Has anybody studied the ramification of moving jobs overseas longterm?

[Deja Q]

Short term, the overpaid management gets to keep their inflated salary.

Long term? I predict total and complete economic collapse because the americans who still have jobs won't spend, the americans who lost their jobs can't get new jobs, and those who do manage to get new jobs will get them far below what they were paid before.

Who needs a housing bubble? The writing is on the wall. America is going to implode. Blame the corporations folks, they are the problem.

How do we make them aware of their folly?

[sasquatch]

1. Some of them are, but they don't care

because they don't see the long run demise because of Globalization. Some beleive in the "Buggy Whip" theory when the plant closes but they don't know that they're losing their jobs because of cheap labor.

[Girlfriday]

2. I haven't "studied" it but I have given it lots of thought.

It's almost like an inverted pyramid, you know. Top heavy - we're definitely going to collapse. Right onto people like us.

What bothers me is, what does this country manufacture anymore? I heard that the U.S. and Brits had problems supplying soldiers with certain weapons - components of the grenades that the Brits use are made in the Netherlands and since they were neutral, they refused to ship the parts. The U.S. had trouble getting parts for a particular bomb because the Germans didn't back the war - how ridiculous is that!

[Deja Q]

4. That's awesome!

Bush and corporate america want it both ways. They want to be unilateral yet get everybody to support them when they need it.

I'm glad the Netherlands and Germany refused to cooperate.

It's a shame, but if corporate and political america want to play the game, this is what they're going to get. :-(

[Kellanved]

7. strange

ALthough Germany did not back the war, the US was not put on the "rogue" list. Any German made weapons and weapon parts were available to the US (as was the airspace, the use of bases located in Germany, ...).
More likely that the Pentagon didn't dare to order new German products (like the ridiculous thing with the paint for the Pentagon itself) in times of open disagreement.


On edit: BTW: The Netherlands are coalition members and in no way neutral.

[Systematic Chaos]

3. It's all part of the plan, IMO

It's like the whole urban renewal phenomenon on a global scale.

The way I see it, Americans have reached the end of their usefulness in the eyes of these megacorporations. We're too high maintenance in our cost of living and everything, so now they're turning the impoverished schmucks of the third world into the consumers of tomorrow. Give them jobs that let them earn just enough to go off and buy things they don't need at Wal-Mart and keep the river of money flowing.

Just like how in the inner cities, the slums are being bought out and torn down (or renovated) to make new (and expensive!) housing space in the inner cities. In the meantime, the suburbs are sprawling and showing signs of decay.

I'm tired, so maybe I'm way off base here, but somehow it kinda makes sense to me even if the analogy isn't perfect.... :shrug:

[Old and In the Way]

5. Our standard of living will take a hit, no question.

Worse to contemplate, what happens to our society when we can no longer build stuff? We see how our national security depends on imported oil....how are we going to cope when we are consumers beholden to others who are the producers?

[NashVegas]

11. Now You Know Why Survivor and Other Reality Shows are Pushed on us

They're teaching us necessary skills for the coming wide-scale Darwinism.

[izzie]

6. I have thought about it a lot

Who will buy all the stuff if no one makes any money. Look at me, I buy almost nothing as I have lost so much of my retirement income. I cut gas in half food and every thing else. The days of having a 40 by 60 inground pool are gone. I do see a lot of buying but I see people re-morg. houses then buying. I do not buy new glasses but have glass recut for old well these are just little things but they add up if 100 million are doing it.The country is starting to go up in business but it is arms. Not a good thing at all. If people join service in bad times we should see an increase in service. Their are jobs there. Can a gov. give a man at 40 near 20 thousand a year and free med for the rest of his life? When will people working 2 jobs making a riot over that? Even jobs at cheap places where not much education is really needed, like walmart will not build a country of high skilled workers who buy goods.The CEO's are killing the goose that laid the golden egg, The great Am. Middle class.That was the one thing we had in this country that no other country had.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

17. I cannot disagree with anything you've said

The actions of today's corporations prove what I've thought for a long time: Greed makes you stupid.

