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Outsourcing is inevitable, it's just another manifestation of a greatly expanded and greatly integrated world economy after the end of the cold war in which 3 billions+ well-educated and very hard-working people joined the global competition. Unless you want to completely wreck the international economic system which will bring more harm to the Western economy than it'll do to the developing world (we all rely on each other, but we can live without wall street financial innovation or even real innovation like google, but we can't live without oil, gas and all other national resources, most of which are under developing world's control), you have to figure out a way to deal with the sudden influx of people who are better educated AND willing for work more for less. Outsourcing is just a reaction to the imbalance of competitiveness and salary between developing and developed countries. It's painful, it will surely make lots of people feel bad and most of them might not be able to face the reality and blame their own plight on this or that scapegoats, usually this or that government. But the fact of matter is, this is the first time in 400 years that pretty much the whole world operates under a single economic system and competing more or less fairly, without far less distortation brought about by colonialism or communism. US's indebtedness is just a indirect reflection of the relative loss of competitivenss brought about first by emergence of Europe from WWII destruction, then by the emergence of Japan, then South East Asian countris and Korea, the the biggest giant: China. It has little to do with actual government policies, a more nationalistic and protectionalistic policy will reduce US competitveness even more, and it will have other negative effect on the economy even if government forced manufacturing jobs to remain in the states. In sum, what's happening right now is a culmination of gradual shift of world economy, the economy is just trying to rectify what was a grave inbalance in which much of the world's resources and talents were either taken away by the west for free or chosen to lock themselves up in their own nations. Unless a new equalilbium is established under which US and European standard of living must lower substantiallly to reflect the new world economic order, no government policy can stablisze or reverse the relative decline of US manufacturing industry, unless, of course,genetic scientists invents something that can make US workers much much smarter and much much more innovative.
If what you a have in mind comes to pass the United States will enter a depression like no other. It will take years for it to pull it's self out. China which has a population of 1.4 billion lives can grow by providing goods and services for just their own citizens. They will soon be in the same economic position the United States was 50 years ago.
Outsourcing has been going on since the 60's. When I was a little girl we would buy our parents gifts for Mother's Day and Father's Day. We were told to see where the gift was made and if it was made in China, to not buy it.
I am totally against outsourcing. I think the 9 million people and counting, that are out of work, most will not be able to find a job in the same capacity. Just my opinion.
We need to put a ban on outsourcing. Everyone who believes this must write to their Senators and Congressman.
1. Make a law no company can move their operation out of the USA and sell their goods back to the USA. If they want to move, fine. But your product will not be brought back to USA for sale.
2. Encourage people to start their own businesses with low interest rates, incentives to start a business.
3. We must place ten times more border guards along the Mexican border. Not one illegal to get across the border. Check more vehicles coming across the border for drugs.
Bring back the shoe factories, clothing industry, electronic industry. Is there one television made in the USA?
Back in the 70s a television cost $500 and a microwave cost $400. That was alot of money back then. People would save their money to buy what they want. You could even park a car in a garage. Now the average person is $8,000. in debt on credit cards.
As consumers we need to stop all this frivolous spending. Most garages you can't even park a car in them, they are so filled with stuff.
Each company looks to its own interests, but on a macro level, the overall loss of quality jobs has weakened the buying power of the public, which is what is hurting these companies (and shareholders) now.
Very well put.
I am a victim of outsourcing and the downturn in the economy. I was an automotive designer, mostly plastic injection molded stuff. I have had to directly deal with our "offshore" counterparts and for the most part 90% of the work we received back was garbage and had to be redone. Our mid level managment would actually make up work to send oversea's while we could do the real work. Upper managment would alway's turn a deaf ear to any of the negative results that where presented to them. "make it work" was what everyone was told. The big wig's just did not want to accept the fact that it wasn't working. Sure the numbers were manipulated to look like it was cost effective in reality it wasn't.
Sure there are certain things that actually do work very well , but not everything. In the design world the "offshore" groups have progressed along to become great CAD modeler's (although they tend to overcomplicate things) , and can really pump out a lot of the tedious drawing and GD & T work. But as far as handing them a concept and expecting to get back a nice manufacturable part that is in a easily modifiable CAD part.... they aren't there yet.
My opinion of the whole globalization/offshoreing thing is it's keeping shareholders happy and making money for the CEO's and it's bringing the standard of living up for many countries. Just look at the middle classes popping up where there weren't any before. Unfortunatley it is bring our standard of living down and eliminating our middle class. So it all depends on what level in life you are , for some it's good and for some it's bad.
If what you a have in mind comes to pass the United States will enter a depression like no other. It will take years for it to pull it's self out. China which has a population of 1.4 billion lives can grow by providing goods and services for just their own citizens. They will soon be in the same economic position the United States was 50 years ago.
