President Defends Global Outsourcing 1075
mytrip wrote to mention a New York Times article discussing President Bush's trip to the Indian subcontinent. There, he urged Americans to welcome global competition for their jobs. From the article: "Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip, strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods ... 'The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable,'"
Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Insightful)
How many of you are making more money because of all the people in China, India, and other cheap-labor locales, who buy stuff that you produce? To vote, Click here [republicans.org]
Now, how many of you know somebody who lost their job because of overseas competition? To vote, Click here [democrats.org]
Based on that unscientific survey, I'd say that George Bush is talking smack. The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers and replacing them with cheap overseas labor. There may be more wealth, but it's all concentrated in a few hands.
Bush can't understand what's it's like for an ordinary family to suffer the devastation of unemployment because he's never lived through it.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate donations should be out, as should corporate lobbying.
Lobbying should be funded solely with private donations that are capped. If you want to do more yourself, then lobby yourself, but organisations should be limited.
And I'd like to make campaigning limited to local funds. I don't want funds from New England rich boys or Texas oil tycoons funding political ads in my state. If you want to campaign for a federal office (House, Senate, or Presidency) in my state, then you should have to have the funding come from MY STATE. If you can't raise funds here for your advertising, well, too bad.
Imagine what THAT would do to corporations. It would strip their power to screw over the average citizen. Then, perhaps, politicians might actually have to listen to their home base, instead of big oil or big media.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting you should say that. About ten years ago there was a proposal by a presidential candidate which was titled, 'Can't vote, can't contribute'. Essentially, if you were not able to vote in an election you were not able to contribute.
This would exclude all PACs, corporations, etc from contributing to campaigns since none of them vote. Their members vote but not the entities themselves.
And I'd like to make campaigning limited to local funds.
This was another aspect of the above proposal. There is no reason someone from California should be contributing to a Senate race in another state. If they wanted to contribute money to the candidate they would have to move to the state in question.
In fact, as a classic example of how out-of-state funds can alter a campaign, Cynthia McKinney from Georgia was defeated as the direct result of thousands of dollars that was poured into her opponents campaign because she did not support Israeli policies in the Occupied Territories. Jewish donors from the Northeast responded and altered the outcome of the race.
Of course these changes to campaign finance laws will never happen because that would diminish the influence that business and PACs have. We couldn't have that happen, now could we?
The media consists of corporations. (Score:5, Insightful)
We all know that war is often very profitable for both those who manufacture the supplies consumed during conflict, as well as for those who report on said conflict. Therefore it seems unlikely that those who are benefitting the most from a rather pro-war administration (if not an entire system) will stand against it.
Such an initiative would require the corporate mass media of the US to in turn speak out against itself. Again, it's doubtful that it would do it, at least to the extent where real change may happen.
Lyndon Johnson and Brown and Root (Score:5, Informative)
Lyndon wasn't much for house debate, nor was he a skilled lawyer, so writing and pushing through legislation was particularly difficult for him. Which for a congressman is a pretty serious drawback. But Lyndon was a big - physically imposing - man. And he had access to a lot of money through his connections at Brown and Root. So pretty soon Lyndon was passing contributions around to various Democratic congressmen in threatened races throughout the country. Because of this Lyndon grew very powerful in a very short time - powerful enough to attempt a run for Senate only two years after having won election as a congressman. He lost that first bid, but within a few election cycles large numbers of congressmen owed their seats to his arranged donations. Lyndon had the choice of committee seats at his disposal, and quickly became close friends with then congressional leader Sam Rayburn.
But Lyndon still wasn't satisfied. He wanted to be a Senator. So off to his friends at Brown and Root asking to finance a new election bid for Senate. This time he won, but only because he cheated. Didn't matter. Once again he climbed the ladder from junior Senator from Texas in 1948 to minority leader in a single six year term (the Democrats lost the senate majority during the election of '52). He did this through funneling corporate contributions, much of which came from Brown and Root.
Of course, we all know how Lyndon Johnson wound up as President. He was chosen to be JFKs vice presidential nominee in order to shore up the southern vote. Nobody expected him to have any power in that position. But JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas on Nov 22nd, 1963 and soon thereafter Johnson assumed the Presidency.
Who was there right behind him scoring military contracts left and right? Brown and Root. Soon to be named Kellog, Brown and Root. And then soon thereafter to be purchased by Halliburton.
We all know who Halliburton is, don't we? History sure is a strange thing...
See the works of Robert Caro [robertcaro.com] for a detailed history of Johnson and his connection with corporate financing. He was arguably one of the founders of this whole cross state campaign financing fiasco.
Re:What about "informational" ads on TV? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd love to see all of the money taken out of politics, but in this case the cure is a lot worse than the disease.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Interesting)
There's no way you can have anonymity when the people giving the money don't want it.
It would be more practical just to bar donations outright, because at least then the problem is "just" monitoring a politician's finances to see if he's receiving money from an outside source (it's not easy, but it's something that law enforcement is fairly good at), rather than trying to stop the flow of information -- who's sending large amounts of money to whom, which is a relative impossibility.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:5, Interesting)
I disagree. We should just carry the current system to it's logical conclusion without wasting any more time:
All donations should come with a patch that is sewn onto the politician's clothing, so they look like NASCAR drivers, and we know who gave them money.
And legislation should be clearly labeled with corporate sponsers, like advertising.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Interesting)
Corporations will just pay private citizens to make their donations and do their lobbying. This changes nothing. Requiring people to not be affiliated with a corporation in order to influence their representatives means that the corporate employed have fewer rights than the non-corporate employed, which is arguably a violation of equal rights.