[LuLu550]

18. I'm glad I read before posting

I agree with you, izzie and would have put it the same way..corporate greed and this administration are killing the middle class "goose that laid the golden egg." When the middle class starts to dwindle, who will be here to buy all those cheap widgets made more cheaply by nearly slaves in China??? :shrug:

[PNAC_butter_jelly]

8. The middle class will soon be gone..

I heard today that there are 77 million boomers about to "work their way through the system".. I think that the powers that be are waiting for the boomers to "be gone".. Once that happens, things will change.. The houses that were built as part of the boomer boom, will be sitting there vacant, because no one can afford them.. Once there are more houses than buyers, the real estate bubble will pop , just like the dot com bubble did.. When people figure out that they owe more for the house than it's worth, they will really know despair.

I think that a lot of people will be throwing in the towel soon. The only thing that has kept the plates all spinning is the fact that people are willing to take out equity loans to buy vacations and dinners out with the family.. and they are willing to use plastic instead of the cash that they do not have.. Credit card companies are the middle class crack dealers.. they are right there to "help" you get all the stuff that you think you need, but in the end, they know that you will overspend, and then they "gotcha"..

Whne the boomers are gone, there will be enough jobs to go around, but by then they will be low paying jobs..

Like someone else said, there are very few jobs anymore that actually involves making something.. It's sad, but the ones at the top do not really care of they have an educated and healthy workforce.. They only want cheap..

This adminstration is hell bent to spend every penny that they can get their hands on, so that there will be NO money available to fund things that benefit society, so the middle class folks will have to get used to doing with a lot less than the last generation had..

I foresee a future that has ZERO job security, no unions, no affordable medical care, no public schools, crumbling infrastructure,and people juggling several jobs, just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads..

With an undereducated public, it will not be hard to keep people here.. Most foreign countries have pretty strict standards of the kind of people they will allow in..

It's funny in a way, that the rightwingers who for ages have compplained that the immigrants are taking jobs away from the "patriotic americans", may actually see their prophecy fulfilled. There will come a time when the average Joe Schmoe might be eager to get that job as a gardner, or convenience store clerk..

I feel for the ones who are teens now.. I cannot imagine a more insecure future, than the one they face:(

[InkAddict]

16. Stop looking in the crystal ball and

look around you. That prediction is a little hindsighted (is that not a contradiction in terms?)

>>I foresee a future that has ZERO job security, no unions, no affordable medical care, no public schools, crumbling infrastructure,and people juggling several jobs, just to put food on the table and a roof over their heads..>>

Itinerate IT analyst (code/tomato picker, is there a difference?) RIF'd one way or the other since 1984: RIF'd just after the dental claim got paid, RIF'd after taking sick dad to doctors (no sibs), RIFd on mergers, RIFd on downsizing, RIF'd on offshore outsourcing, RIF'd after multiple corp. domestic contract reorg's, RIFd after election results, RIF'd after request for additional training. What union? I'm gonna smash all those corporate coffee cups in the cupboard as therapy!! The public elementary school in the neighborhood closed due to "toxic" environmental health concerns (Did EPA just get around to checking, or was that situation present when mine attended?), and the kids are near the bottom of testing scores while our "smart" politicos kick the school funding issues around, ad nauseum. One job down to 50% of FT hours and after RIF, one low-wage, no bene job out of town, no less. It would be easy to say that 9/11 changed everything, but it's not so - THINGS have been changed for at least two decades. Can you say purposeful application of discrimination laws meant to "select out" rather than protect meet fascist profiteers and their "special interest" abettors. But, hey, it could always be worse than being "selected" and "manipulated" by the corporate whores and bullies into attending the most recent Great Smoke&Freeze-Em-Out Rodeo 2003/04.

To top it all, the State says one must care for one's elderly parent,(you know, take care of the one that never earned his HS diploma and wouldn't shell out for the kid's college, but took twice yearly two week Vegas vacations with those big corporate bonuses from the single 40+ year-employer and who now has excellent retiree benes cause he's such a nice old guy who worked hard(er-?).

