Forum Post: No more outsourcing U.S. jobs.
Posted 12 years ago on Nov. 19, 2011, 6:10 p.m. EST by bluefields
(3)
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The media's main critique of our movement is its lack of a unified cause or demand. While I think the simple message of dissatisfaction is poignant, I also think there's a way to turn all of it -- the collapsing economy, the unemployment crisis, the lack of accountability of big business -- into a single, productive sound bite.
"No more outsourcing U.S. jobs."
It targets one of the largest problems we're facing: United States corporations are gutting our economy by sending thousands of jobs overseas, where they can pay their employees less than a living wage. Not only does this result in fewer jobs in the United States, that money is never fed back into the U.S. economy.
This problem can be solved. Congress needs make this practice illegal or tax it to the point that it's no longer profitable for the companies in question. It's an inexcusable form of corporate greed that our government has the power to stop. We're not asking them to create new jobs; we're demanding that they return our jobs to us.
I encourage you to take this idea and run with it. Start up the chant at your local Occupy site. Put it on signs and pass them out. Explain it to the journalists who are all too eager to dismiss us as bored children with no clear objective or goals. This is where it all overlaps. This is a fight we can win.
Let's get our jobs back.
Yeah, that is a major part of the problem. It would just have to be done in a way, by someone with a strong understanding of economics, so it would help the problem but not seriously mess up various economies.
I remember a while ago I worked at a law office and they announced that they were outsourcing some jobs. They were saying that we were going to be competing in regards to production with the outsourced branch... and that the outsourced branch was going to be working 6 days a week, 8 hours a day.....It sucks for those whom these jobs are going to, as they are working crappy hours for crappy pay, and it sucks for us in the US as these jobs are dissapearing. Perhaps if US companies weren't setting up in other countries those countries could perhaps get some projects together themselves and use their resources for something that would truly benefit them. It is hard to say though, the impact it would have.
Take a look at this people.http://economyincrisis.org/category/taxonomy/news
I agree that the tax treatment of corporations incorporated here in America employing overseas workers needs to be changed. Perhaps companies should be given tax credits when hiring U.S. citizens, X dollars worth of credits per new, full time citizen hired. I think if you outright tax corporations for hiring overseas workers they may simply pull up stakes and go elsewhere.
perhaps they should be forced to pay extra tax for the outsource employee. take my word.. taking thier money is a lot more effective than giving them money. there should be a outsource employee tax equal to the rate of the labor cost in america. that would force them to keep jobs here in order to be more 'cost effective'
Another loophole to close. If they had to pay the same rate elsewhere as they do here it would no doubt make a big difference. So they have stuff made by out sourcing - what if the workers there were paid what our workers get- what if that was required to operate in someone else-es home as they are required to do here? What if the facility being used for outsource had to run to the same standards as in this country?
Corporations are ruining outsource lives ( foreigners ) and environments because they are allowed to, they fuck-up someone Else's environment in a close up and personal way because they are allowed to.
Fuck the environmental laws and requirements in the USA I'LL fuck-up somewhere else where they will let me.
Outsource a highway to hell.
Potentially, although they have incentive to keep their companies here in America due to all the other ludicrous tax cuts and loopholes they can exploit. It's unlikely that taxing them for outsourcing jobs would offset that profit margin enough to make them completely uproot.
Everybody deserves a living wage, no matter where they are from or where they live
I absolutely agree. That's one of the reasons this practice is deplorable.
blame the foreign governments for that. they are the ones that allow this to be perpetrated on their citizens for the gain of the ruling party
People deserve to live their life but the guarantee of a wage hurts growth. It limits how much you can make.
I think the minium wage law should be replaced by a guaranteed annual income law based on a living wage and that the maximum wealth (not income) should be no more than 3X the living wage.
I like programs like the EITC but wealth caps are the epitome of idiotic.
You can't guarantee income if there isn't enough wealth being generated to pay for that income.
We're competing against slave labor - what does that make us if we have to lower our working standards to be able to compete? Slaves
Stop outsourcing and sign the whitehouse petition at http://wh.gov/9C4
Eliminating outsourcing (and I suppose also imported manufactured goods) would of course be an impossible task unless it were engineered incremently and very gradually. Otherwise (if it were to be implemented too rapidly), there would be few goods available for sale and purchase. Thereby, elimination of most of the existing jobs for distribution, marketing and delivery would occur (because there would be very little to sell for quite a while).
And assuming that outsourcing could be eliminated gradually, the job sector which would be primarily stimulated would be robotics (more automation) so that those tasks being brought back could be made obsolete. Plus, the automation surge would extend to jobs not yet outsourced as well as those slated to come back eventually.