"Local funds only" is equally bad. I could easily funnel my money to a local business and have them
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Informative)
That's a rather deceptive statement. Certainly, Democrats get a good chunk of the corporate funding. However, the vast majority of that funding goes to Republicans.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Insightful)
I'll vote for the match vs. the flame thrower any day. At least with the match I have a chance of controlling the fire.
Do the Democrats who voted for Nader and the Greens really think we're no worse off under the current regime? If they do, I know they're too stupid to run a country.
Stupid Libertarians might think there's no difference, but every body count increase I see from Iraq tells me there's a hell of a difference.
The fact is that Al Gore migh
When Americans No Longer Own America (Score:5, Insightful)
Published on Monday, February 27, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
When Americans No Longer Own America
by Thom Hartmann
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.
Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because they "restrain trade." Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.
These policies have kneecapped the American middle class. Our nation's largest employer has gone from being the unionized General Motors to the poverty-wages Wal-Mart. Americans have gone from having a net savings rate around 10 percent in the 1970s to a minus .5 percent in 2005 - meaning that they're going into debt or selling off their assets just to maintain their lifestyle.
At the same time, federal policy has been to do the same thing at a national level. Because our so-called "free trade" policies have left us with an over $700 billion annual trade deficit, other countries are sitting on huge piles of the dollars we gave them to buy their stuff (via Wal-Mart and other "low cost" retailers). But we no longer manufacture anything they want to buy with those dollars.
So instead of buying our manufactured goods, they are doing what we used to do with Third World nations - they are buying us, the USA, chunk by chunk. In particular, they want to buy things in America that will continue to produce profits, and then to take those profits overseas where they're invested to make other nations strong. The "things" they're buying are, by and large, corporations, utilities, and natural resources.
Back in the pre-Reagan days, American companies made profits that were distributed among Americans. They used their profits to build more factories, or diversify into other businesses. The profits stayed in America.
Today, foreigners awash with our consumer dollars are on a two-decades-long buying spree. The UK's BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco's profits go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House, Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax's US Coal Mining Operations, GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse's Power Generation profits go as well. Ralston Purina's profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber's; TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance's profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by Fortis AG in Belgium.
Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat world" so-called "free trade" p
Re:When Americans No Longer Own America (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:When Americans No Longer Own America (Score:5, Interesting)
Also I appreciate open mind shown in USA. Most fair and impartial country on this earth. Perhaps I would not get such a fair audience anywhere else in the world.
Now let me tell you the other side of story.
There was a soft drink company called Thumbs Up in India. When the economy opened and Cocacola arrived, they tried to buy the company. When the company refused, Coca cola just baught all their products and sent to warehouse, and kept them off market shelves for a while, so people would forget them. Result? Evantually the Indian cold drink company gave in. Coca cola changed the taste of that product. It sucks now. Now it's all Coca cola.
The same thing happened to many many Indian companies. At many places, American companies did not need to play games. American products were far superior than their Indian counterparts. Obviously people switched to American goods. GM and Ford, losing here, are having time of their life in India. Because old Indian cars sucked compared to GM and Ford offerings.
Many Indian companies were closed, Indians lost jobs as well.
But evantually things stabilized, and bingo, actually turned upwards. Call centers, software outsourcing, people started seeing benefits.
And now people in USA are complaining. Perhaps many of the jobs lost did not belong to USA. They were just borrowed from India. I know I sound like Satan to your ears, but you should see the whole picture.
People in India switched to USA companies because for almost same price, they offered better quality. Now companies in USA are switching to Indian labour, because it costs much less for the same skill level.
Just a list of few Indian companies went bankrupt or got kicked in 1990s- Premier Automobiles, Murphy Television, Thumbs up cold drink. Can't remember more of the top of my head. But there are a lot.
Military equipment producers, OIL companies and such are having time of their lives in USA. Why not ask them to share their profits before blaming Outsourcing?
Dude, this is just other side of capitalism. Face it. You can't just have benefits of something and but not face disadvantages.
And I have strong faith in future of USA. This country thrives on innovation. Evantually Americans will figure the way out and in the process bring a whole new era. The same thing happened at times of Japanese auto makers, at times of South Asian electronics manufactures, the same thing will happen about cheap Chinese goods and about Indian call centers.
And don't throw that list of non USA companies owning USA companies. 53% rubber products? You guys fucking own GPS.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the sort of UTTER BULLSHIT that got GW Bush elected over Al Gore because people were voting for Nader.
Absolutely correct. I'm so sick of hearing that lame ass excuse. In case anyone forgot, the Republicans took control of both houses of Congress in 1994. Anything passed since then, no matter which president signed it, was Republican born and bred. That includes one of our all time /. favorites, the DMCA.
Stop using that crapass excuse for supporting a lying, corrupt and incompetent party. It does make a difference who you vote for.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:5, Insightful)
Examples:
USA PATRIOT Act renewal [senate.gov]
Bankruptcy "reform" [senate.gov]
Highway Pork Bill [senate.gov]
I can come up with more examples if you like.
Notice we are not saying the Republicans and Democrats are the same. We are saying that they are close enough to warrant voting for someone other than them.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides- what the hell could we make here to sell to India that China can't make for 1/100th the labor cost?
Comparative advantage, not surplus. (Score:5, Insightful)
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Re:Comparative advantage, not surplus. (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
Now, that's very basic trade economics. It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation. Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
Re:Comparative advantage, not surplus. (Score:5, Insightful)
You're wrong about that.
Suppose it takes China 10 h to produce a computer, and 2 h to produce a car . It takes America 2 h to produce a computer, and 1 h to produce a car. America has an absolute advantage over China, as they can produce more computers and cars in a fixed amount of time.