But wait, says corporate America, we can scam more $$ out of the system and return it to the energy CEOs, if we RIF this one Info tech slave! WOW, hot damn, six financially screwed American citizens spanning three generations for the price of a single IT RIF -

It's just plain sick, and I'd be willing to bet this isn't just a tinfoid, coincidental, serendipitous, isolated incident! I'm sorry, but this was planned at every turn, best I can tell, by 41' then honed by Marvin the Martian Ray-gun's "trickling," and pausing a bit for the VooDoo commercials. Methinks, anthrax wasn't the only thing they've been field-testing - methinks they've begun to use their privacy-invading datamining capabilities to levitate our wallets and beam up their contents--sort of a BFEE Star War hypershield!

Oops, sorry about the rant, I still have trouble reframing all this crap into a good thing so that as it gets worse, it really gets better...a bit like, "a fever's a cure if it doesn't kill ya." Want to flip for it?

[SoCalDem]

19. I hear ya.. One question.. What's RIF???

:shrug:

[Vitruvius]

20. RIF = Reduction in Force = firings

n/t

[JCMach1]

9. Management eventually goes as well

At least that's how it looks from the UAE...

I am training some of them as we speak.

[Squeech]

10. We will become a third world country

The "jobs" that they can't ship out are the ones that (obviously) you have to be right there to perform: construction and repair work. By the time we can no longer afford to buy the cars that are being built in Brazil, we will have the sort of economy Cuba has now, where a nation of backyard tinkerers fabricate the spare parts to keep their 50 year old cars running.

By the way, don't ever let them sell you a new football stadium or other such "public" works boondoggle as a jobs program. Most of the budget for new construction goes for the concrete and steel, and the disposal costs of whatever was on the site before (and could still be useful if it were taken care of). If you really want to put skilled tradesmen to work, repair and restore your old buildings.

[Vitruvius]

13. Exactly. First they shipped manufacturing overseas. Now they're

shipping engineering, programming, and R&D overseas. Which means the END of "American know-how".

With no manufacturing and no technological skills, it's welcome-to-the-third-world for America.

Our ruling class is deindustrializing America for their own short-term profit. And -- as JCMach1 points out -- eventually management goes as well; they're digging everybody's grave, including their own.

[Hubert Flottz]

12. Gawd told Bush to have a jobless Recovery!

We're going to need a holy Resurrection after Bush gets through! Supply Slide economics, Taxcuts, War Debts, Massive Unemployment, Ballooning National Debt, Texas Chainsaw Diplomacy, Fear Uncertainty and Mistrust On Wall Street, Fear Uncertainty and Mistrust On Main Street!

Other than that I'd give Bush about a Z - on his overall progress report! And a Whatever Comes After Z on Citizenship!

"We Knew Herbert Hoover, If Bush Ain't Herbert Hoover, He's Way Ahead Of Whomever's In Second Place!"

[KG]

14. longterm ramifications are not important - only the next quaters P&L

greed will kill this country.

[Mikimouse]

15. An intriguiging question...

One of the exercises I assign to my students is to argue both sides of the following question: Considering the situation in Saipan (textile/clothing sweatshops using Chinese workers, who are brought to Saipan under contracts advertising 'jobs in America'), and knowing that Saipan flies the US flag, a bill has been introduced in the federal legislature mandating that any are, region, or nation flying the flag of the US will be subject to all federal labor laws, including minimum wage requirements.

The responses are quite varied. Some of these folks only care about inexpensive clothing (and, probably, by extension, their gas guzzlers, etc.), but some argue that the passage of such legislation would make it futile for industries to move overseas. Now, of course there is always the possibility that American industries would then move elsewhere, where the flag does not fly, but that would also involve a great deal of expense for industry. In the final argument, many of those who are currently unemployed will end up working minimum wage service jobs, such as convenience store clerk, or some other similar type of job. Hooray for Laissez faire capitalism!!! The American people are the masters of our own destiny, and it is up to us to say when enough is enough. Regulation of prices (through a careful examination of the value-added theory of labor), and regulation of quality of any product. Historically, perhaps the Guilds had a good thing going, at least in theory.