Some of it had to do with NAFTA. If you want to good information check out some of the Ross Perot/Al Gore debates. In the end, Ross Perot ended up being the one who was right.
I think the CEO's had tremendous pressure to please the shareholders the last few decades by increasing profits to exceed their competitors, or just keeping up with the Joneses. It may go just beyond getting a big bonus... they fear being fired if they fail. What else would prompt all those corporations, large and small, to fudge with their books? Labor, of course, is the biggest expense, so why not start there? Me, old-fashioned and patriotic to boot, would have a hard time with replacing domestic workers with those overseas. However, our finest universities, those that educate and groom future CEOs, teach globalism, so maybe laying off hoards of U.S. workers don't bother them at all. I would like to see the U.S. become more protectionist, but I don't see how we could even start moving in the right direction.
You guys amaze me. You really need to look at some actual facts. For the last 60 years our unemployment level has averaged 5-6%. Recently, during the peak of this outsourcing period, the rate dropped to 3%. Relative to cost of living, our wages remain at the top of the list globally. Our lifestyle remains at the top of the list. According to the NCAP "For the past 15 years, corporations have moved jobs to the United States at a faster rate than jobs have left, for an 82 percent increase in insourced jobs compared to a 23 percent increase in outsourced jobs. Manufacturing jobs have been insourced at an even faster pace than service jobs... Insourced jobs pay 16.5 percent more than the average domestic job, and one-third of them are in the manufacturing sector." When we outsource to India for example. The see a rapid rise in salary and household income. They begin to become more "Americanized" as we say. They buy more of our goods, and we see a large increase in GDP. Also consider this statement from the same research group.. "American companies generally outsource work to India or China that requires little skill or training. The high-end work and wages stay here; but in fact, they might not be retained if the stateside work were not augmented by outsourced functions in lower-cost countries. Furthermore, workers freed up from routine tasks that have been outsourced are often redeployed within the company to higher paying jobs, or on projects that generate greater value-added services or products."
Definitely attention needs to be focused on that issue. Global business classes need to acknowledge the horrible effect it's having and the "just ship it overseas" approach is doing more harm than good. @Cache you're wrong.
You need to replace the word Republican with Democrat and you have this part right. It's the Dems that want to obliterate the middle class and make everyone illiterate and dependent on Democrat supported government programs like welfare to entrap them into having to vote Democratic (to keep the programs they are now dependent on) and thus locking the Dems into power...perpetually.
I was judging by your comments as to your knowledge of Ricardian Econ. You implied that comparative advantage dictates a lower price for goods. That is false, so the assumption is then that you don't understand Ricardian Econ. In fact history has proven Ricardo to be pretty much spot on. There are always individuals who've been directly hurt by outsourcing, but the population as a whole is benefited by it. Also, no one is arguing that high paying jobs cannot be outsourced, but rather that they generally aren't outsourced. A high paying job would be one that pays an above average salary, by definition. These jobs make up a very small fraction of the total outsourced jobs.
You're gonna have to provide some actual facts for that to be a valid statement. I did so already, so I think the ball is in your court to rebut.
...and in 1993, Sir James Goldsmith, in his book "The Trap", warned of the dangers of globalization. On Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Trap-James-Go...=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246039027&sr=1-3 One reviewer summarized the book nicely:
according to the McKinsey Global Institute, "for every $1 outsourced, the economic gain to the United States as a whole is $1.12 to $1.14; whereas the country to which a job is outsourced gains just 33 cents." Sounds like the insourceers should be the ones complaining, but why aren't they. Because they benefit too!!!! It is a win-win for the economy of both nations involved.
outsourcing began with low-skill work, such as textile operations. As 3rd world workers gained more skills they started outsourcing higher skill jobs, such as microchip & plasma engine RD&M to biotech research. This trend is not going to be reversed. As the cognitive economy develops more and more processes are going to depend on the ability to generate original ideas, and thanks to the internet, there's no way to stop ideas from going across a border. So get used to the idea of low-skill high paying jobs being a thing of the past, in order to obtain a superior salary you'll need superior skills, regardless of which side of the border you're at. It's free market capitalism at it's finest. Enjoy.