Exporting jobs

I don't know why you are all getting worked up about this. It's being going on in electronics since the 1980s. Where did Korea /Taiwan get their electronic industries from?

After all, US consumers love low prices.. as do we all.. So if you want low prices and the job is labour intensive you either pay existing workers less or move to where they are paid less..

All the rest is just BS...
education/patriotism etc.

Unless of course you are prepared to pay 50% more for a Made in USA sticker. We Brits proved a long time ago that is not valid and protection of local markets does not work either...(see your steel and car industries for examples of industries losing market share for years and years...)
 
Quote from madf:

I don't know why you are all getting worked up about this. It's being going on in electronics since the 1980s. Where did Korea /Taiwan get their electronic industries from?
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Well, IMO the scope of job loss hapening now is totally unprecedented and cannot be compared to what happened before. The quantity and quality of lost jobs, number of industries and professsions affected is staggering.

What's more important people before had alternatives. If a worker lost his jobs in the 80s he could have upgraded his skills and start a new carrer in engineering, accounting IT etc. Granted it was not easy and he may have had to start from the bottom but it was possible and rewarding. Now with loss of accounting, engineering and IT jobs I do not see any alternatives whatsoever.

As I am typing the payroll number just came out and it's terrible. Two years into alleged recovery and no new jobs are created. That says it all.
 
well for years the US has had a strong dollar policy which is equivalent to exporting jobs.

It still has a huge budget deficit and a huge balance of trade deficit.

And it has very low interest rates.

You cannot have all thoise and jobs as well .. in the long term

So perhaps now it's time to actually PAY?

Economics is right in the long term.. and US economic policies over the past 20 years have been designed to shut out economic reality in the long term...

Where is the US car industry? The US aerospace industry?

The US mlitary industry is still number 1... that's what you are paying for.. and it's all US based and very very expensive...

You get what you pay for in the long term....
 
Fri January 9, 2004 03:45 PM ET

By Jonathan Nicholson
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The year 2003 was the most difficult for U.S. job hunters since 1983, as they faced the gloomiest job market in years, according to Labor Department figures released on Friday.

The unemployment rate was the highest since 1994, and the search for a new job was the longest in two decades.

According to Labor Department data, the average spell of unemployment lasted 19.2 weeks in 2003, or almost five months. That was the longest average duration since 1983, when the U.S. economy was emerging from the worst recession since the Depression. Then the average spell was 20.0 weeks.

As a percentage of all the unemployed, the long-term jobless -- those out of work for 27 weeks or more -- made up 22.1 percent in 2003, the highest annual number since 23.9 percent in 1983.

Democrats have called for renewing a federally-funded extension of unemployment benefits offered through states to deal with the problem. They revived their attacks on Friday after a weaker-than-expected jobs report showed only 1,000 new hires in December. Measures of long-term joblessness improved slightly in the month, though.

While Bush administration officials have continually repeated that they will not be satisfied "until every American who wants a job can get one," it has yet to support a renewal of extended benefits, a move many economists say would help blunt the economic damage of the rise in long-term unemployment.

In early December, Treasury Secretary John Snow told Reuters the administration had yet to decide if it would support extending the program for a third time.

According to the liberal-leaning Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 80,000 to 90,000 workers will be exhausting their state-funded benefits every week by late January, after the program's eligibility ended in December.

"Unemployment is the Achilles' heel of this administration and Congressional Republicans, and they cannot continue to ignore it," said House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, of Maryland.

Lee Price, an economist with the Economic Policy Institute and a former Clinton-era Commerce Department official, said the long-term jobless numbers show how difficult the labor market remains.

Extending jobless benefits again would stimulate the economy by putting money in the pockets of people not getting paychecks, Price said. "Almost 100 percent of that is going to be spent," he said.
 
Many of my friends have lost their jobs to poorly educated, terrorist-loving Indians who can't even speak English...

I don't agree with exporting our jobs to the terrorist-populated Al-Quaeeda Indians and the commie North-Korean loving Chinese...

