Per this article in Salon - White-collar sweatshops -
“Globalization” is becoming a dirty word to U.S. tech workers, increasingly angry and anxious as their jobs disappear overseas, never to return.
From the blue collar factory floor over the past few decades ago and now to the white collar cubicle of the technology worker, in this age of advancing globalization, if everything is outsourced to the lowest cost provider does this fundamentally undermine the value for a nation’s skilled labor in some way, and will it potentially have negative long term economic consequences for the American quality of life for skilled, white collar technology workers?
I never understand the hue and cry over globalization. Unless a company is taking advantage of overseas workes (as in a true sweatshop where workers are essentially slave labor) I think globalization is overall a good thing.
Realize that finding cheaper labor means lower prices for goods and services. Creating jobs overseas also allows those country’s economies to expand thus creating a larger marketplace and thus greater business opportunities for everyone.
Competition is ultimiately a good thing. It keeps innovation alive and keeps prices down. Up till now the US has been the best among the world’s countries at reinventing itself. If you study economies that are protectionist you see they ultimately falter…they just delay the inevitable (Japan comes to mind as one such country).
I grant that it sucks for the American workers out of a job. I can sympathize as I am currently one of the out-of-work people in this country seeking a job in the tech industry and have been so for four months. To some extent I’d love to see American jobs protected and me back in the workforce but I do not think it is in the best interests of our country to do so (just my personal best interests).
What is the average per capita income of the world?
I honestly don`t have a clue, but I think that may give some reference parameters to this thread.
Please don’t mix up the H-1B debate in this mess; it is a separate, but related debate. H-1B workers, by law, are required to be paid the same salary as U.S. workers at the companies that employ them, or the prevailing wage for the geographic area and occupation, whichever is higher. Plus there is a yearly quota of 195,000 H-1B visas, a number which will drop down to 65,000 as of Oct. 1. And H-1Bs are not just for programmers: they can be used for any person holding a job which requires a bachelor’s degree or equivalent in a specific field (plus, oddly enough, fashion models). Teachers, engineers, accountants, finance professionals, social workers: all would be eligible to be employed pursuant to an H-1B.
Outsourcing is really a separate debate: I’ve been meaning to start a GD thread about it for a few weeks now, but have had a hard time framing my thoughts. Some not terribly organized ones, for now:
Offshoring of professional work, such as programming, has been going on for a while now. Is this a bad thing in the short- to medium-term for U.S. workers? In the long term? Obviously it creates downward pressure on salaries, but does a foreigner somehow deserve less opportunities just because he’s a foreinger?
On the other hand, let’s be real; the cost of living in Beijing is significantly lower than in Seattle, plus the Chinese programmer probably didn’t have to take out $50k in student loans to become qualified for his job, so in many ways the playing field isn’t level.
What can individual Americans do to keep the economic balance tilted in their favor?
Jobs aren’t the only things being ousourced now. I read a newspaper article a few days ago (haven’t been able to find the online report yet), which takes the cake.
Those patients in the UK who have to wait upto several months before they can get certain kinds of surgery/treatment (don’t remember which exactly), will soon be sent BY THE NHS to India for those treatments. The NHS is currently in the process of making official a trend that has been going on for several years now. Treatment is immediate, it comes at a third of what it would cost in the UK, and they get a nice holiday in the bargain!
At the same time, newspapers here are regularly are filled with adverts for qualified nurses to take up employment in the Canada, the UK and the US.
Globalization is not devaluing labor, rather, it is the other way around: artificial barriers to trade and commerce inflate artificially the value of labor in some places to the detriment of others. The same argument was used against the integration of blacks: they would take jobs from whites and wages would drop. This was true but it was the only decent thing to do. Besides, it was not that the labor of whites was being devalued by offering jobs to blacks, it was that the value of the labor of whites was being artificially inflated by immorally keeping blacks out of the job market.
Creating legal barriers which attempt to keep jobs in one country is morally very wrong:
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It artificially inflates the cost of services and products in detriment of the consumners. It denies buyers and consumers the freedom of choice to buy where they think they can get the best value for their money. It means consumers have to pay more for goods and services in order to subsidise the workers of the sectors being protected.
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It denies the poor people in other countries the opportunity to make an honest living. The rich workers of the rich countries trying to deny the poor workers of the poor countries the opportunity to make a living. It is immoral and it is disgusting, no less disgusting than the racist policies which shut people out of jobs on account of their race.