But whether this robotic revolution is stimulated by legislation to eliminate outsourcing or just ongoing competitive pressures, elimination of jobs by advancing technology is inevitable. Even jobs such as customer service and tech support are literally only a few years away from being totally automated with computerized voices indistinguishable from humans. Currently, most outsourced customer support is conducted via sophisticated scripting and sequence trees which enable people in distant countries who have never seen the product to do troubleshooting effectively. It is only a few steps away from being handled entirely by computer. IBM's demo on the Jeopardy quiz show and their released information about their intelligent (call it artificial intelligence, if you wish) voice recognition and information response with voice synthesized speech, is currently moving vast sums of investment capital into IBM. They are even field testing medical diagnostics which will eliminate many health care positions. Like we have seen our gasoline pump automated (people formerly did that for us) we will see virtually every aspect of our lives automated and roboticized.
So the answer is not jobs... because we won't need jobs eventually.
The answer is to establish a welfare state where people are provided an adequate standard of living without working and they can pursue other interests such as art, education, and volunteering, not just to aid the infirm, but to innovate and manage (the way wikipedia and open source software have been created and maintained) or just to live in leisure (as much of the wealthy do now).
Jobs would still exist for additional income, necessary because such a system will still need facilitators and managers (anyplace where volunteers aren't forthcoming).
Yes, it's a utopian society, but with the explosion of technology it is inevitable.
Why do you call them US jobs? There is no such thing as a US job. Companies hire people to make products. Congress cannot tell companies where to locate their facilities.
You have to attack the problem onthe consumer side, Start a campaign for people to buy American products. There are plenty of resources to find US products. Here is one http://www.stillmadeinusa.com/
You can also just read the box and look for made in the USA.
the past 10 years outsourcing it jobs to india has created a massive divide of wealth between rich and poor..it has caused govt to relax the rules to setup engineering colleges and hence even poultry farms are modified as engineering colleges in india..which mass produces half baked engineers who take the cheap labour in call centers and there is no quality education.. IT firms which are rightfully the jobs of you americans..please stop outsourcing and save both america and india.
I would say that this is a symptom of the problem.
Corruption of our elected officials is the problem. Corps buy there loyalty to outsource, lower corp taxes, repeal regulation and to turn a blind eye to corporate crimes.
Voting out ALL incumbants is the solution.
I agree. We can start by boycotting Toshiba. Here is a list of their crimes:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/computers/toshiba.html
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2213279355#!/group.php?gid=2213279355&v=wall
http://www.boycottowl.com/Toshiba/79
Ok then. Destroy US manufacturing by giving them no place on earth to make competitive products. Makes sense to me.
If it's not manufactured in the US, it's not US manufacturing.
The next step is total automation of most jobs. In the future you would be competing against a machine instead of a person. I am not a luddite. The machines might make thins cheaper (less people to pay). However when no one have jobs there would be no one to buy the products (less people get paid). Sometimes employee are customers.
The H-1B visa has allowed for firms to send people over to the US to learn the skills and then to return to places like India so the jobs get outsourced there. It is why Bill Gates is a douche. He is a member of NASSCOM and in 2008 he got his own special audience in front of House Science Committee and said that he would move his business overseas because there was a shortage of tech. Although, two studies had been done that said otherwise. Further, he had already been shipping jobs overseas.
It has gutted our tech industry, R & D is gone, our legal fields are being shipped off. http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/newss/outsourcing111.html
But, don't talk about it (from 2009): http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/28/819822/-Judge-orders-websites-to-rat-on-American-workers-who-wont-snitch-on-Indian-H-1b
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142806/Court_orders_three_H_1B_sites_disabled
if we as members of OWS cant demand the us govt solve the body odor crisis in this great land of ours ,what was this struggle for ???
Outsource corporate media to the citizens.
Jobs are becoming obsolete due to advances in technology more so than outsourcing. This should be a key issue with the OWS movement.
Check these links out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Z8TR4ToNs
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/wired-success/201109/are-jobs-we-know-them-becoming-obsolete
http://www.cnn.com/2011/OPINION/09/07/rushkoff.jobs.obsolete/
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-see-more-jobs-for-machines-not-people.html?_r=1
this should be the first demand of the OWS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w
Hmmmm, what you are describing is the effect of treason. GATT and NAFTA under the WTO agreements.
We need an article 5 convention NOW!
Lessig power point on article V http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gpbfY-atMk
Lots of facts here about Article V. http://algoxy.com/poly/article_v_convention.html
Article V conference, Lawrence Lessig at harvard 9/25/11-other attendee video comments http://vimeo.com/31464745
This has been going on for the last 20/30 years and the government is part of it!
Geez, the 99% have been voting for outsourcing with their wallets for over 30 yrs. We have all shopped for price never looking at the MADE IN label. Seems the chickens have come home to roost. Increase minumum wage and further reduce demand for MADE IN THE USA. I have been watching this phenomenom for over 30 yrs as a victim of outsourcing from a Fortune 100 company, watching as we closed US plants and first relocated in Mexico and later moved to the Far East chasing the cheap labor countries.
Protectionism doesn't work. This is exactly why we bailed out the auto makers, to preserve the jobs. They're still outsourcing more jobs and the ones that were saved cost us almost $1,000,000 per job.