I would agree with exporting jobs there if we militarily liberated those countries (to remove their weapons of mass destruction) and ruled the countries directly from Washington... then we can use the labor there for free as the Indians and Chinese would exist to serve us or face the consequences... but the way things are now, they are stealing our jobs...

We must not allow these 3rd world cave-dwelling Indian terrorists and commie Chinese to screw us like this... I say we attack these God-forsaken countries and show em who their master is... then they will work for us on our terms, like in Iraq (whose people and oil are better off under our control than under Saddam's)...

As members of the Civilized World, I say we stand tall and fight for the jobs of our patriots... if the Indians keep on screwing us over, I say we give the Pakistanis a bunch of F16s and give the Pakistanis the go ahead to attack India...

God Bless America...
 
P.S. The above account is purely tongue-in-cheek fun and nothing more than a caricature of American neo-conservatism!!

But if you found yourself agreeing with it, I can only suggest that you need your head examined... personally, I am all for free markets... if we preach it, we must not be one-sided and hypocritical about it... Indians are not only cheaper than our IT workers, but they are on average probably better qualified... it makes total economic sense for our companies to outsource IT work to India, if they are to be able to compete on the world stage...
 
Quote from candletrader:

it makes total economic sense for our companies to outsource IT work to India, if they are to be able to compete on the world stage...
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Nobody ever questioned the fact that outsourcing is good for the companies (at least short-term), it's not the issue here. The question is whether it's good for the country and what's going to happen to the american middle class.

It sure make sense for a company to outsource everything to India including or excluding its CEO. Then it will be able to compete with another american company which outsourced everything including or excluding its CEO to China. It may well be beneficial to shareholders of both companies, whomever they are, but the question is whether we can still call them "our" companies and what is the benefit for the rest of the country. A lot of people from these companies would lose their jobs and have no chance to replace them cause the rest of the industries/companies are also going to be in India/China/Russia.

Take Levi Strauss for example. Do we even have to care what's good for this company if it does not have a single employee (outside headquarters) left in this country. It's now turn of the Chinese to worry what's good for Levi Strauss.
 
Quote from dddooo:

Nobody ever questioned the fact that outsourcing is good for the companies (at least short-term), it's not the issue here. The question is whether it's good for the country and what's going to happen to the american middle class.
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Some here think we have some intangible advantage that will allow us to stay on top of the heap even though we can't really compete in most ways. I think there will be a great leveling which will not be good for the average US citizen. China, India and the rest of the developing world will gain and we will lose.

m
 
Please be aware in the real world there are huge disparities in wealth and income. The average US standard income is probably around $40-$60k per year. In India it's lucky to be $10k per year.


In a free world - a democratically free world free from central planned economies - jobs that can be done at $5 an hour instead of $25 an hour will move.

It's simple market economics.

I find it strange that this subject is even discussed in the US which after all is the champion of the free market.

Surely the US is the champion of the free market still or is it the "free market as long as it does not affect our standards of living"?

I don't believe it is the latter: if however you believe it is and act accordingly then you are by your actions proving that all those who criticise the actions of the US in the world as "economic imperialism" :.
are correct.

I would hope that is 100% wrong.

Many countries including mine owe the US a great debt for its help - both military and economic - in the past. To see that help and vision transformed to economic imperialism would be tragic..
 
Quote from MackieMesser:

I'd like to believe these bromides, but I don't. The world is going to get really competitive and we aren't going to have what it takes.

"American
creativity, ingenuity, invention and entrepreneurship
— and with the right public policies and business
priorities in place."

We are losing that and others are gaining.

m
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mackie,

Sure, we can become competitive if we wanted to. We still have the best resources, talent, and educational system in the world for now...

But the problem I see if that it's not that easy. We have been preaching global capitalism for years. And it would be very hypocritcal for us to stop that policy now just when developing countries are now ready to play in the biggest game of all - global trade and commerce!

We gotta practice what we preach. And it's coming back to haunt us in a big way. All these countries are now ready and hungry to get a piece of the pie! And that just means less for American Middle Class. Old powerful civilizations have always yield to newer, hungrier ones. It has always been this way. And will always be so..

Changes will come slowly at first then faster and faster.. Buckle your seat belts!
 
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