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It hurts everyone and is not going to work in the long run. It is impossible to stop it and the sooner we get used to the idea the better and the more effective we can be in making the transition to a world economy a smooth one for everybody.
It is a shame on rich countries that we attempt to maintain our position of privilege. We subsidise our agriculture and deny poorer countries the ability to compete where they probably could compete better. We try to maintain our wasteful standard of living even at the expense of the lives of people in poor countries. We keep them out of our countries by immigration restrictions so they cannot come and work and we try to make barriers to their being able to work in their home countries. It is very shameful and history will not judge this any more kindly than it judged discrimination based on race. Every day people die trying to make it to a developed country. From Mexico they die trying to cross the dessert into the USA. From Africa they die by the dozen trying to cross the sea to Spain or Italy. Bodies wash ashore every day. They die in shipping containers. They continue to die every day in their desperate attempts to go somewhere where they can make a living but those who do not die and are caught are just sent back. We in the rich countries could not care less whether they live or die. We just want them to go away and w. We want to keep our standard of living even at the expense or poor people around the world. It is shameful.
Free trade and the H1-B and L-1 visa programs, allow companies to hire the cheapest labor in the world. This leads to greater profits, not necessarily cheaper goods at the store.
Nike shoes are not necessarily cheaper, just because Nike pays Vietnamese laborers very little wages. The point of free trade(NAFTA) is not to make sure goods(Nike shoes) are cheap, but rather to make sure that companies can get higher profits.
This is a structural change in the american economy, the jobs that are lost to cheap foreign labor are gone for good, the factories that close here and reopen in china, will never return(unlike past recessions and unlike the depression).
There is really no reason why the United States should produce anything, and in fact, in a few years, the United States will produce nothing. There also is no reason why american companies should employ american workers, american lawyers, nurses, computer programmers, customer service workers, billing and collections workers, radiologists, doctors, telephone solicitors, etc when we can get chinese or Indian workers to do the same job at one tenth the price of labor.
No repetitive job will be done by americans in the future, the United States will be a society where few americans actually do any work, we will just consume.
Even government jobs will eventually be “privatized” and then outsourced to foreign workers for a cheaper price. Already, some of last years income tax forms were partially examined by Indian contractors in India. Eventually, all government services will be preformed by foreigners.
What few americans remain that still actually work, who still have jobs, will have to make up for the lost taxes that the permanently unemployed no longer pay, as well as another increase in taxes that will be required to provide homes, food, and other goods/welfare for those who will never get jobs.
Any american company who builds a factory, or keeps a factory in america, employing expensive american workers instead of cheap chinese, indonesian, russian, indian, african, or mexican workers, will eventually go out of business from competition of those companies who do use the cheapest labor in the world.
Free trade and NAFTA will finally enable the vast majority of americans to never have to ever work again, nor ever pay any income taxes again(since they will have no taxable income). Nearly 50% of all americans already pay no income tax, and in a short time, over 90% of americans will pay no income tax when they dont need jobs anymore after their jobs are done by cheap asian workers instead.
The service and construction industries in the United States will be performed by cheap or illegal immigrants. We will be strictly a leisure class in the world, no workers here, no industry here, and no high tech here.
It will be a Utopia here in the United States, a New World Order where the United States becomes a “ruling” society with no workers.
For most of the first 2 centuries of the United States, we financed our government thru tarriffs, and kept out cheap foreign competition.
Now that we have free trade, financing of our government is being shifted from tarriffs to the income tax, a more equitable way to bring in money and thru borrowing and deficit spending.
The old archaic inefficient ways of our history are gone forever, you will never again see any major party advocate tarriffs instead of income taxes and borrowing, and no major party will ever again want americans to labor or manufacture any goods.
Perot and Pat Buchannan were soundly defeated in recent elections. Pat Buchannan, a republican running on “protectionist” policies got less than 1% of the primary vote in 2000. Perot, a third party candidate, also running on the “protectionist” platform, did not carry a single state in 1992 or 1996.
The long standing historic american doctrine of “proctection” of its industry and its jobs has ended.
