Commerce and economy has everything to do with productivity and that means producing there were it's cheapest. Therefore it has everything to do with globalism. Things being done now are done very bilateraly. Without the current globalism there would be NO exchange of technical knowhow and therefore the epithome of unilateralism. you confuse globalism with imperialism and foreign investment with unilateralism. Sorry to say that. You must be an old style French socialist not? The one responsible for the wonderfull European economy grinding to a halt? ALLOW ME TO CAP THIS: ECONOMY HAS TO DO WITH PRODUCTIVITY
We refuse to take low paying jobs while enjoying the dirt cheap toys that we buy from Costco and Walmart and complaining that jobs are lost to oversea's workers? You cant have your cake and eat it too. Either you work just as hard as a Chinese worker with no health care/retirement benefits and live in a crowded with unsanitary conditions or live in the good old USA with all our freedom and cheap toys that thanks to our goverment help turned other nations to semi slavery factories. Now where is that low paying job that nobody wants? There are tons of them out there but our standards are so hi that we spit at them. With all the problems that we have, most citizens from poor countries would give their 1st born to live here. I have been to many poor parts of the world and see how hard they have to work, and it's so great to pay all that taxes and enjoying my big screen plasma. Geez, even if we are being taxed hier, it's still a great place to be.
Thought I finally heard some good news at work yesterday. Was told they did some hiring , two new engineers. Then I found out they were from India and will be relaying all the work over here via internet for $6.50 an hour no bennies. Yikes!!
Hi ET Fellows, Here another piece of easily verified nonsense of Harry's: "The Chinese Civilisation has invented scripture far before Occident." FACTS: Old Chinese or Archaic Chinese - ideogram writing: dates out of the Zhou Dynasty: 11th to 7th centuries B.C.) Egyptian Hieroglyphics - ideogram writing: oldest known dated 4240 B.C. Sumerian Cuneiform originated around 3500 B.C. Linear-B Greek 14th to 13th centuries B.C. Thus still older than Chinese! (Proto-Greek between 3200 and 1900 B.C.) Be good, nononsense
With all the problems that we have, most citizens from poor countries would give their 1st born to live here. Which countries might you be referring to.......is Australia poor....Sweden?...........There are many countries and places in the world that their people would like to visit, but never want to reside here.... This is written by a red-blooded native American boy who has lived as an immigrant in Europe. I feel I am qualified to make this statement above, and am not brainwashed into thinking that if you don't live here, you must want to. Michael B.
I have no idea how outsourcing will play itself out in the end. In fact, I doubt that many, if any, do. On the one hand, there is economic advantage in parceling out work at a lower cost. The producer and consumer obviously get to share in the benefits of lower cost. Also, the country that gets the jobs benefits. So, ostensibly, we have a win-win-win scenario. Or do we? On the other hand, the country is giving away jobs - a source of wealth and prosperity. And it is no longer only lower end employment that is involved. So called "knowledge workers" are being edged out in favor of lower cost alternatives abroad. True, we now live in a "global village" of sorts. But I can't help but get the feeling that the growing trend towards outsourcing is the macroeconomic equivalent of a "buy now, pay later" deal. Perhaps that widget won't seem so cheap in a couple of years when you lose your job due to outsourcing and can't make your monthly widget instalment. While I believe in free trade, I wonder if outsourcing on a meaningful scale is just a little too modern a concept for me to comfortably digest. It reminds me of the Atkins diet: eat plenty of fat and be healthy. I just have difficulty dealing with that kind of counterintuitive logic. Maybe it's just me.
Germany and France were the ones to gain from this event toward the unrecognized goal of globalization. Countries are still evaluating the benefit to them when considering to join the EU....Answer eurocurrency.....but again economies of scale would get re-balanced. Here in the USA we are blessed with Crops that do in fact feed the world.....We have other natural resources such as mining, textiles, oil and information technology..... In the scheme of things the USA has much to offer the world....and I do believe that some day there will be a one world economy...but at what cost and to whom? Michael B.
I just can't get one of Aesop's fables out of my head: the one about the ant and the grasshopper. You will recall that the ant spent the summer working to save enough food for the winter while the grasshopper basked in the sunshine. When winter came, the ant had savings that he survived on while the grasshopper starved. The countries being outsourced to are working and creating wealth. The American consumer is "spending his way to prosperity" with the latest SUV purchase or whatever. Perhaps the analogy is not a very good one, yet it lingers. There is a complacency here that I just cannot get over. You are quite right. The US has much to offer the rest of the world. It is the eventual cost (to the US) that I am unclear about. As for the materiality of outsourcing, how much incremental unemployment is required to destabilize the economy? Do the experts or larger interests always need to play chicken and bring it to the edge just to show how smart they are? Really, I'm just thinking out loud here. I'm still trying to decide where I stand on the matter.
The problem with this thread is that offshoring (outsourcing to economies of scale for the sole purpose of lower labor and taxes compared to ours) alone over the short term seems to help the bottom line. Countries to become self sufficient and build their economies and infrastructure based on this new found resource would be bad managers as their new found resource of providing specialized labor was not home-grown and stable, but in fact temporary. So we will end up feeding them anyways....(savant says with a frustrated tone) Michael B. P.S. anyways I got lost...the problem with this thread is that this is a vastly inter-connected issue and much more complicated than has been addressed here.
Sorry if this has already come up, I haven't read the whole thread carefully. Consider, the first outsourcing is when one cave man collected berries, another hunted buffalo, and they traded with each other. When the fishing net was invented, it put a lot of fishermen out of work. Sure, it hurt a lot if you were a fisherman. But, trying to fight the inevitable (government interference?) just prolonged the pain. The sooner people figure this out, the faster the pain will go away.