But since China's minimum wage is 1/100th of ours- they pay only the eqivalent of
In the US, 1 computer costs 2 cars. In China, 1 computer costs 5 cars. In the US, 1 car costs 0.5 computers. In China, 1 car costs only 0.2 computers. As we can see, China gives up fewer computers for each car produced than the US does.
But- here's the big one- China has a billion workers to feed. They have a virtually unlimited supply of labor. So they can make all the computers and cars THEY need, PLUS enough for export to swamp the markets of the United States and Europe with computers and cars, and drive the native manufacturers in the US and Europe out of business entirely, of both computers and cars.
Thus, even though the US can produce both goods faster, and can hence produce more goods in a fixed period of time, it still costs them more to produce a car (in terms of computers). Thus China should focus on producing cars, while the US manufactures computers, because they each have a comparative advantage in that area.
But since China has a relatively unlimited supply of workers, they can just bring more factories online and outproduce the United States in both cars and computers- thus utterly destroying the US market with cheaper goods.
Now, that's very basic trade economics.
It's also complete bullshit at this point, since China's wages are 1/100th of ours and they have no shortage of labor.
It doesn't necessarily apply well to the real world, but such examples do show us that one country can never produce everything for less than another nation.
It actually shows no such thing, because it has a severe lack of input data.
Even if both nations have the same productivity, the result is that neither has a comparative advantage nor an absolute advantage over the other.
Productivity means NOTHING when you have a billion starving workers to feed- you can always overcome productivity with sheer numbers. Ricardo was an idiot and if he were alive today I'd shoot him just for proposing such a dangerous piece of sheer propaganda and lies.
Re:Comparative advantage, not surplus. (Score:3, Insightful)
Does it matter? They've got 29% unemployment, and 1/10th our minimum wage. That's a hell of a lot of worker dollars to soak up before productivity means anything at all- and when you throw in the fact that they could be trading with China, which adds another billion workers and 1/100th our minimum wage, our producti
Re:Comparative advantage, not surplus. (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet, manufacturing capacity (if not jobs) is returning to the US from China every year - robots work cheaper than people. America has one huge advantage over India and China right now: we have infrastructure. We have reliable power, good safe roads, good telecom infrastructure, and universities capable of graduating world-class engineers in every corner of the country. China and India have this in a few cities. We still have a real advantage in producing goods that require more than just cheap mindless labor.
A factory with high-tech automation, reliable power, and reliable delivery of raw materials is going to outproduce a sweat-shop eventually, it's just a matter of technology. I know my company, for example, might want to move all of its engineering work to India ASAP, but it simply can't: India doesn't have the infrastructure available to it yet. Not enough power and telecom to move big test labs there, not enough engineers graduating every year to move design there at what we want to pay.
Right now, India simply can't produce *enough*. Any one item, sure, that's cheap, but the entire capacity of the country gets consumed pretty quickly and then what? It takes generations to grow infrastructure.
Either that, or it will be feudalism all over again- the robots will benefit the top 1% of society and everybody else will simply starve to death.
Marx predicted this exact thing. He's been wrong for over 100 years in a row, so pardon my optimism. Growing up, my family was damn poor, but we could afford shoes for everyone, more than one chair, "silverware" (not silver, of course) for everyone to eat with, and a car. There's wasn't a single working-class family who could afford any of these things at the start of the industrial revolution. Just about every manufacturing job that existed 100 years ago is gone today, and yet everyone is better off. Ain't technology grand?
Re:Not accurate. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes it can. One nation can be the best at producing everything. It's 100% possible in theory. In practive however, of course the French will always make better cream coffee than Americans.
However, when it comes to mass produced goods like cars, computers, software, clothes, etc, etc
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Funny)
I'm glad that China has become the industrial center of the world.
I'm also glad that engineering and other idea work is going over there and America can concentrate on what it (nowadays) does best: scamming each other out of money in bubble markets.
I'm sure that in the not too distant future, if it ever came to war between our two nations, they'll be willing to sell us the technology we'll need to fight them at reasonable rates.
In fact, I, for one, welcome our new industrialized, t
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Informative)
"Doing the work for 10 times less" is a fallacy if the cost of living in the other country is also 10 times less. The only people who come out ahead in your scenario are the textile factory owners.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Insightful)
Outsourcing is promoting even more separation between rich and poor. I thought that the American Dream [wikipedia.org] was centered around doing your job well and getting promoted up through the ranks so you can retire a wealthy man. Apparently, that only applies to the Americans whose paychecks get bigger as business costs get smaller, leaving all of us hourly-wage earners (or salary earners) screwed. I can't get promoted no matter how well I do because there's a Mohandas-Ghandi-sound-alike who produces cr
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps we should only worry about the American poor.
Anyway, if there is job to be done, and someone in India can do it just as well, but cheaper, and he needs the money more, then how can we deny the job to the Indian? What exactly is the problem here?
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tempting to believe, but wrong.
It sounds like you understand one important part that others fail to get, the principle of Comparative Advantage [wikipedia.org], which is why trade creates wealth.
But there's more to it. Look, for example, at the computer you typed this on. Although computers were al
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:4, Insightful)
Not only that, but people have been making these silly arguments for labor protectionism for years. Specifically, for around 300 years, since the time of Ludd at least. The fact is that the US has one of the highest average incomes on the planet, and we do this by sloughing off the job that don't lead to growth. These jobs are invariably replaced by better jobs. The fact is, that jobs and job markets change. If they didn't, we'd all be subsistence farmers or working in crappy factories, and no one wants that.
I think we can separate a feeling of empathy for the employee from a sense of doing what's best for the country. No form of protectionism has ever been good, labor or otherwise.
