's restaurants once Bush has turned the middle class into a cheap labor force.

[Menshevik]

3. also hurts a lot of people with degrees

with computer programming jobs being outsourced to China and India

[ObaMania]

35. .. not to mention it insults them too!

When the * admin tells them they need to re-train in another field to succeed in the 21st century. Yeah, that's what people with a degree in (for exaample) IT paid out the ass to go to college for.. to retrain to be a hugger at the Wal-mart and take a 2/3rds paycut.

[GingerSnaps]

37. Walmart

We are all going to end up at Walmart someday :grr:

[noiretextatique]

4. it is good for the bottom-line of corporations

lower expenses, that is, which makes shareholders happy. then, those happy sharholders "trickle down" their earnings to people who got outsourced by hiring them $6.00 per hour instead of $18.00. they will probably make them part-time employees also...that way they don't have the burden of providing health insurance.
i'm sure those rw sisters consider this a pro argument.

[GingerSnaps]

28. Their mother is in the Insurance Industry

They avoid saying what her job title is. My guess would be claims examiner that denies people treatment for cancer and other life threatening ailments and diseases.

[Hippo_Tron]

47. But it all has to collapse some day...

Once you get all the way to the bottom and you can't go any lower, then what do you do?

[noiretextatique]

49. see post #2

greed never makes much sense in the long run.

[AG78]

5. Well it makes

the rich richer. That's the most positive aspect of it.

It makes America a 3rd World country, since we export raw materials, and basically make nothing here. That helps the rich get richer.

It might turn more people to religion(in one of those looking for some kind, any kind, of hope moments). And then they'll give more of whatever small amount they have left to go to building Church mansions.

It'll make sure people keep fighting with each other(black vs white, man vs. woman, black vs. latino, white vs. asian, young vs. old, etc) for the few remaining jobs, so that they don't come together and go after the people that sent their job away.

Might make the military a more attractive option.

How dare you say there's nothing positive about outsourcing. We're lucky they're nice enough to give us a job. We'll be lucky when they choose who gets an education. We'll be lucky when they choose who gets to live in clean air. We'll be lucky when they choose who gets water.

We must never question them. Capitalism means freedom and democracy. Outsourcing is good for the middle class, because it'll put cheaper products on the shelf, and we need to consume.

[GingerSnaps]

59. Greed

Will be the downfall of our Country. We have to hit rock bottom now that * stole a second term in office.

[AliciaKeyedUp]

6. I think they say

That we in-source a ton of jobs as well. If you limit one, you will limit the other.

Not sure I agree, just responding to your post.

[annabanana]

8. I would sure like to see some examples of "in-sourcing"

(?)

[AliciaKeyedUp]

12. According to an article I read in Business Week

Don't ask me to find it, but it said the U.S. imports millions of jobs from other countries as well.

[Spangle]

16. Millions of Jobs

Hmmm... I find that highly doubtful. It can be done cheeper elsewhere. To bad you can't remember the source of that. I would have liked to see who said it and what they were basing their info on.

I wonder if they are including overseas companys who are trying to sell their products here and have to have it made in part here. So it can have the "assembled in USA" stamp on it. Tee HEee..

[OneTwentyoNine]

19. No...I'm ASKING you to find it,we deal with facts and links on DU..

So show me the link to the article of all these MILLIONS of jobs we import. We don't make SHIT in this country anymore. One of our strongest manufacturing capabilities in the US was aircraft manufacture.

Beech,Cessna,Boeing,Bombardier/LearJet all of them here in Wichita,all of the OUTSOURCING their collective asses off. In five years or maybe less not one damn piece of an aircraft will be made by those companies,all they will do is assemble parts made by others--mostly overseas.

[AliciaKeyedUp]

20. I don't have a Biz Week subscription

I saw it in a doctor's office. Nor do I even claim it's right. I was saying that is what THEY would say.

If that ain't good enough for you, oh well.

[GingerSnaps]

30. Maids?

:shrug:

[hollowdweller]

41. How many of you own a VCR? OK, how many own a MX Missle?

America doesn't make anything any common people want anymore!

I used to love it when Jesse Jackson said that.


