It’s just a formality. It’s no different from getting a job in your own country, if you think about it. If the company can find someone else better qualified than you, they’ll hire him/her. If they can’t, they’ll hire you. If you happen to be a foreigner, they’ll be able to say to their government “This foreigner is better qualified than any citizen of our country who applied for this job.”
Which just plain doesn’t happen. In South Korea, for example, the only jobs an American can get are teaching English, writing English textbooks, or appearing on television. The process of getting hired is oneroud for both the employe and employer–the employer has to sponsor the employee, which means filing paperwork with several government ministries, paying a bond to the government to ensure that the employer can afford to send the employee home at the end of his stay, and paying for the employee to fly out of Korea to get the work visa.
The idea that one can just pull up stakes and move to another country is ludicrous.
I seem to have hijacked this thread. In order to allow the thread to return to “How exactly does outsourcing make us stronger?” I’ve started a thread in IMHO: Help me “outsource myself”.
Sorry for the hijack.
Well, if you mean go to the airport (or port) on a whim with no preperation whatsoever, then ok, I’ll agree. If you mean that it is impossible for people to move to other countries, work and live, then I’d have to strenuously disagree. It may not be statistically significant in comparison with the numbers of people who move to America, but there certainly are people who move to other countries.
You might look around this online magazine.Especially this one which purports to list overseas opportunities. Here’s an article from the Wall Street Journal on creating an international resume.
Finally, this book claims to be a how to on the subject. It contians in one of the reviews “Every year, hundreds of thousands of Americans and their families accept the challenge of living and working abroad.” Not an acredited cite, I’ll admit, but clearly someone thinks it does happen with some frequency.
Not really. It has been cyclical. During good times, markets are growing and companies fight for volume and market share. During bad times, they tend to focus more on cost-cutting. Some companies have figured out how to do both successfully. Wal-Mart, for example, has exploited savings from inventory management using sophisticated information sharing and decision-making processes, and passed them onto consumer prices (of course, it helps that the marginal costs are low as well) which attracts more consumers.
Regarding the open borders/immigration thing mentioned by Binary Drone, it is indeed pretty complex and difficult to obtain a work authorization permit for a foreign national to work here in the US. Why should it be any easier for a US citizen in India? I don’t understand what you are advocating here.
I agree but I hope you aren’t under the impression that it is substantially easier for anyone to move to the US and get jobs.
No, that is just the point. I don’t think that it should be as hard as it is here either. What I am advocating is quite simply that as a condition for globalized business; borders must be wide open for labor.
Let me see if I understand this. You are proposing a US law which would require that any US business employing people in other countries can only do so if the US and that country have some sort of open border treaty?
You are correct that the paperwork can definitely be reduced. If the government had enough resources and didn’t always give into public rhetoric, it could even remove or increase the cap on work visas, which stands at a paltry 65000. Unbelievably enough, there are enough groups out there seeking to completely eliminate the work visa program - which is some .02% of the population, and which is one of the biggest channels of importing skill and brainpower from other countries.
I think you have in large part identified the problem. One of the reasons people demand protectionist measures is that the government is not doing enough to
(1) mitigate the effects of those who are hurt by the outsourcing;
(2) work to try to insure that everyone is getting at least some reasonable share of the benefits from our increasing average wealth. When almost all the gains in the economy are going to the very top (the top 1% saw after-tax incomes grow 200% in real terms between 1979 and 2000 while those families in the middle quintile see gains of only 15%…and I seem to recall this gain is due mainly to working longer hours, not getting higher wages), it is no wonder that there is not a lot of buy-in to this notion that maximizing our economic efficiency is such a wonderful thing.
Also, there are some truly dicey issues that need to be dealt with, such as the fact that other countries often have more lax environmental standards. (Of course, the WSJ editorial page solution for this is that we need to relax ours but some of us don’t see this as the best idea.)
I am not saying that protectionism is the solution…I don’t think it is. But, as long as people like Bush go around mouthing platitudes and stick their heads in the sand in regards to dealing with the issue that there are winners (usually the already wealthy) and losers when the market becomes more globalized (after all, we are not even allowed to discuss who gets what with his tax cuts because that’s “class warfare”) then they should expect that people are going to call for protectionist measures.