Re:Bush Whacked. (Score:3, Insightful)
Bullshit. They're making OUR infrastructure building technologies. They obviously have the capacity, capability, and will- they have *everything* we do already. There's no competitive advantage left for the United States- they can do everything so much cheaper than we can that there is nothing left that is unique to us.
Have more faith and less suspicion and fear of people.
E
Outsource him (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Outsource him (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Outsource him (Score:4, Funny)
Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
100% free capitalism cannot sustain itself over the long term, we've seen that before. This is why the government has a role to play in the economy. There is a vast middle ground between pure capitalism and pure socialism, and neither extreme can produce a sustainable economy.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. Rich men decided that a truly free market wouldn't always guarantee them a fortune. So they began to tinker with it by shutting out the smaller entrepreneurs who might have produced competition. They craved a leveled and massified population whom they could count on to keep the capital moving in their direction (because the people work for them!). They've intervened on the free market and made it something else instead. You said an oligarchy. I think you're right. I like that term for it, because it reveals the true nature of business today: Businesses are sovereign nations unto themselves. And they have no borders. We aren't mere Americans (etc.), we are citizens of the companies we work for, and we abide by their policies. If possible, our companies care less for our well-being than our government does; the profit must come first (whereas the government was intended for the people).
But your argument now becomes very interesting:
Here I say you are wrong. The problem with our "free market" is that it isn't a free market. It's dominated by monopoly and oligarchy, as you said. To fix the problem, we need to free the market again. Government tinkering doesn't make it any more free. Read the proceedings of the 73rd congress, 1934. You'll get a better idea of why government wants to regulate the economy. As it turns out, it's for the exact same reason that wealthy businessmen have for their own meddling. We want businessmen AND politicians out of the economy. There is no role for either of them. We need a FREE market.
A free market is a largely local market sustained by small business. International trade is performed by local entrepreneurs. The same principles of small government ought to apply equally to the business-state. We have to step back and ask ourselves, why are we working for somebody else? That's the root of the problem, and it won't be fixed easily.
If we had a government that could be relied on for its integrity and honesty, I would agree with you that the government should play a role in the economy. If we could have such a government, we might have a chance at a truly free market.
Mr. Bush has reinforced his belief that government serves not the people, but the economy (he will contend that "government serves the people best through the economy. I say: the people are the economy."). Mr. Bush refuses to protect "some Americans" for the sake of a robust bottom line. This was not the Founder's vision for our Republic, and such is a great crime against the people and a violation of our nation's charter.
Re:Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
While that is true, the inequity would be sharply curbed if you couldn't make money from the labors of others. It would be within an order of magnitude, not six of them or so.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Good. (Score:4, Interesting)
While I do contract Perl work for my main income, I also operate a small town computer repair service. I've grown this side business over the past 3 years into a decent little business. I've taken the time and effort to build a solid reputation, and as a result I have a sizable chunk of the computer repair service in the town and the surrounding area. In fact, my main competitor keeps trying to offer me his business. I don't bother buying it, because I am gradually absorbing his business anyway(he has horrible people and repair skills; he essentially got by for years because he was the only game in town).
I've had several kids asking me for a job. If I were to hire one, I would have to train them, schedule appointments for them, and introduce them to my customers. They could easily go and start their own business. Instead, they want to benefit from my hard work and investment. Which is fine. But I won't give them partial ownership over the business I grew. If we can come to an agreement as to what would be a fair wage for their services, then we can work together. If not, given that we have a free market, they are free to compete with me, or to find other employment.
Re:Good. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course, there might be something I'm missing. Feel free to point it out.
1) Asia is not a country. It has different human rights values depending on where you are.
2) You equate standard of living and human rights - quite incorrectly. (Singapore for instance has a higher standard of living then the US, with less attention to human rights)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
We are at an inherent disadvantage because we have a decadent lifestyle. Every time a person who is living in poverty in the US eats at McDonalds or buys a beer, they're taking advantage of something that is not available to t
Re:Good. (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if capital and goods are free to move across national borders and people aren't, the rich can simply play one nation off against another, moving to poorer areas when a region gets wealthier. When a nation becomes poor again, they will move back.
Re:Good. (Score:3, Insightful)
1. A democracy does not mean you need total free trade. Democratic nations can vote for socialist leaders, or leaders who realize that unlimited free trade is a bad idea if only you are playing by the rules.
2. Our founding fathers were for free trade between the states, but wanted tariffs to protect American workers. They also thought citizens should be armed, believed in small government, a
Re:Good. (Score:3, Interesting)
The majority seem to want to. In other words, if you want a democracy, you have to accept the consequences.
I think the majority want jobs that pay the traditionally high American wages, and cheap consumer goods.
Maybe the two are mutually exclusive, and maybe not. If they are, it will be a tough lesson to learn the hard way.
Re:Good. (Score:3)
http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/res ults/president/
Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:5, Insightful)
What becomes viable? Almost any manufactured product the Indian middle class want can be made in India less expensively than the US can make it. If the Indians can't do it, the Chinese will do it for them.
I can envisage US companies making products in Asia for sale in Asia, with the profits coming back to the US companies. The only people in the US who will benefit are the owners of the companies who do are successful doing this.
It looks to me like Bush is one more pushing the "increased business profits are good for my friends" line. I'm not sure how the average US citizen will benefit from this strategy.
Re:Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're okay with children starving in China, then it's fine to oppose this leveling. But if you actually want the world to be a better place, outsourcing is a good thing. Leveling the labor playing field is a good thing. Why is it that it's better for someone in the U.S. to prosper than someone in India? Think about it.
