De-Constructing America

03-09-2003, 12:45 PM

http://www.dailyreckoning.com/home.c...cfm&qs=id=2981

Deconstructing America

"...The U.S. gave away its agricultural knowledge, its education, its technology, its manufacturing jobs and is now giving away its IT jobs. The displaced manufacturing workers did not move to the promised greener pastures. What reason is there to believe that the displaced engineers, Wall Street analysts, accountants, scientists, and other knowledge workers will do any better when their careers are outsourced?..."

HeadPimp · 03-09-2003, 01:16 PM

Interesting article.... Guess we are turning into a truly consumer based economy. Lets not forget that we haven't outsourced all our entertainment that we ship worldwide though!

wsjb78 · 03-09-2003, 05:50 PM

Anyone of you actually read Moore's Stupid White Men?
I've had it now for about 3-4 months but haven't had time to read it yet...

StuartD · 03-09-2003, 07:02 PM

Funny.... I could have sworn that I've read this same thing from Canadians over and over again.... particularly about our hockey teams

Anyway, Canadian companies have been high tailing it out of Canada for a long time... mostly back when the $$ was at a point where it was cheaper for Canadians to go shop in the US.

Then it reversed to where it was cheaper for the US to shop here.... in which case, it also became cheaper for the US to hire Canadians to do a majority of things, like phone and data centres.

I think the major difference is that Canada never lost sight of what our key strengths were.... lumber, fish, minerals... you know, our major resources.

The US... well.. what's left to really claim as their own, or to consider as a "key export"?

The US wasn't losing money until Dubya stepped in... and he certainly wasn't the start of the "deconstructing" of the USA... so... really, money will still coming in strong and fast for the US even as the jobs and specialists and what not were leaving.

So, is it really such a bad thing?

Pidgin · 03-09-2003, 07:11 PM

Read the article..
Not too interesting.
Its more a political than economical
Its more an opinion than it is an analysis

The writer is complaining about the effects of globalization while praising and wanting to protect the US economy which is the byproduct of the same globalization he is complaining about.

baddog · 03-09-2003, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Paul Craig . . . former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal

I wonder if that is because of his inability to spell the name of major corporations like Hewlett-Packard correctly.

As far as outsourcing goes, I highly doubt that this will be the downfall of the US, but to be honest, the author of this article lost all credibility with me when he spelled Hewlett-Packard incorrectly. Then when he starts bringing up the demise of Social Security, well, it all went down the drain then.

People have been suggesting this would happen since 1971, at least, and now I find myself knocking on the door for collecting it myself.

Cheap labor brings higher profits, and allows more time for the skilled personnel to do what they do best, coming up with the technology and ideas. So what if they hire Rajid to write the software, Rajid is not the one that was able to come up with the idea. This is not any slight against anyone from India, but you may notice that India is not producing companies like Dell, or Microsoft. Of course, maybe that is where Hewlet Packard is based out of.

I have to thank StuartD for listing the natural resources of Canada for me though. I always thought it was snow, their women, and canned moose.

Masters · 03-09-2003, 08:01 PM

I agree with Ron

Keep on Rockin'

StuartD · 03-09-2003, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by baddog

I have to thank StuartD for listing the natural resources of Canada for me though. I always thought it was snow, their women, and canned moose.

Actually, I think the US had more snow than we did this year... I guess that's the one thing you guys have been doing better than us

As for women and canned moose, oh hell no... we keep that for ourselves. No exporting that stuff!!

corvett · 03-09-2003, 09:21 PM

If the business finds that it is beneficial to hire inexpensive foreign labor, then they are going to do it…on the flipside, just as the foreign workers are moving to the US for better paying jobs…and without placing restrictions, this is not likely to be prevented

The people that benefit from this are ultimately the consumers

foreign workers are not as ‘cheap’ as they hinted in the article…there might be language restrictions and training issues, cultural and emotional issues, plus the cost of living differences in the 2 areas might make the advantage to moving negligible

The cons might outweigh the pros

pornodoggy · 03-10-2003, 01:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by XXXManager
Read the article..
Not too interesting.
Its more a political than economical
Its more an opinion than it is an analysis

The writer is complaining about the effects of globalization while praising and wanting to protect the US economy which is the byproduct of the same globalization he is complaining about.

Well, with creditials like

Quote:

Paul Craig Roberts is a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution, John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, and research fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for the Wall Street Journal and nationally syndicated columnist and a columnist for BusinessWeek magazine. He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute during 1993-96.

I'd be very, very suprised if it was anything but exactly what you described.