Fear Itself has already responded to this point but I wanted to point out that it is actually potentially misleading in the opposite direction. I.e., it doesn’t sound too bad if you say that almost half the people in the U.S. own equities. The WSJ editorial pages are very proud of the fact that there is such a large “investor class” and trot such facts out regularly. However, this overlooks the distribution of who owns what. And, it turns out that a huge fraction of the total value is owned by a very small fraction of people. (I don’t remember what the exact numbers are.) After all, we could easily get equity ownership up to 100% by having the government give out exactly 1 share of stock in some company to every household in the U.S. But, this would hardly do very much to mitigate inequality in our society.
I’m not sure how you think this would help or exactly what you think this would do. Do you forsee folks from the US rushing to India or China to get low wage jobs? I see an open boarders approach having just the opposite effect…those that could would most likely rush to the US. But why, you ask, we gots no jobs, we have billions on the streets, unemployment everywhere, things are SO terrible, blah blah blah. Except they aren’t. We whine about this stuff (a LOT) but really most American’s have no idea what its like out there in other countries, especially those we are talking about with vast quantities of cheap labor. There is no way most Americans would even dream of picking up stakes and going to India to find a job for instance…they couldn’t take it frankly. Hell, most American’s wouldn’t even like to pick up stakes and go to Europe for that matter (much as they dream they would), and its a hell of a lot closer to the US than India or China is…and I’m not talking about in miles.
But lets say you did open the borders up to everyone, and lets say that labor did follow the jobs and didn’t simply rush to the wealthy countries like the US, Europe, Japan, etc. What then? India opens its borders and gets flooded with folks looking for work from all the poorer countries out there. Then what? How does India support all these new mouths to feed? Do you think that enough new jobs will be exported to India/China/ect to allow all the poor folks to work? They don’t have enough jobs exported to them NOW without all those extra people…thats why, despite us exporting jobs India’s unemployment is 8.8% (2002) (from the CIA handbook).
Also, whats your rational as to exactly why nations SHOULD allow people following jobs to come into their countries and strain their social systems (if they have them), their resources, and take jobs away from their own people? I’m really curious as to what you think your idea would actually accomplish…
-XT
Of course lowering of the cost of things that US consumers buy is good - just as long as there are US consumers with money to buy. Those without jobs have a hard time finding money to pay the cheaper prices.
In the long run there is little argument that lowering costs is a good thing. However, there is a considerable economic transient, like the one JohnnyLA is now experiencing. People have to retrain for new skills for example and that takes both time and money. In the meantime people have to eat, pay rent or martgages etc. It does seem to me that some of the cost saving advantage to the general welfare needs to be used to help smooth out the transient. Our business and political hot shots need to be a little more proactive in this area and anticipate the need for such actions by the society that is being benefited.
What do you think the government can do?
(i) A system to support those out of work financially? Offer re-training services in currently hot areas of growth in the economy?
(ii) Put a cap on salaries for top executives (like Japan, for instance). Regulate wages for middle and lower management?
As for the government havings their heads in the sand, the Congress recently voted to bring the temporary work visa cap from 195000 back to 65000. Why? Ill-targeted public appeasement. I wish the lobbies in Washington and the general public were more informed about the issues involving labor markets, off-shoring, work visas and immigration. As long as people like Lou Dobbs exist to scaremonger and mix up the issues of national security, immigration, illegal aliens, terrorism and legal skilled workers etc etc, we will continue to see this sort of ill-targeted legislative and executive measures.
I agree that the small picture (individual jobs lost) is an issue but we have to acknowledge that it is the inevitability of an open economy (John Mace’s analogy to automation and cheaper imports are spot on — the only reason why off-shoring particularly takes the heat is because humans are directly replacing humans which takes me back to the poor level of debate on these issues) and yes, we should definitely have a strong support system for the unemployed. That is sadly lacking.
I’m afraid the much-maligned Dogface (can people BE so stupid as to not understand he was mocking and disapproving of the scenario he presented?) and John Mace have it right. Income levels in the U.S. will have to gradually fall to meet the rest of the world.
Also, a world with open borders – with no tariffs on goods and no restrictions on the movement of workers is logically equivalent to a U.S. which allows no importation of foreign goods, no offshoring, etc. Think about it.
It’s really pretty simple. As the supporters of “free” trade will no doubt agree, all we really need to do is outsource all the jobs. After all, since there are no downsides and price reductions always outweigh any possible negative impact of wage reductions, there is no reason to keep any job in the US. The more jobs we send overseas, the better off we’ll all be.
Besides, outsourcing only impacts non-core workers. You know, customer service, paralegals, medical consultants, engineers, light industry workers, programmers, and other such degenerate scum. And with their jobs safely overseas, they’re free to give up on the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars they invested in training and just find something new. Or not, since as noted above, keeping any job in America is by definition counter-productive.