Historically what we've seen is that changes like this float all boats. Although I am not fond of him in general, Bush is right in saying that increased prosperity elsewhere creates opportunity here. The suck is that the imbalance will take a while to level out, and while that's happening we will experience some economic woes. But if the value of labor were the same in every country in the world, the result would be global prosperity, not global poverty.
I'll get back to you about whether this is okay with me when my job gets outsourced, but at least in the abstract it seems like a good thing.
Re:Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, the thing for me is that we are not responsible for making sure the people in China and India are prospering. I'm not fond of protectionism, but realistically we do need to look afte
Re:Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not exactly sure why, because India and China failed to control unsustainable population growth, that the rest of the world needs to destroy their economies and economic well being to insure they are well fed. Economics is in reality a form of warfare. Sometimes a rising tide raises all boats but most of the time there are economic winners and losers. The U.S. was the big winner in the 20th century. It is poised to be a big loser in this one, at least for the vast majority of its people, while its top 1% will probably continue to do very well. In this brand of warfare there really is no reason why U.S. workers should aid and abet their own destruction to insure the "Chinese" are well fad.
This isn't really about insuring China and India are well fed anyway.
The bottomline at work here is there is a global economic elite, less than 1% of the world populations who are rich and getting richer. In the last 30 years many powerful communist party members in China abandoned socialism, for Fascism, and are entering the ranks of this elite along side the long established rich in the U.S. and Europe.
This elite embraces and loves globalization. They have the capital and the ability to invest it anywhere in the world where it will yield the greatest return on their investment. By contrast working people have limited resource and they can't just invest in the new economic hotspot in the world like China. If their nations economy craters they get to starve.
Its a basic axiom of capitalism that labor cost is one of the basic factors in profitability. In the past trade and physical barriers allowed labor costs to diverge in different regions. The U.S., Japan and Western Europe could have high wage rates and a good standard of living because they weren't competing head to head with people making a few cents an hour in Asia. A key barrier that allowed this was that it was expensive to ship goods between nations both because of tarriffs and the cost of hand loading and unloading ships using longshoremen. The WTO has dismantled the tarriffs, at least in to the West, though they still seem to thrive in places like China blocking Western good going there. Shipping costs plunged thanks to container shipping. Communications costs disappeared thanks to fiber optics and computer networks.
What we see today and what Bush is really saying is, that multinational corporations, and wealthy capitalists embrace globalization. It is great for them. In particular its causing a dramatic drop in labor costs to them and capitalism thrives on low cost labor.
The thing they continually gloss over is that this means that in nations where labor costs are high, those workers are mostly doomed unless they have or can acquire skills that justify a premium salary. They will either hit unemployment or their will be constant downward pressure on their incomes. People now in the middle class will be pushed in to poverty. In fact this is already happening in the U.S. The number of people living below the poverty line is increasing dramatically in recent years. The U.S. economy still appears prosperous because most of its big companies are globalized so they are still making lots of money, so the DOW and Nasdaq do just fine, as they slowly dispose of their expensive U.S. work forces and reap big gains from low cost foreign labor. Unfortunately their U.S. work forces are being quietly destroyed in the process.
Its really easy to see where this ends. The U.S. is going to end up where it was at the beginning of the 20th century. There will be a small number of very wealthy people, doing very well, and a huge body of desperately poor workers, barely making enough to survive, working in dismal working conditions if they can get work at all.
The ruling elite which really is George W.'s only constituency will still be very comfortable and very happy. They have money and they can keep making money
Re:Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:4, Interesting)
There isn't anything good about whats happening in Asia now unless you are profiting from it. Industrializing 2+ billion people, giving them cars, freeways and modern amenities is going to drain the planet of resources and destroy the environment barring major breakthroughs in things like steel and energy production. Sure maybe as they urbanize they will reproduce less but the gains from lower population growth are "out there" while the turmoil that will come from this massive industrialization of so many people is going to hammer the world in the near term which is all that matters to me.
The U.S. pushed this affluent industrialized life style excess to its limits in the last century with a much smaller population. If India and China do it, which they are, the results are going to be cataclysmic.
As for me being happy about China controlling their population, well its pretty much already too late for my lifetime.
"Don't get too attached to your preconceptions about the power elite and class war. As long as you frame it that way, you're perpetuating the problem, not solving it."
I have no clue what you are trying to say here. This is such a vague statement its not something that can be countered. I suspect you are doing what most people do when the subject of class warfare comes up. Deny it and make out like the person that raised it is a crackpot. It is the beauty of modern class warfare that the ruling elite has managed to con workers to such an extent that workers deny it exists or is happening or they suffer because of it. In effect working people have unilaterally disarmed and the rich are laughing all the way to the bank. They can sucker dumb workers in to voting for people like George W. and his faux Republican friends using wedge issues and fear mongering, and then George W. and friends screw them coming and going economically which at the end of they is the one issue that really matters.
If you want to see understand the Bush administrations attitude towards workers you need to look no further than Elaine Chow, the Labor secretary. Her family are relatively recent emigres from China, and they made their fortune on container shipping from China to the U.S. She is a poster child for making money by outsourcing American jobs to China. She is openly contemptuous of American workers and she is the LABOR SECRETARY.
Re:Umm, I'm not so sure about this (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:IP (Score:4, Insightful)
If the U.S. were to dominate the world economy via intellectual property (but not in any other way), why would other countries continuing paying us for knowledge which once in the wild can be reproduced again and again at no cost?
Right now countries will respect our IP "ownership", but that's because they can't sell their products here if they don't. With the U.S. still the largest economy on the planet, you don't want to be shut out. However, once the rest of the world develops robust middle-class markets the cost of paying the US again and again for ideas is going to lose its appeal. Intellectual property (especially in the form of patents) is a "I got here first, so you can't do this without my permission" model. It's a fiction that only works as long as everyone playing agrees to believe in it (unlike, say, a rock, which is there whether you believe in it or not).