You will never again see any serious national advocate a return to:
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NATIONAL REPUBLICAN PLATFORM, ADOPTED AT MINNEAPOLIS, MINN., JUNE 9, 1892 "We reaffirm the American doctrine of protection. We maintain that the prosperous condition of our country is largely due to the wise revenue legislation of the Republican Congress. We believe that all articles which cannot be produced in the United States, except for luxuries, should be admitted free of duty, and that upon all imports coming into the United States coming into competition with the products of American labor there should be levied duties equal to the difference between wages abroad and at home. "
Although almost no american company has been prosecuted for not obeying the H1-B laws and requirements, they can still be a pain, and do still have quotas, that is why most american companies are shifting from H1-B to L-1 visas, which do not have quotas nor requirements.
I dont understand your question, what do you mean by economic balance? The balance of payments of trade between countries is always “balanced”, in one way or another. There is no need to do anything. This “shifting” of labor and factories to other countries has been going on for decades, just try to find clothes, tv’s, vcr’s, etc which are actually made(and their components) in america.
Another huge benefit to american companies that free trade brings:
is an end to costly regulations and taxes, like building codes, epa regulations, osha requirements, social security, state taxes, labor unions, state and federal labor laws, etc which do not have to be paid or followed/obeyed if you build your factory in china with chinese workers instead of in Indiana employing american workers.
I’ve recently started working as a translator, for a company in other country.
Being in a 3rd world country, I’m beign paid what is considered here quite a bit of money. Of course, when I found out (and I DID find out) what would be the average wage I should be charging in the original country where my work is “sold”, it turned to be about 8 times what they pay me, minimum.
I still think it’s a good deal. True, the economic difference between both our countries is beign used as an excuse to underpay me… but the same difference makes that ‘little’ money worth as much as if I were paid full wage there.
I agree that all the focus on the H-1B is misplaced, and would be better placed on the L-1 category, which is more flexible in some ways. I would not say by any means, though, that the L-1 has “no requirements.”
First the foreign national has to work abroad for 365 days (6 months if the company has an approved blanket program, which involves meeting still more criteria) for a qualifying parent, subsidiary, or affiliate company of the U.S. company where he/she will work. Then both his previous position overseas and the proposed position in the U.S. have to meet certain criteria, and the prospective L-1 employee has to meet certain criteria. Basically this means that both positions have to qualify as “managerial” (a concept which can involve managing a function rather than people in certain circumstances), or as positions requiring specialized knowledge (another rather fuzzy circumsance, but one which in practice has been getting more and more strict; in practice, it’s related to the H-1B concept of “specialty occupation,” and in practice mostly ends up meeting the same criteria, although there is no requirement in most cases that the person have a related bachelor’s degree).
At the moment, it is true that there are no annual quotas for the L-1 category, and there is no legal requirement for the L-1 category that the person be paid the prevailing wage. In practice, however, salary is a required piece of information on the petition paperwork, and consulates routinely deny L-1 visas if they feel the salary is too low, mostly on the reasoning that “you can’t really be a manager/a specialized employee if you’re only making X amount.”
There are actually a couple of restrictionist L-1 bills banging around Congress right now; I’ll post links on Monday. I’d put money on significant restrictions being placed on the L-1 category over the next year or so, probably a prevailing wage requirement at a minimum.
**pol3925, ** I used to work for a translation agency that did this; we actually paid the couple of overseas freelancers about the same as the locals, but this was a few years ago now and we didn’t do it much because the technological barriers were higher then (although they wouldn’t have been if my boss hadn’t been so clueless about technology).
We did it mostly because for translation into Spanish, in all but a few cases we got better quality of work by outsourcing to a country where it is spoken. Even native speakers living in the U.S. start to lose their fluency, especially in the highly technical material we specialized in. The vocabulary just changed too fast.
I’ve always wondered why more overseas translators didn’t market their services in the U.S. The competitive advantages could be huge.
Well… anytime you need a spanish translator… especially for technical stuff (electric and Telecomm. engineering)… DO give me a call!!
I’ve started a couple of months ago, but I’m really thinking of going freelance on worldwide markets… (’:D’)
Assuming that what you’re describing could happen (essentially no jobs left in the US, nothing produced there), could you explain to me how a society which would produce nothing, create no wealth could rule anything at all? The only thing such a society could hope would be to receive enough foreign aid for its citizens not to starve…
What is there to explain? Cant you see what is going on all around you?
You dont see what the world is today.