Right now outsourcing gives us goods for less, so in a way it kind of raises our standard of living. However in the long run as our wages continue to fall and unemployment rises as a consequence of outsourcing we will reach a balance point where we were no better off than when we made every thing here.

[Name removed]

38. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[lapfog_1]

10. If by insource you mean the opposite of outsource

Then what you mean is that foreign companies are hiring American
workers to produce goods or services in America for consumption
by foreign markets.

And while there might be an example of this or two... this just
isn't happening on any kind of scale which is significant.

Our labor rates simply don't allow for this, nor is there much in
the way of special skills here that cannot be found elsewhere.

If you have examples where this is happening, please educate us
on the massive number of Americans employed this way.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

11. Insourcing:

The freepish myth.

You just hung your ass out for all to see.

[AliciaKeyedUp]

13. LOL

So, in a thread that is suppposed to show both sides I can't even try and recite what the other side says?

You just hung yourself out to dry as a jerk.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

14. Thanks.

A day ain't a day unless a newbie calls me a jerk.

[AliciaKeyedUp]

21. Apparently you earn it

[Spangle]

15. I agree

You should state what "they" will say. I personaly rather have a heads up. Posting it here also gave a few a chance to respond.

So far, what I see is very few IF ANY jobs are being "insourced" here. I'm suprised that any are and for the reasons mentioned. It would be cheeper to do elsewhere.

[GingerSnaps]

29. Can you name one job title

That has been created or that's expanding from In-sourcing.

[Taxloss]

32. "Private, Iraqi Army"

Americans (and Brits) have those jobs now, thanks to Bush!

[GingerSnaps]

34. Thanks for reminding me

I feel like an idiot now.

The dispensable product "us" compliments of Bush and Blair. Have you heard about the older used products that is in circulation right now?
The last I heard a 72 year old was being used and I can only imagine what he or she will doing for the B & B Crime Coup.

Possibilities might be shield, dispensable driver, dispensable human bomb and any other dispensable product that they might think of.

[high density]

33. Insourcing is bullcrap

I just searched google for "insourcing" and the first hit was this page: http://www.ofii.org/facts_figures/

The argument is that some Americans have jobs that have been "insourced" because there are foreign corporations with operations that employ people in America. I guess it's rather difficult for a Japanese paper company to cut down a forest in Washington without hiring local employees. :crazy:

[GingerSnaps]

36. I can't think of a single job

The next group of jobs that will go the way of outsourcing will be Bank employees. All of the banking will be done by ATM's and the personal contact will be done over the phones from India.

[No Mandate Here.]

9. It helps the corporatists in power.

One of their main unspoken goals, which they will get if * and deLay and their allies are allowed to continue in their current direction, is to create a permanent underclass. They want a large segment of the population working for MallWart wages, with no benefits. For survival, we will each need two jobs, further depressing wages. The serf and vassal system would be back.

You don't have to have been a very good history student to remember what comes next.

[OneTwentyoNine]

18. You got it...Keep dragging out the "Your lucky to have a job"

The line I thought was buried and gone when that doddering fool Reagan left office.

Nope,back in full glory courtesy of Bush. Watch for your boss or CEO to use that line as often as needed to keep your ASS in line when asking for raises or benefits. Same Republican economic policy's they've been using for 100 years.

[NewHampshireDem]

17. The main argument for outsourcing seems to be ...

based on the idea of "comparative advantage."

A good explanation of it can be found here:

http://www.digitaleconomist.com/ca_4010.html

The gist of the idea, however, is that Country A should do what it can do most efficiently and allow other Country B to do what Country B can do more efficiently than Country A. Another layer is added, saying that even if Country A can do two things better than Country B, if it specializes in one of them and Country B specializes in the other, both A and B will be better off.

If you take it out of the realm of countries for a minute and look at fast food, you can see someting like comparative advantage at work. McD's could sell both hamburgers and pizza more cheaply than Sbarro, but, instead, by focusing on hamburgers and allowing Sbarro to specialize in pizza, McD's is actually better off. (You may remember McD's failed attempt to move into the pizza market about 15 years ago.)