Editors Shouldn't Bitch, Their Own Company Does It (Score:4, Insightful)
VA Software in Fremont, Calif., a provider of software, information and community support to IT managers and development professionals, keeps core, business-critical work at home, according to Colin Bodell, CTO. "Work that benefits from close proximity to our customers stays in the U.S. Work that can be done anywhere is typically sent to India," he says.
Bottom line: Slashdot's parent company and President Bush are on the same boat on this one. Editors shouldn't ignore or forget that.
Re:Editors Shouldn't Bitch, Their Own Company Does (Score:3, Informative)
There is a point in this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:There is a point in this... (Score:4, Insightful)
However, do a little googling on 'indian middle class' and you'll find that the US equivilent wage to lead a nice middle class life in India is placed somwhere (depending on the year and on the study) between $6,000 and $15,000 per year.
I'm no isolationist, but there is a serious catch here that noone on either side of the issue is directly addressing - I live in a place where it takes at least $40,000 to 50,000 to lead a nice middle class life. What can I possibly produce that would generate that income from a market in India? As other posters here have already alluded to, the indian middle class will get a much better deal from Indian (or Chinese, etc) produced goods.
In the end, U.S. workers can't compete until the cost of living differences, as well as the differences in currency valuation flatten out. Globalization will innevitably lead to this flattening, but the upheaval in the US, with its relatively high costs and current currency valuations, will be severe, I expect the ranks of the working poor to swell massively, with consequences that, so far, I have yet to hear any politician (or economist) deal with honestly.
What do we have to sell? (Score:5, Insightful)
Almost anything we make can be made cheaper in China or even India.
And as time goes by, more manufacturing will be moved there.
This isn't about DIFFERENT products. There aren't any different products. I can outfit an entire house at WalMart and almost all of their stuff is imported from China. So any country that would be a consumer of our products would be smarter to just get those same products from China. We do.
I'm in favour of a global economy, but not in the way it is being done.
Right now, we're in a race to the bottom because we aren't putting any barriers on countries without the same worker protections or environmental protections that we have.
Rather than dragging us down, we need to bring them up.
Re:There is a point in this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Try exporting US lamb to New Zealand... It's only slightly more pointless than trying to raise US lamb for US markets.
Australia, Canada get to keep their Wheat Boards, subsidizing their wheat exports while creating monopolies in their
Easy to swallow (Score:5, Insightful)
Long story short, those unaffected by outsourcing directly will agree with Bush's view that there is a market to sell other goods (that are not already outsourced to India), and that is good for the country. Those affected by the outsourcing won't give a shit about a new market, and only care about their lost job/income/life.
Re:Easy to swallow (Score:3, Interesting)
Not true. Some of us take the hit and find something else.
I've seen it from both sides. I've lost a couple of jobs to outsourcing. I also grew up in Mexico in the 50's where protectionism was absurd. American goods which were better made than Mexican counterparts, cost 2-3 times as much only because of tariffs Mexico imposed on those goods. The only people who benefited from that were the
Time to realize the world doesn't care. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is the world doesn't care. We either compete to win or we lose. If all you are willing to do is bitch about Bush or your employer (or usually the case - portraying yourself as victim even though it happened to someone else) then your going to lose.
The world economy is such fun. It doesn't care what you think and it don't care what you think your entitled to. Accept it and then deal with.
Re:Time to realize the world doesn't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Time to realize the world doesn't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
I think it's unfortunate that a lot of jobs are leaving the US. I also think there will be some serious long term problems that come from people not having opportunities to work in some heavily outsourced fields. At some point, we will run out of experts if there is no way to develop that experience over time because learning is not cost effective.
Outsourcing to call centers that don't speak the language well enough causes a backlash. There are already some companies that have moved their call centers back to the US. There are also training programs to teach people to speak with more recognizable accents. Ie, in India, there are people who specialize in speaking with an American, British, or Australian accent to communicate more effectively with the customers in those countries. If you're not able to communicate with your vendors, you need to complain to them. The people with the big checkbooks can refuse to renew service contracts if the service being provided is worthless. That affects the bottom line more than the cost difference between phone support in the US vs India.
...but first, they need a job to pay for it.... (Score:4, Funny)
...but first, they need a job to pay for it, and that's where my fellow Americans can help today. God bless.
not much of market (Score:3, Insightful)
Bush's globalization focus is disturbing to me. It is reducing the US economy to one of consumption, while production is leaving the country. Couple that with increasing federal spending, and debt, and increasing personal spending, and debt, and the US will be an economic hostage to those who buy US debt securities.
Gas stations on the Garden State Parkway are now run by Lukoil, a Russian oil company. More and more of America's cash is leaving the country - our affluence is being purchased at the expense of our future.
Remember, everyone can do everything! (Score:5, Interesting)
That's the usual refrain here when outsourcing debates start. In addition to the fact that we can't all be the best and ok but not amazing programmers have to do something for a living, if we don't have the entry level jobs here, who will learn the skills to let them design programs?
Indians have programmed for years. (Score:4, Insightful)
1990's - Indian programmers programmed for major US corporations in the US.
2000's - Indian programmers program for major US corporations in India.
The evolution of the internet made this possible and will also make this impossible to stop.
Re:Indians have programmed for years. (Score:5, Insightful)
2020's - Indian programmers program for major Indian corporations in India
2030's - US programmers program for major Indian corporations in the US
Re:Indians have programmed for years. (Score:4, Insightful)
2000's - Indian programmers program for major US corporations in India.
2010's - Indian programmers program for major Indian corporations in India.