You dont see that we are already the ruling society of the world.
I dont understand your question, we already are in the midst of a great transition from being a manufacturing society, to a society that produces nothing, and each year, we gain in power. We are now the only super power in the world!
Our influence and power are gaining as we lose jobs and factories, not declining. As the united States produces less and less, our power gains and gains, where no other nation on eath can challenge us today. We are the best fed nation on earth, in spite of continually losing our manufacturing base, and in spite of being the largest debtor nation on earth.
This is a trend that has been going on now for a couple of decades, and there is no reason to think anything will be different next year, or next decade.
The united States has been a debtor nation for quite some time, and our debt continues to grow and grow. Actually, it is becoming so large, that no other nation will ever want to force us into bankruptcy(much like banks refused to foreclose on Donald Trump because he owed so much money) .
Factline: Import Nation
Alan Tonelson
Thursday, June 26, 2003
U.S. TRADE TRENDS
Imports as share of U.S. manufactures market*, 1992 – 17.81%
Imports as share of U.S. manufactures market**, 2001 – 28.09%
I was just about to post that I agreed with you 100% (maybe a first!), but I don’t understand the above sentence. Are you saying there should be no restrictions or just different restrictions? If the former, I can’t agree. In that case, half the world would emigrate here.
Oh, my, Im SO forwarding this thread to my bro, He’ll make mincemeat of your arguments… My grasp on world politics is so much thinner… 
The question is: Cant YOU see what’s going on all around you?
Your faltering economy can barely support the humongous and useless army you use to self-proclaim yourselvs “world police”.
Your meddling imperialistic policy makes you be more hated by the rest of the world each day…
You disgregard UN’s directives whenever it suits you, you bully smaller nations into following your rules…
Do I sound like an extreme muslim “terrorist”?
Well, I’m just an average, well-educated student from a 3rd world nation. Nowadays, not only “crazy arabs” or “commies” hate you… average people do.
(this post is directed to the US as a nation, not to any American in particular, but to those who share this woman narrow views.)
>> Our influence and power are gaining as we lose jobs and factories, not declining.
So what’s the problem then? You should want to accelerate the loss of jobs so that the USA will gain even more power!
** pol3925**, don’t even bother with her as she has a history of posting crap like that and then disappearing from the thread never to respond to anything.
Susanann:
Did you have some epiphany about economics lately? I seem to remember you railing against NAFTA and companies that export jobs as if they were destroying the country in many previous threads.
Or are you being facetious…?
Now you get an idea of the dilemma that slave holding societies faced. Do you think it was easy for them to adapt to the new order? Of course not! But just because something is difficult to do it does not justify holding on to immoral situations of privilege.
Of course I am not saying all immigration barriers should be removed overnight just as I would not have said the slaves should be freed overnight but the only decent thing to do is to work towards that situation. By preserving our situation of privilege we make it imposible to remove immigration barriers. We should indeed work towards helping the poor countries develop so that the world will not need to restrict people’s movements.
Societies which had slaves maybe could not make the transition overnight but the fault of the situation lay with the slaveholders, not with the slaves and so it was the duty of the slaveholders to make the transition as fast as possible even if it was at the expense of their own situation.
By restricting people’s right to move in search of better jobs we are restricting a fundamental right in a very immoral way. It is our duty to work as fast as we can to get to a situation where we can remove those barriers and we can only do that by helping the third world develop. Instead we protect our economies with subsidies and protectionist measures.
Two hundred years ago I would have said to slave owners: I realise suddenly freeing the slaves would wreak havoc with the entire economy and everybody would suffer, owners and slaves alike but this cannot continue and so in we are going to have a period of transition where you will start paying them a salary and by date X they will be free.
Today I would say to the world: this situation of privilege morally wrong and cannot be maintained. By date X all restrictions will have to be removed so we have X years to help the poor countries develop to the point where travel restrictions can be lifted without major problems. I am symplifying, obviously, but that’s the idea: the aim is to remove all travel restrictions as something immoral. Yes, we will have to pay a price but it is the only moral thing to do. We have no more moral right to opportunity than those born in the third world.
The first step is to remove all trade barriers and subsidies which condemn third world countries to being unable to earn an honest living. That is the least we can do today as a step towards equality of opportunity. I am not saying we should do everything but that is the least we can do as a step towards greater justice and equality.