Moving back to the American economy in general, comparative advantage--in a perfect world, which this is not, with completely free markets and a level playing field, which are not--would mean that capital could be invested in R&D, which America does very well, rather than in areas like tech support, which can be outsourced with little impact on the quality of service (theoretically at least, as anyone who has been on the phone to India can attest). In essence, the money saved would be used to hire more scientists/engineers, rather than less skilled workers.

However, that does not happen. Instead, as other posters have pointed out, the money is used to fatten the bottom line and enrich greedy CEO's who have outrageous compensation packages. IMHO, the real problem is not outsourcing, per se, but the fact that Wall Street is so focused on quarter by quarter earnings, which leads companies to find ways to artificially inflate earnings results, and these incestuous boards of directors that allow those at the top to steal from the companies they (allegedly) serve.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

27. The "comparative advantage" system works best among countries of

relatively similar economic levels.

For example, the U.S. can grow oranges, and Canada cannot. However, Canada makes some really great winter gear and is motivated to do so in a way that nobody outside of Minnesota and the Dakotas would be. Not a problem.

The nations of the European Union are close enough in standards of living not to make much difference, and in addition, they have free movement of people as well as of products. If there are no jobs in your field in your own country, you have the freedom to move to any other EU country that may present better opportunities.

A new bilateral NAFTA between Canada and the U.S., allowing free movement of people as well as jobs between the two countries, would be great.

However, if you send oranges from Mexico to the U.S., then those oranges have a price advantage that no one in the U.S. can match. However, there is no problem if they want to send their oranges to other Latin American countries.

Yet Mexico and Central America grow coffee, a product for which the only U.S. source is a few small plantations in Hawaii that grow beans for the luxury market. Again there's no problem, as long as consumers are aware of and prefer to buy fair trade varieties.

At the same time, Mexico and the Central American nations undoubtedly have their own regional competitive advantages, and they could probably set up agreements that benefited each of them.

According to the economics of "comparative advantage," a poor country is always going to have the advantage over a rich country in providing unskilled manufacturing labor, at least in dollar terms. However, the "big picture" suggests that the world would be much better off and the economies of both rich and poor countries would be less distorted if free trade agreements were limited to small groups of nations that have similar standards of living and would allow free movement of people as well as products.

[w4rma]

22. Osama, China and North Korea love American outsourcing because

it is the machine that is destroying American economic (after which, military will follow) power in the world. Its a brain drain on America as brilliant minds are choosing to live in places that place them on a pedistal rather than insulting, degrading and underpaying these intellectuals.

You'll notice also that our competing 1st world countries are egging America on towards more outsourcing. The reason for that is that they are making a bundle off of regular Americans who are falling farther and farther into debt to the banking industry.

[UNIXcock]

23. certain outsourcing is good ...

... if for example, I have someone on my payroll earning way more than the market can bear, either take a cut in pay or I'll hire someone I can afford to keep my doors open. It's that simple.

... Would you pay a neighborhood boy $50/hour to mow your lawn if you could hire someone to do it for $12/hour?

[AngryOldDem]

24. Good and bad of outsourcing

Good: Outsourcing can be good if it takes the know-how and technology and applies them to the local workforce. In short, the old "teach a man how to fish..." bromide. If people learn the skills from us which in turn they can use to better their local communities through the production of materials that will stay within those local communities, outsourcing is a win-win deal for all involved.

But that, unfortunately, is living in Fantasyland.

Bad: Most often jobs that can be done just as well (if not better) here are shipped offshore, where we get what we pay for. Customer service sucks, the quality of the product generally sucks. There is nothing here for workers whose jobs have been outsourced to readily transition to. This has severely affected older workers, (late 40s, early 50s) who are close to retirement age. These people have been forced to take jobs out of their career fields, that pay less than half of what they were making before their jobs went overseas.

Companies will tell you that outsourcing helps the bottom line. But does it really benefit workers both here and abroad in terms of the tangibles like wages and benefits? That is another question. To my mind, outsourcing is nothing more than the slave trade modernized. Sounds harsh, but my family has been living with outsourcing for almost a decade now, waiting for the ax to fall. So I am not particularly a big fan of the concept.

[Nobody]

40. A Republican I know was complaining about customer service

from Dell tech support in Turkey. He complained about not being able to understand their accents. He said he had to call back multiple times before he got someone whose English was understandable. And he is staunchly in favor of outsourcing.