2020's - Major Indian corporations outsource work to U.S. programmers because wages are so much lower here.
the reality is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:the reality is... (Score:3, Insightful)
Why will India be any different? People wil whine and complain, and 50 years
Re:the reality is... (Score:5, Informative)
Year Real GDP (billions of 2000 dollars)
1970 $3771.9
1971 $3898.6
1972 $4105.0
1973 $4341.5
1974 $4319.6
1975 $4311.2
1976 $4540.9
1977 $4750.5
1978 $5015.0
1979 $5173.4
1980 $5161.7
1981 $5291.7
1982 $5189.3
1983 $5423.8
1984 $5813.6
1985 $6053.7
1986 $6263.6
1987 $6475.1
1988 $6742.7
1989 $6981.4
1990 $7112.5
1991 $7100.5
1992 $7336.6
1993 $7532.7
1994 $7835.5
1995 $8031.7
1996 $8328.9
1997 $8703.5
1998 $9066.9
1999 $9470.3
2000 $9817.0
2001 $9890.7
2002 $10048.8
2003 $10320.6
2004 $10755.7
Detect a trend?
Re:the reality is... (Score:5, Informative)
GDP is a pretty damn poor measure of economic peformance. GDP is a measure of aggregate economic activity, with no description of how that economic activity (income) is spread out amongst the population. Not to mention that it doesn't show how income is produced - is a service job at Wal-Mart as good for our economy as a job at GM producing cares? There are far more problems with using GDP as your golden measure.
What has effectively happened in our economy- and you probably know this considering you spat out a trend from 1970 to 2004 is that real income per person has remained fairly flat. In other words, the economy has grown but the normal worker has not seen the benefits. Go read Krugman over at the NY Times. Or better yet, read the source material Where did the productivity go? [nber.org] which describes what's happened to our economy.
You should damn well listen to the refrain and understand the numbers - something is going seriously wrong in America. The middle class is falling apart under increasing costs (college, health care, no pensions) while the absolute top has received nearly all of the benefits of outsourcing, increased productivity, and the last thirty years of economic growth.
Re:the reality is... (Score:5, Interesting)
Confirm this for yourself. Find out what the average wage was 30 years ago or 40 years ago. Look in an old catalog, and look at what someone could purchase with their wages then, and compare it with average wages and what they can afford to purchase now. Aside from things like big screen TVs and computers that obviously we can afford more of now, we can now afford more clothes, more lawnmowers, more washing machines, more sofas, etc. We can afford to eat out more, purchase more pre-packaged/advertized food products. People can now afford better housing. People can pretty much afford much more of everything.
You do understand that cheaper goods = higher income, right? There is no difference if a shirt cost $10, and you make $10 an hour, or if a shirt cost $5, and you make $5 an hour, right?
Americans today are the wealthiest people in the world, living in the most wealthy period of history. This is undenyably the truth.
There is something to be said about the so called gap between the "rich" and "poor", but a better way to describe it would be the gap between the "Richest", and the "rich". It is true that the richest group of people have seen their real consumption increase much faster than the middle class or poor. And unlike a lot of people, I would fully agree with you that disparity between the rich and the richest is undesirable. It would be much better to see income increase evenly amoung all people.
But this disparity doesn't have much to do with foriegn trade. It has more to do with the minimum capital required to do buisness in the United States. 50 years ago, lets say you wanted to open a buisness, let say a small factory that machines parts. Such a buisness would be fairly easy for a middle class person to start. But not so today. The cost of OSHA compliance, compliance with local/state/country/federal enviornmental laws and hiring the experts, lawyers, to ensure compliance, insuring that you comply with all the non-enviornment local/state/country/federal laws, ensuring that you meet all the conditions that your workplace is handicapped accessible, making sure you are not only in full compliance with the 75,000 pages of tax laws, but that you can prove to the IRS you are in full compliance... making sure you are an "equal oportunity employer" (this wouldn't be so bad if it was simply banning discrimination, but it is thousands of pages of rules and regulations that can be quite counter-inuitive, and you are going to have to hire a lawyer to deal with them), and lets not forget the cost of liability insurance, because people in America love to deal with them.
Basicly, you are talking a cost of several million dollars to start a significant buisness in the U.S.
Why would they buy American? (Score:4, Insightful)
Globalization works great for the rich people. It forces their entire workforce to take pay and benefit cuts in order to eek out a living. At the same time, the people who sit on the top of the pile are getting tax cuts and crying about how unfair it is that they be asked to contribute anything to the society that made them rich in the first place.
Again, this shows that Bush and his ilk have no connection with the citizens of this country.
Re:Why would they buy American? (Score:3, Insightful)
Has it occured to you that by the very act of being able to post to slashdot, you are in fact, (compared to the rest of the worlds population) one of the rich peo
He's an idiot, but he's right this time (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, until everyone is up to speed, shoving jobs to third-world countries means that developed countries are going to see a LONG period of economic depression. And, of course, the corporations and their CEOs are STILL going to get richer, becaues their labor costs will plummet at the same time their sales increase.
Still, it has to happen eventually. It's just gonna suck for the U.S. and Europe.
Hunger in the US (Score:4, Informative)
It tells me something different ... (Score:3, Insightful)
It tells me something different than it tells you.
"How fat people are" in the US is a piss-poor measure of their poverty level ... except, perhaps, in the opposite direction that you're assuming. Due mostly to warping effect of agribusiness corporations and their reps in Congress have on the market, it's cheaper to be fat and malnourished in the US than it is to be slim and healthy.
A few problems (Score:3, Insightful)
2) A global economy only means more money for shareholders, not joe blow. If his job needs to go overseas, he's pumping gas to whoever is left that can afford a car.
