Toyota and Honda are American companies that outsourced production to Japan?
The problem here is outsourcing to other countries specifically because they have cut rate costs for employees, and don’t have those pesky Federal guidelines, unions, and the like.
Sure, the other countries may be constantly under fire for human rights violations and not have any employment guidelines or price control - but hell, they’re cheaper, so screw 'em.
Generally it’s low-end high tech jobs that gets outsourced - people who crank out code, or call center help. In order to be outsourced, a service must be of such a repetitive and standardized nature that it does not matter who does it or where it gets done.
“Basic rights” is a subjective term. A person living in squaler in Asia, India or South America might be more willing to accept lower pay and benefits that a big fat American raised on his God-given right to a house, SUV and 2.2 kids.
Zagadka - I think it would be professionally negligent of me to accept an economic analysis performed by the Dead Kenedy’s.
Are you talking about local economies or the Global economy because the same argument applies to both. Just as Americans would resent a great income disparity that forces them to live to support overpaid CEOs, America as a whole cannot expect to earn significantly more than market wage in a global economy by simple virtue of being American.
Because they generally do…it’s basic economics. Case in point - the sagging economy has weakened the US dollar which will have the effect of encouraging manufacturing (low costs) and foreign investment (buy low dollars sell high). As with everything in economics every benefit has a cost associated with it.
The problem is that everyone thinks that the worlds economy should “self-correct” so that the US has the highest standard of living on the planet.
Do not confuse 20 years of industry experience with 20x 1 year experience performing the same tasks.
As already pointed out, we still maintain our infrastructure.
Economies aren’t “driven” by anyone except market forces. No one can just wave a magic want and make jobs appear out of nowhere otherwise they would.
There can be big disadvantages in outsourcing if your supply lines are to long. This was realised by the very successful Spanish fashion chain Zara. They tried shifting manufacturing to the Far East and it did not work . So everything was bought back to Spain and a lot of it is done in-house . Result :- faster response to changing fashions and a tighter control on budgets.
This link gives more details :- http://www.ebusinessforum.com/index.asp?doc_id=3490&layout=rich_story
These Dead Kennedys lyrics contain a couple of popular myths.
For one, unemployment compensation does not run out after just six weeks. It takes more like six months.
For another, persons who are unemployed but whose unemployment compensation has run out do not automatically fall off the radar of national unemployment statistics.
Could you expand a little on this? What kind of self-corrections? When?
IMO, the correction will be a higher standard of living in currently poor countries and a decline of this standard of living in currently rich countries. Not necessarily until all of them will be on par, since it would take a long time, and a lot of things can change over the long term.
These days, 13 weeks.
You do realize that the song was written 20 years ago, right?
Yes, they’re called free marketers. There are a LOT of them on the Dope.
Just because a potential enemy is from Asia doesn’t mean you can say “Yellow Peril” and make the rest of us not consider the wisdom of exporting our tech to them.
Sure, you can export infrastructures. Factories that once made electronic components here shut down because they can’t make money when competing with slave labor in China. Such factories now are going concerns in China. For all practical concerns, the infrastructure has been exported.
This assumes that free markets don’t best provide for people and their needs. Why can’t a person support a free market and people, since free markets provide for people?
That company made a bad business decision. But I fail to anything immoral about it.
Fuck WWIII. In a few more years when China decides ownership is more valuable than continuing investment capital, they’ll be nationalizing everything we sent over. No massive global catastrophe needed. Just look at when we’ve gone through over the years with nationalization issues in South America.
The question is whether that will touch off WWIII.
Wrong, at least for the short term. One of our large customers (specifically, management, to the chagrin of the engineering analysts there) has been working toward sending their finite element analysis work to India (among other tasks, I imagine, but this is the one that directly affects me, since my job entails engineer analysis outsourcing, primarily FEA). This, and the more general fields of engineering analysis (stress, heat transfer, etc.) require a great deal of knowledge and skill, more than management realizes. The workers in India, unknowledgeable and unskilled about the products their analyzing, best practices, optimizing the use of the FEA software, and often the basic fundamentals of analysis theory (cite: numerous postings to the FEA mailing list I subscribe to) necessary for making sound engineering decisions rely on my customers to guide them through the procress. Given the time difference, and the amount of time required to guide them through a task, the engineers who are supposed to be outsourcing this stuff end up doing it themselves, to the annoyance of management, who end up paying their Indian employees to do nothing.
In your defense I will add that I think this approach will be short-lived. The attitude of management seems to be that, if you can learn to use a GUI, you can do finite element analysis. The fact is, there’s a lot more to it than just cranking through menu picks. Hopefully, management will figure this out.
Of course, the question becomes when the top management will start to realize that their jobs could be outsourced. Hell, I am sure lots of companies could find someone in India willing to do just as poor a job as CEO at 1/10 the price…Actually for some companies, finding someone who would really be able to do as poor a job would be the challenging part since they would have to find someone who at least had gotten an MBA to breed the common sense out of them! 
Well, isn’t it immoral to do things that hurt people so that you can benefit, especially when you wouldn’t be significantly harmed if you didn’t?
A few miles from me is the old mansion that was used for that Stephen King “Rose Red” TV movie a few years ago. It’s inside a walled community in Lakewood, Washington. We went to peek over the wall at it. Inside is a development of upscale houses with gardens, private gyms in seperate cottages, private docks, etc. Outside, across the street from the wall are trailer parks with gouges made in the dirt for the kids to play in. This being the Pacific Northwest, most of the trailer’s roofs are rotted with moss. A large portion of the trailers’ renters are military families from Fort Lewis, who couldn’t find jobs so they joined the Army, so they could guard the supply lines of trade that support the people inside the wall.
I understand that some people are going to do better than others, and in many cases made choices and efforts deserving reward. But do they really have to have life this much fucking better than the others?
Not exactly true as more and more jobs being offshored are more than just basic jobs. But let’s assume that your statement were correct.
If you take the basic jobs out of the system, how do people get the on-the-job training and experience they need to advance to more involved and detailed work? How do people become “innovators”, to use a current buzzword? You don’t get out of college and step into a senior design position!
Know what? Based on the amount of proprietary information that the beancounters are pushing to share with their offshore contractors in the name of saving a few bucks per hour, I can totally see this happening–no kidding. This from recent conversations with my customers/former co-workers/friends.
I’m still waiting for the part where you explain how the market auto-corrects, Star Was.
I suggest you get in your way-back machine and head off to Britain in the '80s. Tell us how it all went.
Oh, wait! We already know!
When not even Reagan would buy into an idea, you know it is bad. O_o
What was this idea that Reagan wouldn’t buy into?
Actually, unemployment benefits are for 26 weeks. (6 months) Late last year, or early this year, Bush signed a bill that extended that (temporarily) for an additional 13 weeks.
A little theory called Monetarism.
Here’s an interesting quote I grabbed out of the April 19, 2004 issue of Businessweek in the section called Talk Show:
Emotionally, it sure makes it easier to get rid of “positions”, instead of people.