Then he told me that he was going to use another PC manufacturer instead because of their tech support.

I used the opportunity to explain to him that this is what happens. If Dell wanted to serve their American customers (and the ones who are most likely to vote for Bush are also the same ones who demand that every foreigner speak flawless English) they'd hire people fluent in English. Also keeping in mind that too many of us do NOT have a second language and never tried to make themselves understand when they were speaking a foreign language and therefore are compassion-challenged when dealing with someone clearly trying their best.

But noooo. Bush told the nation's unemployed that they should all start over. No child left behind (though we don't give a damn about the adults we're leaving behind intentionally)

[AngryOldDem]

43. Didn't Dell scrap its outsourcing....

...and bring most of its customer service back here, and for that very reason -- customer complaints? I've heard countless horror stories about Dell support.

And Bush's exact words of advice to unemployed (and essentially unemployable) workers were: "They need to embetter themselves." I hoped like hell that that piece of "wisdom" would have made its way somehow into the Kerry campaign. It was beyond insult (not to mention beyond good grammar as well).

[Nobody]

44. I heard that too but they're still using Turkish tech support

Maybe they have a contract that isn't expired yet. Nice. And I remember the words to the unemployed included going to a community college. I found that insulting, too.

It's well and good to retrain, but retrain for what?

[AngryOldDem]

50. The Trades

My husband (who is in business information systems, a prime outsourced industry) works with a guy who was seriously considering enrolling in the local community college for heating and air conditioning repair. His rationale was to keep one step ahead of whatever was coming. Only in America.

I have a friend whose husband was an engineer; lost his job and spent over a year looking for a new one. He's now in car sales. Again, only in America.

[Nobody]

51. I thought that that was what I was doing

Especially since I was in IT customer support (the face to face kind dealing with everything from software to hardware to networking to printers). But when I was let go there were none of these jobs either.

The trades are a good idea. Thanks. They're mostly unionized, too, and that's a huge plus.

Oddly enough my Rush Limbaugh-loving, Republican brother is very much pro-union to the point that he boycotts union-busting companies.

[GingerSnaps]

57. They were in India last month because I got John, Paul, George &

Paul again on the phone in customer service. I got so fed up that I asked to speak to Ringo at one point.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

25. The corporate line is that

our benevolent U.S. corporations are outsourcing out of the goodness of their hearts to "make U.S. companies stronger" (while employing as few Americans as possible) and to "promote development in the Third World" (while seeking out countries with the lowest wages and fewest protections for labor.)

The truth is that it hurts the U.S. by destroying middle-class jobs without replacing them and also hurts Third World countries by using their people as slave labor. (Do they have a chance of ever owning the products they make? If not, then they're slave labor.) These workers have no minimum wage, no benefits, no limits on hours, no protections against unsafe conditions or unfair practices, no prohibitions on child labor, none of that pesky "government over-regulation" that the Republicanites are always whining about.

Sure, people take these jobs. Glamourized descriptions of these jobs lure them from the rural areas to the shanty towns of Third World cities where they soon find that there's no other way to survive except for criminal activity.

Despite what the corporatists say, no country ever developed a prosperous and equitable society solely by serving as a target for outsourcing. In China, a conspicuous but very small part of the population has gained unbelievable wealth. However, conditions are actually worse in most rural villages than they were under strict Communism, with free schooling and free health care gone. The country has an internal "illegal immigrant" problem as desperate rural people flock to the cities to do day labor and live as squatters in unfinished buildings. Whole regions of the country are still stuck in poverty. AIDS is spreading in many rural areas, because desperate people sold their blood to unscrupulous blood banks that reused needles to draw blood from several different people.

It is far better for a country to develop economically using its own resources, or at least insisting, as Taiwan did, that foreign companies share their technology and train local people for management positions. That way, when the outsourcers left in search of cheaper labor, as they inevitably do, Taiwanese people were ready to take over. Taiwan, like Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore, also invested heavily in universal education and building a modern infrastructure.

Did you know that in the early 1960s, South Korea and the Philippines were both considered Third World countries at about the same level, and that the U.S. sent Peace Corps volunteers to both places? Now South Korea is an industrial giant, and the Phillippines is still stuck back in Third World status.

