At what point does offshoring stop?

[Deja Q]

At what point does American infrastructure get looked at again?

Discuss.

[ananda]

1. hmm

It doesn't? People can always work at wal-mart or burger king?

[Poll_Blind]

2. Love your sig pic! n/t

PB

[4morewars]

3. When all the unions are gone.

Then all these jobs will be back; starting pay? $5.15/hr

My question to you is:
Will we still be able to buy all this imported from china plastic crap ?

[Deja Q]

4. At $5.15/hr, it takes 2.5 jobs in order to make ends meet.

And computer personality profiling means a good number of people, many of which genuinely good people who just aren't extroverts, are left to starve.

[The Anti-Neo Con]

18. Why is it that employers only want extreme extroverts?

I've had that problem with job searches b/c I'm an introvert by nature. It seems most employers want someone who's not only extroverted, but overbearing and boorish. Really, what comes across to me as the "perfect" personality type they're looking for would be the personality of Bush.

[jwirr]

19. That is the question that the corp. forgot to include in their business

plans. The US is a consumer nation - we import much more that we export and when we cannot buy anymore it is going to hurt the whole system as well as isolate the US from all the other areas that had the good sense to keep their industrial base secure: EU, China/Asia/Japan, South/Central America and Canada. We also borrow about $2b a day to keep this consumerism going and we are borrowing much of it from the countries that import to us.

[The2ndWheel]

5. Depends on what your perspective is

There is no such thing as an American job. These corporations are global, so they have no shore. At one point they were confined by the arbitrary lines that designate what we call the United States, but today the globe is their country.

The only way it stops is if we run out of the energy required to keep globalization's infrastructure going. There's no such thing as "American" infrastructure, or America period. There is no India, there is no China. The borders are there for human control purposes, but in reality they don't exist.

[acmavm]

8. Saying corporations are 'global' is so misleading. They have a country

of origin, a country where they have a headquarters, where their officers live, where they get their tax breaks, where they mooch of the local people and the local government.

They only reason they are called 'global' is because they open an office in a foreign country. They open a sweatshop in a country that allows cheap labor and the exploitation of the people.

[The2ndWheel]

21. So how are they not global?

Headquarters in one country, factories in another half way around the world. Their products are sold everywhere. They advertise on every commercial channel.

[acmavm]

24. I do believe I said that they operate globally. But they have an address.

They have an anchor to a country, to a city, and to a state, whatever. There are ways that tie their corporate identity to a location.

I could say I'm global as well. I can go anywhere I want. Let's say I had a business selling trinkets. I could arrange to sell those trinkets where ever I went. BUT, I (being my company identity or personage if you will) would be tied to the United States. To narrow it down further, I would be a Nebraska based company.

[Stargazer99]

28. They have an address alright-off shore address

[Deja Q]

15. But the countries they live in DO have shores, lines, you name it.

And, because of it, too many Americans are suffering.

And the same creeps wonder why nobody is signing up for their little war. There is less and less worth defending every day.


Especially when prices for products and services made around the world are confined by the shores and barriers. Your glorious "globalization" cherrypicks its own circumstances. This isn't globalization, not in the slightest.

[The2ndWheel]

20. My glorious globalization?

I despise globalization.

[Stargazer99]

27. Oh, yeah, just watch if we get into war

I believe you are kidding yourself.

[CrispyQ]

6. We need to upgrade everything! But only the rich will see improvements.

Honestly, I don't think I will see a grand upgrading of our Commons in my time. The wealthy will fence themselves off in secluded enclaves where the Commons are upgraded & maintained. Their transit routes will bypass the masses, who will live in sprawling, filthy ghettos.

Yeah, I think William Gibson's dark vision is pretty damned close in his sprawl series. ;)

[LiberalPartisan]

7. Offshoring is not going to stop

Ironically the demand for skilled technologists in India is so great the cost of labor is increasing. Consequently Indian companies are offshoring work to China and Russia.

Like water which seeks its own level, work which can be performed anywhere with decent connectivity will always seek the lowest cost provider.

[CJCRANE]

9. I could tell you

but you wouldn't like the answer.

I refer you, however, to the science-fiction novel "Snow Crash" by Neal Stephenson.

[Deja Q]

16. I think I already know the answer...

Something akin to the first few minutes of the series finale to "Blake's 7", or more completely, the Doctor Who story "The Sun Makers" (globalization on a solar system scale... well thought out by its writer, some 30 years ago...)

[CatholicEdHead]

10. When there are no more jobs left here

and we are outsourcing Americans overseas for pennies.

[originalpckelly]

11. When there is another great depression.

People have been talking about it, and it will happen if the wealth becomes continually more centralized in the hands of a few. That is after all what outsourcing is all about, increasing profits for stockholders, while robbing Americans. The sad thing is that most of the people now making our products are the ones who will be hardest hit; because there won't a market for what they are making. The rich people live in America; if we get desperate we can have a revolution; we have a chance to be on the receiving end of charitable donations. ;-)

However, the people who are supposedly being helped by this outsourcing won't have a chance in hell.