Unless we collectively decide to return to agriculture-based economy in which growing and trading of food is the only economic activity, then nobody can get away from a collapse of world economic system. Because nobody has everything it needs to develop a modern industrial economy (the closest one is Russia, the most resource-rich nation in the world, but Russia has its own share of problems to deal with as we all know). Remember, the whole industrial economy was developed during a period when the world was operating under some kind of trading system, either as a result of colonialism or mutual agreement. Unless you wanna to adopt North Korea style isolation, there is simply no way around the fact the you have to compete with far more people for the same or even smaller pie. It's a two way street, China has to compete with America too, and China has also given up A LOT (lots of state jobs previously thought to be iron-stable were lost as a result of its opening up, Chinese workers suffered A LOT as well), the only reason we see it more through the angle of "America losing jobs to China" is because 1. we live in the US, so it's a more personal thing. 2. America, being the richer one, has more to lose. But if you think globalization is a painless transition for China, you only need to fly to myriad small to medium Chinese industrial cities to talk to those whose social contract with the government (lower salary in exchange for free heathcare, free housing and life-long employment) was torn into pieces unilaterally by the government almost overnight.
If what you a have in mind comes to pass the United States will enter a depression like no other. It will take years for it to pull it's self out. China which has a population of 1.4 billion lives can grow by providing goods and services for just their own citizens. They will soon be in the same economic position the United States was 50 years ago.
They have reacted to the economic problems by saving even more and not consuming as much. But they also are not in the position that we are as the government is focusing their stimulus on infrastructure as they have excesss capacity in manufacturing. They don't have to borrow for this but just aim at infrastructure that they have neglected for along time not propping up business that produces more product than is needed. That includes their auto industry as sales drop because of the increased savings.It will take along time for them to switch from a export based economy to a consumer based economy especially when their population tends to respond like this.
There's no turning back from outsourcing. There is no way Americans can compete at the salary level with that of China, India, Vietnam, Brazil, etc. We cannot live on $25K or less per year while they are educated (College degrees) and $25K gives them a very comfortable life where they live.
We're done. We in America have to find new outlets. I'm not talking about Corporate because they are the ones outsourcing..I'm talking about American workers..we have to find a way to survive.
I don't know what the answer is though. Big business supports the government and has much influence over laws/regulations put in place and most of them are NOT in favor of small business due to the high cost of implementing those regulations.
An example of that is going "organic". Big business took that over and the USDA has a laundry list of what you have to comply with in order to use "organic" on your food. Small farmers cannot afford that..hence the new "natural", "grass fed", "no chemicals" sales pitches you see at Farmer's Markets. They cannot use "organic" anymore due to regulations.
HappyTexan, many Farmer's Markets I attend, use the word "organic". Unless someone from the USDA comes to a small town to search those people who sell their produce, chances are many people who grow organic produce will continue to put the label "organic" on the sign.
What is going to happen one day, is the people will revolt against the government because government is the reason why our country is spiraling downward.
There's no turning back from outsourcing. There is no way Americans can compete at the salary level with that of China, India, Vietnam, Brazil, etc. We cannot live on $25K or less per year while they are educated (College degrees) and $25K gives them a very comfortable life where they live.
We're done. We in America have to find new outlets. I'm not talking about Corporate because they are the ones outsourcing..I'm talking about American workers..we have to find a way to survive.
I don't know what the answer is though. Big business supports the government and has much influence over laws/regulations put in place and most of them are NOT in favor of small business due to the high cost of implementing those regulations.
An example of that is going "organic". Big business took that over and the USDA has a laundry list of what you have to comply with in order to use "organic" on your food. Small farmers cannot afford that..hence the new "natural", "grass fed", "no chemicals" sales pitches you see at Farmer's Markets. They cannot use "organic" anymore due to regulations.
If the corporations have a hold on our government, than its time for the people to create a new government.
What is going to happen one day, is the people will revolt against the government because government is the reason why our country is spiraling downward.
I'm just turned 40, and I believe if things don't change we will see something like this in our/my lifetime.
Look, we just had an election. Millions of American were against the bailout..so much so the .gov site went down with the influx of emails. Our representatives passed the bill anyway.
Those that voted YES against the wishes of the majority of Americans got re-elected back into office.
Why ? Why weren't these folks voted out of office and people that represent the taxpayers voted into office ? I showed up to vote and for the first time in my life voted for neither Democrat nor Republican because both of the candidates voted YES for the bailout. If Americans really felt that strongly then a third political party should have won, yet they didn't even get moderate numbers.
American won't revolt..they will wait for the government to come to the rescue.
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