3) What the fuck do we care about India (or China)? They don't pay our taxes. They aren't getting shot at in Iraq. That they don't like Pakistan is really the only useful thing about them. They didn't vote for Dubya, hell not even half of us did.
4) Their workers cannot compete fairly against american workers, owing largely to property values in the US. Ever try to buy a small house near San Jose? 50 year mortgage ring a bell?
5) US dollars invested overseas are not ending up in american hands. They're ending up in India. How is that good for us?
6) Why should US children bother to learn math or science? There will be no jobs utilizing those skills. Instead they should be learning history, deceit and bed pan frisbee.
7) Who is going to be left to build and design missiles, aircraft, tanks, and navy ships if our unskilled factory jobs are done elsewhere, and all our highly skilled design jobs are done elsewhere? Oh that's right, we have a great track record of peace lately.
8) The only thing keeping the investors in the US is the relative safety, uncorrupt government (by comparison), and generally complacent populace. If they start getting hungry they will get angry, and have no problem shooting your ass.
I find it intriguing... (Score:5, Insightful)
how the often libertarian gestalt of Slashdot suddenly advocates government-sponsored trade protectionism as soon as the topic of *computer-related* jobs comes up. Farm subsidies are economically inefficient, and they distort the true price of food. The same thing is true of the oil industry. Why can't the government get smart and start allowing non-distorted prices for gasoline?! Obviously the government is in the hands of special interests. Ah, but then the subject of outsourcing comes up, and the tech industry is under threat and in need of assistance!
There's clear hypocrisy at play here. We want competition and open markets, we want global cooperation in open source software development, we just don't want to give up top dog status in areas that directly affect our jobs.
Made in China is fine and programming in India is fine, as long as the price of laptops keeps dropping. When a product is even a few dollars more expensive than average, Slashdotters are more than willing to scream and yell about it. Well, lower prices are the result of global markets. More buyers, more sources of cheap production.
We'd rather get cheap, well-made goods and donate to aid organizations than truly allow developing economies to compete with us.
Bush just doesn't get it (Score:5, Informative)
(Kerry, FWIW, talked about eliminating some of the tax incentives that encourage companies to offshore. At least he understood the problem and had an appropriate, if timid, response.)
s/give you scholarship/remove existing subsidies/ (Score:5, Insightful)
Ya' know, I'm starting to think... (Score:4, Insightful)
The mask is off. Now we get to meet the real Dubya.
Useless to Argue (Score:4, Insightful)
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls [bls.gov]
(select the 4th item and have them draw a graph for you!)
This form isn't part of a proper global economy. (Score:3, Informative)
Parity (Score:3, Insightful)
The common thread I keep seeing intoned over and over in threads here is all the doom and gloom, that everything can be done cheaper elsewhere and jobs will go and go never to return. To some extent this is true, jobs will leave. Things ARE cheaper in India. However what people neglect is how market conditions change in the target countries. In India for instance, the demand for that cheap labor is so high, that already you are seeing a substantial increase in wages over even 10 years ago (its still very small compared to US salaries, but it IS rising). This is generating that middle class spoken of in the article. At the same time these same engineers are creating a consumer class and discovering a sense of entitlement. Doesn't all this sound familiar, oh yeah, its what happened in the US over a span of 50-60 years or so. The general concept behind globalization isn't that the US economy and work for is destroyed and impoverished, but rather one of the world economy reaching parity. 10-15 years from now, the overall cost of labor will be comparable, or close to comparable between india and the US most likely. Companies won't offshore to india, it will instead be to china, or russsia, or some country in africa. The point to the theory is the that haves and the have nots will come closer together in a global economy. Workers in India will eventually earn the same rights and standards of employment as the US and Europe. At the same time Europe and the US will learn how to make its workers cost less to companies. And while all this is going on, new economic powers will be rising in the way india is now. The process in it ultimate form would have many many nations all competing on even footing, but before that can happen the process of realocation of resources needs to happen. Its painful, but its not the end of the world. Sure people will lose jobs, but we as people will adapt and move on. As has been mentioned we AREN'T entitled to anything by right, we work hard, we do jobs, we earn money. The US unemployment rate for all the doom and gloom is still one of the best in the world. There will always be people who suffer do to economics, and whenever thos people are concentrated in one sector they will complain loudly (look at the manufacturing sector of the past), but those same people always make do and move on.
I agree with him on this issue (Score:3, Informative)
Futility (Score:4, Insightful)
Outsourcing is international trade. Two companies, one in America, one in India, exchange money for software.
If outsourcing is to a company's advantage then they will try to do it. That's a given. The only way to prevent outsourcing is to put up massive and draconian trade barriers.
Unfortunately, such trade barriers would impoverish the American people and cripple the American economy. An enormous amount of America's (and indeed the world's) wealth is due to international trade. It's one of the few points that most economists agree on.
So do you want to lose your job from outsourcing or from a crippled economy?
Let me get this straight... (Score:4, Insightful)
Outsource Everyone (Score:5, Insightful)
In short, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The single best way to cut U.S. corporate labor costs is to outsource the top of the pyramid.
Re:Mmmm Curry (Score:3, Insightful)
Which will have to pay franchising fees to McDonald's America, and also purchase raw product from McDonald's Indian Distribution centers which are owned by McDonald's America.
all those fancy plasma TVs aren't made in America
But are paid for and sold by American companies.
so the American working man won't benefit, but the big American companies will..
That depends on how you define the American "working man". "Working man" used to m
Re:This is just ignorance. (Score:4, Insightful)
The US economy is current diverting resources to needy areas such as government bureaucracy, the retail and service sectors, housing construction and the armed forces. Thank goodness we're not locked into software development and manufacturing!