It's cheaper to outsource certain jobs and unless you can convince some guy to work for 2 $/hr doing menial labor, I think this is a bad idea.
The American economy is moving towards technology. Full steam ahead!
You make the statement "protectionism doesn't work." What facts can you provide to back that up? What can you tell me about the history of tariffs in the US during the period of time that it became the manufacturing leader of the world.?
http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/the-case-against-managed-fair-trade-and-strategic-trade/
There's a lot of data presented a couple of sections in. Protectionism raises costs and thus prices.
Wages aren't helped by this and not to mention, the data that this guy presents says that the tariffs don't even work to protect jobs.
The Foundation for Economic Education is well known as a free market propaganda organization,as is the Brookings Institution. I don't know a nice way to say it. Its just not in any way factual. It's pure propaganda. To claim we haven't lost jobs to China is just plain insane. Here are some facts.http://economyincrisis.org/content/35-facts-about-gutting-america’s-industrial-might-should-make-you-very-angry
We have lost jobs to china. No denying that. But protectionism hasn't stopped that. American jobs are moving towards technological development, people need to get with the program.
We cannot compete with China in manufacturing.
Well fuzzy, the reason that protectionism hasn't stopped our job losses, is because we have abandoned our protective policies. At first gradually, beginning with GATT, (General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs) back in 1947, with 8 "upgrades" up to 1994. Since then, we've had NAFTA,CAFTA,and just recently, Korean, Colombian and Panamanian free trade agreements. Actually, I'm afraid American jobs are moving more to McDonalds and Walmart.
The productive jobs are moving towards technology.
The average computer science major at my university has two job offers waiting for them without even applying.
I'm glad for those at your university, but we need manufacturing too. We can't all do the same job. That's not how a society or an economy works. But on the high tech end, that's not so great overall either, even if your grads seem to be doing well at the present time. Take a look at this link. http://www.tradereform.org/2011/10/free-trade-utopians-causing-high-tech-job-loss/
This isn't overly specific regarding what constitutes a "high-tech" job. Programming? Designing?
Right we all can't do the same job but we also cannot compete with other countries in manufacturing. That's why there is outsourcing.
If companies have to use American manufacturers if they normally outsource those jobs, the costs of production would be too high and they would go out of business. Thus, a greater job loss.
The American economy is about innovation.
Here is a slightly more detailed breakdown as to what types of high tech jobs have been lost. http://www.techamericafoundation.org/cyberstates2010-national
45.8% of those jobs lost were manufacturing jobs (a number I took from the table at the bottom).
Given the amount of outsourcing in manufacturing, this makes sense.
21.57% of these jobs were lost in "communication services" and 24% lost in "engineering and tech services".
These could be the people that install your cable, not necessarily jobs for computer science majors.
The area that lost the least was software services or programming. That's what I'm talking about.
During a recession, jobs are lost across the board. The economy is still moving towards technology.
Need another hint? Buffet just bought like $10.7 billion in IBM stock for the same reason.
If American manufacturers outsource their jobs, I don't think they are properly called, American manufacturers. You seem to be talking in slogans. "The American economy is about innovation" just doesn't say that much. China is also capable of "innovation". The idea that the US can afford to maintain a 50-70billion monthly trade deficit is insane. It is bankrupting the nation. It is the reason the stimulus had so little effect. I'm not sure what you mean by, "if they normally outsource...." Perhaps you could explain.
"normally outsourced jobs" are ones that already are outsourced but are trying to be brought back by "anti capitalists". You can't just bring those jobs back, they're gone.
Trade deficit doesn't mean we're losing money. Hong-Kong doesn't have any natural resources yet it makes so much money because of being able to have trade deficits.
Innovation means that we create new products, ideas and jobs. Mainly this happens through competition.
Hong Kong doesn't have a trade deficit. You make the statement, The trade deficit doesn't mean we're losing money. But that is incorrect. That is exactly what it means. Try reading Keynes. Your still displaying a sense of "American exceptional-ism" that is not born out in reality. The US has no monopoly on innovation. In a total free market, tech jobs go to the lowest bidder just like labor jobs. The statement, "you can't bring those jobs back" is simply false.
Programming is a skilled job. We're moving towards skilled technology. Designing phones. Think things like android. Biotech. These things can't be outsourced to 6 year old chinese people.
I'm not displaying American exceptionalism. Our economy is innovative. Its a stereotype.
You also can't have a monopoly on something that isn't an industry.
Where does apple make the i-phone? - oh yes in a factory where working conditions are so deplorable and hopeless the workers are killing them selves and they had to install "jumper nets" on the sides of the building. Who says Chinese workers aren't skilled - they're perfectly skilled - the problem is they live in a Communistic society that dictates their wages and standard of living. Communism and Corporatism are the same things (the wealth stays at the top where the power and control is.) I prefer a democracy (a nice combo between capitalism and socialism where there is such thing as upward mobility and freedom.