The difference is that the Marcos government in the Philippines was in it strictly for the money and put most of its effort into enriching the Marcos family and their friends. The South Korean government in that era was equally repressive, but it had a Confucian sense of responsibility and built up education and infrastructure and sent thousands of young people overseas to study. (There was a time when almost all Korean university professors had American or European degrees.)

It's interesting that the Third World success stories have all gotten ahead by going against the World Bank/IMF pattern of focusing on providing cheap labor and cash crops and slashing public spending.

[Yavin4]

26. Good Post!

The only positive argument that one can make about outsourcing is that it raises the standard of living for people in Third World countries which is a myth. Your So. Korea example proves that. The only country in the world in the 20th century that moved from Third world to First world was Japan, following WWII. They did it by building up their own infrastructure and designing high quality goods in electronics and automobiles. They sold these goods overseas and became an economic powerhouse. They didn't become an outsourcing hub for GM, Chrysler, Ford, and Zenith. They created Honda, Toyota, and Sony.

The only way a Third world nation can move into the First world is for them to use their own resources and develop their industries that can compete with other nations' industries. Let India create their own Microsoft, Oracle, and HP.

[GingerSnaps]

31. Third World countries

They have two socioeconomical groups Rich and Poor. Our country is making life easier in other countries while is destroys it's own people.

[hollowdweller]

42. It's also kind of like the dual income family. 25 years ago a dual income

family had a higher standard of living than a single income family. Then things gradually adjusted and it got to where you pretty much HAD to have both people working to maintain the standard of living supplied by one wage earner previously.

Right now we buy stuff at Wal Mart because we are GREEDY. We can get the best price, and have more money for other stuff. Later on we will HAVE to buy stuff there cause we won't be able to afford it anywhere else.

[MsConduct]

45. No pros, all cons. n/t

[alfredo]

48. One good point. When we have to flee our country

there will be jobs for us.

[Yupster]

52. Outsourcing depends on the US economy being an engine

That turns out completely new roducts and new industries all the time.

We outsource the old economy jobs to free our workforce to do the new jobs just being invented.

Of course if this is not the case, then our standard of living will just drop until the market takes care of the problem for us and there won't be any cost advantage of hiring someone here or there.

I don't see us as the economic engine leading the world anymore.

The biggest cause of this is our education system which is no longer geared to turning out those few inovators who can change the world.

I don't see good conming from the outsourcing. I see our standard of living dropping until it's close to India's, and then the jobs will start coming back.

The fact is though that if you want a standard of living above everyone else's, there must be a justification for it economically. We must be more inovative, or efficient, or something. I don't see we have that anymore.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

53. However, the people who are responsible for our loss of

competitiveness do not suffer in this situation, not the executives who go for stock dividends instead of R&D, not the bean counters who tell executives to save money (and their own bonuses) by outsourcing, not the state legislators who fail to fund state universities.

It's the poor suckers who played by all the rules who get thrown on the scrap heap when companies decide to outsource.

[diplomats]

54. What nobody ever mentions is that some products made overseas

ARE AS EXPENSIVE AS IF THEY WERE MADE HERE IN THE US! Think sneakers - $150 for a pair made in a third world country. The only ones who benefit from outsourcing are the company management and stockholders.

Also, a lot of products are made with cheaper materials, like refrigerators that used to have porcelain doors and glass shelves now have plastic everywhere. And they cost as much as they did when they were made with better materials! It's all about profit. I'm not against profit, but not at the expense of the consumer.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

55. $150 sneakers are the reason that I buy my athletic shoes

at Payless Shoe Source for something closer to the actual manufacturing and shipping cost. I'm not going to pay three figures so that Nike can pay already overpaid athletes thousands of dollars to pose in ads.

[csm]

56. what outsourcing does is change labor into a commodity .

Like how industries settled along rivers for the use of water power. I don't know what kind of labor movement can emerge from this.....It's rather like the corps. have gotten around all the work Teddy Roosevelt put in place -

[GingerSnaps]

58. The * Crime administration

Has worked on rolling back everything that has been good for this country.