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Companies are giving the consumer what they want: lower prices. If that means moving production overseas, so be it. You either adapt to your competition or go out of business. Sure it sucks but people are fickle and want the best product available at the best possible price. Quite often, that product will not be made in the god old US of A.
Those lower prices that you talk about, don't always reflect in the quality of the items from other Countries. Most furniture now a days all comes from over seas, and some Cheap, some not so Cheap, but most of it is junk, made poorly, you would know this, if you know anything about furniture and woods that are used. It does suck, not to be able to buy goods from here anymore. Everything we freaking buy, or use has ties to other Countries, somehow. Will this change, probably not.
OK... but let's put aside idea of things being manufactured outside of the USA.
Do you or would you support companies (like Chase or USAA or other credit card companies) who hire other countries to do their work (whether they're on the phones speaking to you... or if these countries do said companies work via computer, etc).
As an American who looks forward to one day moving overseas, I'm really not opposed to going where the jobs are. I wonder, what will the IT industry in Spain or Italy will be like in a few more years?
We have a global economy and we have to live with the consequences. If Americans won't work for what the business owner feels he can afford to pay to make his product and maximize his profit, then the manufacture of the product will go elsewhere. Can't blame the business owner - he's in business to make as much money as possible. The only thing we can do is to refuse the buy the product if we don't like where it's made.
Indeed.
It cracks me up how so many of the very same Right Wing people who claim to be for Free Enterprise suddenly find it objectionable when businesses opt to act in a "Free Enterprise" manner and move their production to a location that provides cheaper labor. Hey folks, that's FREE ENTERPRISE in action. Business has a RIGHT to do that - so welcome to the REAL WORLD - where economic THEORY encounters economic REALITY.
For many of them I see no other choices. We have a government that is turning hostile towards profits and private business, they impose the second highest corporate tax on the planet, heavy EPA regulations, and unions like the UAW, that would rather see a company fail then negotiate a fair compensation.
We have a third world manufacturing that is emerging from all over the world, and yet we have government and unions doing their utmost to keep the costs of operating in America high; we seem to be our own worst enemy.
Its like our private industry is an overloaded mule, and we are beating it with clubs the whole way up the mountain side, complaining that the mule is not performing well, and the answer from government and unions is to beat it harder.
And none of that makes any difference.
The fact is - it's not Labor Unions (the vast majority of offshored work was NEVER union labor to begin with), it's not corporate taxes, nor is it EPA regulations that is driving businesses to offshore - it's the cost of labor (pure and simple). Sure those other things contribute - but far and away it's the cheap wages that are paid overseas that's the deciding factor in American businesses decisions to ship jobs overseas. You can kid yourself all you want - and say "it's those darned unions" or "it's those idiot treehuggers" or "it's those damned tax and spend Democrats" or whatever other silly excuse you can come up with - but the fact is YOU are more of the problem than all those things put together. It's the relatively high wages (compared to workers overseas) that people like YOU and ME are paid that is driving work overseas. So - unless YOU are willing to take a pay cut down to 1/4th or 1/5th of YOUR current salary NONE of that other stuff is going to make a bit of difference. It ALL boils down to the cost of labor overseas.
Eventually the problem with rectify itself as one by one these previously dirt poor countries make the climb up to modernity - already labor costs are rising (along with standards of living) in many of these 3rd World Countries as they modernize and begin their own internal development - and the US jobs previously sent there are instead going to countries that are still undeveloped and relatively cheap. Computing outsourcing for example is ALREADY changing. Previously preferred destinations like India are now being replaced by countries like China and Vietnam where labor is still relatively cheap. Soon THOSE countries will no longer be the "destination of choice" for companies seeking cheap labor and instead the work will go elsewhere. One by one the different areas of the world will pass through this stage in their development as those countries modernize and join the world economy. Eventually even the basketcase of Africa will find itself as the outsourced "destination of choice" and it too will modernize and join the rest of the world.
Once that happens job migration will stabilize and offshoring of jobs from the US to elsewhere will end. In the meantime however (which will likely last several decades) offshoring jobs from the US overseas is unlikely to stop.
I do agree that the U.S. is tending towards a service oriented economy which will, in time, put the squeeze on the middle class and push us towards a two class society - rich and poor. Most of the rich people will provide services to other rich people and the poor people will provides services to ALL rich people.
I support any company that can provide me the best prices on what I want to buy short of breaking the law.
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