How is outsourcing good for the economy?

[John_Mace]

@Beware of Doug

Good try John,, but I don’t want to keep playing serve-and-volley with you. It’s obvious we’re acting out the all too familiar scenario of liberal and conservative talking past each other. I’m trying to describe general trends that affect people and all you want is hard data you can take to the bank. Sorry to take up your time; feel free to bill me. :rolleyes:

You can roll your eyes all you want, but I asked you honest questions. Your “general trends” statements have nothing behind them. You’ve given us no evidence that they are actually true, other than you THINK they are true. If you can’t stand the heat, perhaps it is better that you get out of the kitchen.

Evil Captor: I’ll give you credit for being the one person who actually proposed some specific actions to be taken (raise taxes), but I’m not going to debate with someone whose tactics include thinly veiled personal insults, constant appeal to emotions, and distortion of my posts.

[Shalmanese]

@xtisme

Oh, and least some here think that I am talking out my ass, never lost MY job to outsourcing, blah blah blah…I lost my job when Clinton was still in office when the tech bubble was just starting to go tits up. Granted my job wasn’t shipped overseas…we just weren’t competetive anymore and the ENTIRE company folded…EVERYONE lost their jobs. Basically the US IT technicians and engineers priced ourselves out of the market…and new expert systems and automation, as well as a general loathing of things IT related after the bubble burst, made it so there just wsn’t a market for as many IT workers anymore. I was out of work nearly 2 years before I decided, in a shitty economy, to form my own company.

So your expecting us to take economic advice from someone who couldn’t even keep his own job?
:dubious:

I think the cries of rich people screwing the poor is confusing the issue. There are two factors that contribute to the perception that globalisation only benifits the rich:

1. Globalisation allows companies to make more profits.
2. The large majority of profits for a company go to only a few people.

The first is most definately caused by globalisation and I would regard it as an unmigitated good.

The second, I would dispute is even true unless I saw some hard date for it but the important thing is that it has NOTHING to do with globalisation. It’s strictly an internal problem and should be treated as such.

[Scylla]

@Evil Captor

So, Scylla, you would support the development of extensive safety nets to support workers harmed by the Big Suck?

That’s a pretty vague and open-ended question. I think it’s also somewhat ill-defined. I don’t see how it’s any difference if somebody loses their job because of the BIG SUCK, or because of UTOPIAN OUTSOURCING. The poor shlub has still lost his job. Why would you elect to help only the one that lost it to one cause and not to a person who lost it to another.
Secondly, your question is asked as a hypothetical, yet in fact, there is an extensive safety net to help workers harmed by outsourcing, or whatever cause. We have unemployment, welfare, Social Security, Food Stamps, subsidized housing, medicare, medicaid, soup kitchens, et cetera ad nauseaum. This definitely fulfills the role of an extensive safety net, does it not? We spend somewhere around a third of our tax revenues on programs to ensure subsistence.

Your question, asked properly would break down into a few parts: first, is it good economically to have some kind of safety net? Yes. It is. It hurts the economy and everyone in it if the workers and producers cannot survive transitions.

Is it good morally? Absolutely. It’s good to help people in need.

Of course, both of these have a flip side. If your safety net is set so high that it is preferable to some levels of employment, then your safety net instead of protecting people from and ameliorating the effects of Outsourcing is actually contributing to the phenomenom, and perpetuating it. So, one has to be careful.

The next question is whether our current safety net is adequate. I’d say it’s absolutely awful. You want an example of a superior safety net, take a look at the Japanese model. It’s a kick ass program designed to provide relief, incentive and means to escape poverty. It works, and it actually costs very little compared to ours.

Their safety net is nowhere near as big as ours (if that’s what you mean by extensive,) but it works much much better.

So, no. I do not support an extensive safety net. I would support one that works. Ours doesn’t. I don’t give a shit how big it is and how extensive it is if it doesn’t work. If it doesn’t work then I don’t see how making it bigger changes that.

Finally, I’m not impressed with a willingness to adopt government charity, which is simply being generous with money that isn’t yours. That’s not generosity in my book.

[XT]

@Shalmanese

So your expecting us to take economic advice from someone who couldn’t even keep his own job?

Well, my company did $10 million last year…probably an unforgivable sin on this board, making money and all. However I don’t expect anyone to take economic advice from me.