[LoZoccolo]

12. When we're as poor as them.

Probably when we have children working instead of going to school to support the family too.

Or until people start an organized program of some well-targeted boycotts. It's be hard to get everyone on the same page for that though, maybe having one company come under heavy consumer fire every few months so the rest get afraid to be next.

[Gormy Cuss]

14. No, it's when we are poorer than them.

Until that point any jobs that can move will be targeted for offshoring, unless of course people do as you suggested and take back control through consumer boycotts.

[Caution]

13. it's been going on for 40+ years

it isnt going to stop.

[Stargazer99]

29. Bull

Unions had their begining in the early 1900s. The present administration has killed most unions and that is a good reason why the lower classes struggle now. Hit them in the pocketbook, but as you say it would take a concentrated effort to boycott those corps that were screwing over the American worker.

[Cogito ergo doleo]

17. There will be no American infrastructure as we think of it.

Welcome to the United Truck Stops of North America. Our country is being custom fit to privatization and offshoring with the planning of the super-corridors (there are several in the works) http://www.americas-society.org/bna/infrastructure/trade.html , which are being developed by foreign entities.
http://www.newsvine.com/_news/2006/07/20/294741-texas-farmers-furious-over-superhighway

Our power is that collectively we are the nation's #1 commodity as consumers. If we'd all quit consuming we'd have a chance at stopping this - but we won't have this power much longer, if in fact we still do.

[TheFarseer]

22. 4 things can stop offshoring

1) if our wages fall to the levels of 3rd world countries.

2) if they ever discover that offsourcing does not pay for itself because of various logistic problems, sales lost with bad customer service, or if the job being done overseas is unacceptable.

3) in manufacturing, if the shipping costs become so great that it overwhelms the savings.

4) the government steps in and passes laws to stop it.

I'm sure there are others I've missed.

[Odin2005]

23. The only thing that will stop outsourcing is GLOBAL economic regulations.

The Nation-State is obsolete in today's world. GLOBAL businesses require GLOBAL regulations to keep them in check. We need to get out of the situation now of muntinational corporations pitting one country against another in a race to the bottom.

[Egalitariat]

25. When the wages of skilled workers in 3rd world countries RISE

to the same level of skilled workers here at home. Or until the wages of skilled workers here at home FALL to the level of those in the 3rd world. Then it will stop. Don't hold your breath.

[conflictgirl]

26. I don't think we'll see it happen for several generations

There are a few things that I can see causing an end to offshoring:

- The workers in other countries successfully unionize and raise their wages
- An increased cost of oil (due to scarcity or wars) makes it too expensive to manufacture goods elsewhere and import them here
- Consumers accept the fact that the true cost of goods (when workers are paid a living wage) must go up and collectively demand a return of jobs to America OR can no longer afford to buy imported crap even at cheap prices
- Government policies take away corporate incentives to offshoring/put salary caps on executives.

All of these are key points, I think. What has to happen is for there to be a balance between the cost of manufacturing, importing and purchasing goods, the salaries of workers, and the salaries of executives. Right now things are extremely unbalanced on all sides. Consumers want extremely cheap goods so that they can buy stuff they don't need. I understand better than anyone that low-income people cannot afford to pay more, so this is going to be hard to address. But I mean that even those remaining people with good middle-class incomes still want to be able to get a sweater for less than $20, even though the true cost of producing that item (fair-wage labor + materials) is probably almost double that. For example: I knit, and even NOT accounting for the cost of my own labor, it still costs minimum $40-50 for the yarn to make a sweater. I realize that machines cut the labor time significantly, but there's still no way I can see that the materials plus manufacturing plus shipping overseas plus the other assorted costs that go into making products can possibly equal $20 - or even $10 if it's at a place like Wal-mart. We are used to getting everything as cheaply as possible, and that has driven manufacturers and retailers to look to more ways to save money. (Would Wal-mart really need to get their suppliers to deliver a cheaper product every year, leading to manufacturers offshoring, if the customers weren't in love with the low prices?) That's not even accounting for the rising executive-level wages juxtaposed against the declining worker wages.

There are so many sides to this problem that I think it's going to take many generations for it to be fixed. Unless of course something happens like oil becoming $200 a barrel, when outsourcing manufacturing jobs at least would no longer be enough to create low consumer prices. But that's just manufacturing - white/pink collar work, like customer service, computer programming, etc that can be done via telecom would still be vulnerable.

[Roland99]

30. As soon as the Asian Central Banks tire of helping to prop the dollar

or a non-corrupt administration takes power in the WH and stops allowing jobs to go to Asia in return for supporting the dollar. Of course, an economic downturn will result, esp. if spending isn't greatly curtailed or taxes raised back to where they were.

This article was posted in LBN's SMW thread the other day and explains a lot:


The Invisible Hand (of the U.S. Government) in Financial Markets
http://www.financialsense.com/editorials/reality/2005/0403.html