:rolleyes:
That’s right John. The record unemployment rate for EEs and computer scientists is because the minimum wage is too high. Give me a break. The jobs at minimum wage aren’t going to India.
Craig Barrett and others say that we have to improve education. I agree, though the current administration doesn’t. But if you are planning a major, and see lots of PhDs in your field unemployed, you might have second thoughts about going into that field.
I think this trend is going to end, though. Silicon Valley boomed because people working for one company started another, and did indeed increase the number of jobs. Many of these people came from India and China, which is why restricting immigration is always stupid. (Assuming equal wages here.) But, when you move design and programming jobs to India, that is where the new companies will start, with new CEOs. When the CEO jobs start getting offshored - and it is going to happen, and companies doing business this way get put out of business by their children, then we will hear a different tune.
I think you could make the claim that it’s the Dems and Libs who are destroying education in this country by NOT TEACHING but changing the schools into P.C. indoctrination camps.
I agree with that.
Do you understand what ‘core business’ is? If your firm does engineering, engineering IS your core business. If you do para-legal, then THAT is your core business. So, my company does IT…how would it be a help to me if for some reason I sent all the jobs in my company overseas? My core business is IT for gods sake. I outsource (currently) payroll and HR…because thats NOT my core business. Get it?
Well, I’d have to ask for a cite that the current administration doesn’t agree with improving education…at least any less than any other administration. They certainly pour a lot of money into programs like “no child left behind” and eRate as far as I can see.
I agree with the second part of your statement though…to a degree. Part of the problem though is people in the US chase the highest paying, lowest effort jobs flooding the market with semi-skilled people. Least thats how it was in IT. I remember during the hayday of IT in the US. Kids right out of highschool with an MCSE certification making $40k a year without any experience (and most of them clueless). I can remember when I worked for Williams Communications/Nextira One how hard it was to find GOOD engineers, and how many of the 'engineer’s we did have were clueless, with no experience and few skills.
It had to pop, and it did. And all those folks that oriented towards tech jobs, IT, programming, etc because it was easy and it was good money are out of jobs now. I lost my job as well when my company folded and they layed off everyone in IT. They didn’t outsource (they might have survived if they HAD of)…they attempted to retain technical staff even when there was no work because it HAD to come back. And it didn’t. So, my old company doesn’t even exist anymore. ALL its employee’s were cut loose to fend for themselves. So, instead of the company staying in business by outsourcing some of the work, and keeping SOME US workers, now there is no company, and no US workers at all.
-XT
litost: Well, I must admit that I don’t really know. To be honest, I have always been better at diagnosing problems than coming up with solutions. But, yes, I think re-training is a big thing, as is subsidizing education, doing something about health insurance so it is not tied to your employment, and providing decent support and retraining for the unemployed.
But, I think there is another more basic thing that needs to be done which is simply to acknowledge the problem. Bush et al. are still at the stage of an alcoholic who has not even admitted there is a problem. First, it must be admitted:
(1) That the world economy has many stakeholders and policy should not be dictated by what is best for multinational corporations under the weak claim that what is best for them will ultimately be best for everyone else. [Perhaps a corollary of this is that while markets are useful, they are not perfect and one has to stop believing in their with religious fanaticism and actually take a hard look in what ways they work and what ways they don’t.]
(2) Along those lines, it must be understood that there are trade-offs. There is not just one correct trade policy, willed by God, just like there is not just one correct tax cut policy willed by God. It is perfectly legitimate to ask who is getting what in the society. In fact, it is freakin’ irresponsible not to! This is not class warfare. Rather, it is legitimately acknowledging competing interests rather than just allowing the monied interests to win by default and declaring any attempt to insert other interests to be “class warfare” (in the realm of taxation) or “protectionism” (in the realm of trade). [As Warren Buffett so eloquently puts it, “If this is class warfare, then my class is winning.”]
(3) It must be acknowledged that a world economy can set up a race for the bottom in terms of environmental and labor standards and that this cannot be allowed to happen. [And, something clearly counterproductive like Chapter 11 in NAFTA must never be written into trade agreements again.]
So, I don’t pretend to have all of the answers here. There are certainly people out there like Jospeh Stiglitz and maybe Paul Krugman who have thought a lot harder about this and probably could give you some more definitive ideas. But, I think what one has to do first is get to the level where we can acknowledge the issues involved and figure out how best to deal with them. We are so freakin’ far from this under the current Administration that it is kind of hopeless to plan ahead much further than that.