-XT

[Eva_Luna]

@Evil Captor

C’mon, Eva, you’re not being completely fair here. The Indian programmers who make $15,000 a year are living in a country where that $15,000 can buy a HUGE amount in comparison to the U.S. – I don’t have the exact numbers, but they are probably living as well or possibly better than their U.S. counterparts who make $60K-$100K. So the value of the worker is the same in each society, it’s just that one society has generally lower costs and salaries than the other.

Oh, I’m not arguing that the costs of living, and therefore the salary scales, in the U.S. are completely different from in India. (And I have very mixed feelings about companies who are still making quite decent profits throwing qualified people out of work just to increase shareholder value.) I’m just arguing that the tech bubble was just that, a bubble, and now that it’s burst, I’m really sick of hearing people who were formerly grossly overpaid for their qualifications kvetching about how they’ve had to take pay cuts. If economies run in cycles, then what goes around comes around.

I also find it funny that in a thread where some people insist that people who are paid $5 to $8 an hour for their labor are worth no more than that because in a free market, what you are worth is what you are paid, no matter what that happens to be, other people are saying programmers aren’t “worth” $60-$100K a year. C’mon, people make up your mind. Either a person’s worth is determined exactly by their wages, or it isn’t.

I’m no proponent of a strict free market; you’re definitely mixing me up with other posters. I do believe a certain amount of regulation is necessary to protect workers. I’m just not sure that level of regulation should include preventing U.S. companies from paying Indian workers $15k instead of paying U.S. workers close to six figures for a quite run-of-the-mill professional job.

I’ve got a master’s degree and 10+ years in the full-time professional workforce, and have never made anything close to that (nor have many other qualified professionals I know; in fact, the vast majority of them don’t, including my own father, an Ivy-educated engineer with an MBA). I’m not complaining; I chose my career path, not for the moeney I would make but because I found it interesting, and I do alright. But I’m just tired of the complaining from people who can’t seem to realize that they have to take the bad times along with the good. If you’ve made $80k for 10 years, you should have been able to sock some of that away, not to mention pay for courses to keep your qualifications up-to-date, especially if you’re in a field where skills become outdated quickly.

[Evil_Captor]

@John Mace

Evil Captor: I’ll give you credit for being the one person who actually proposed some specific actions to be taken (raise taxes), but I’m not going to debate with someone whose tactics include thinly veiled personal insults, constant appeal to emotions, and distortion of my posts.

Your call, though I don’t remember specifically advocating raising taxes. As for the thinly veiled personal insult, I do feel that conservatives generally have a tendency to not care about the fate of those who get knocked around in economic downturns and I call them on it. It’s not an insult, more of an accusation. I consider it possible that you and other conservatives do in fact care about the downtrodden but that your concern is manifested in ways I don’t “get.” So, I try to figure it out.

[Evil_Captor]

@Scylla

Secondly, your question is asked as a hypothetical, yet in fact, there is an extensive safety net to help workers harmed by outsourcing, or whatever cause. We have unemployment, welfare, Social Security, Food Stamps, subsidized housing, medicare, medicaid, soup kitchens, et cetera ad nauseaum. This definitely fulfills the role of an extensive safety net, does it not? We spend somewhere around a third of our tax revenues on programs to ensure subsistence.

Actually, much of the safety net was dismantled in the Reagan era, as far as welfare is concerned. An unemployed person’s main source of income would be unemployment insurance, which in my state is barely enough to cover the rent/mortgage for most folks, leaving nothing or close to it for food, clothing and shelter. Also, it runs out after a max of 52 weeks. Six months is enough to find a job, but not necessarily a job that pays well enough to conver the rent/mortgage.

Of course, both of these have a flip side. If your safety net is set so high that it is preferable to some levels of employment, then your safety net instead of protecting people from and ameliorating the effects of Outsourcing is actually contributing to the phenomenom, and perpetuating it. So, one has to be careful.

Yeah, I’ll wait with bated breath for THAT to happen here.

The next question is whether our current safety net is adequate. I’d say it’s absolutely awful. You want an example of a superior safety net, take a look at the Japanese model. It’s a kick ass program designed to provide relief, incentive and means to escape poverty. It works, and it actually costs very little compared to ours.

This Japanese safety net sounds intriguing. Are there any good keywords for searching on it?

Finally, I’m not impressed with a willingness to adopt government charity, which is simply being generous with money that isn’t yours. That’s not generosity in my book.

I don’t know what you mean by “adopt government charity” so I don’t know how to respond to your statement. What specific idea that I have suggested would you define as “government charity.”