10-20-2004, 11:36 AM
Outsourcing? The reason we are getting screwed by it is that other countries do not have any of the environmental or worker protection laws so of course Americans can't compete. On top of that the cost of living in the United States has gotten horribly inflated to the point we cannot compete with someone living in Bangalore.
This wouldn't be such a problem if we could all move to the boonies where we wouldn't have to make so much in order to live but in general the level of education in most rural areas is pretty poor so most companies have little reason to stay in the United States. On top of that its not like we could move to India or China to work either.
Look at auto manufacturing. Almost all of the foreign manufacturers have factories here because of our trade policy. I'm not saying blanket tariffs are the answer but I am saying that the ignorant attitude of "Let the market fix it" is dumber and more dangerous.
Paul Samuelson, an economics Nobel Prize winner and one of the eminent figures in economics also thinks that outsourcing could end up having a bad net result for the United States. From an article about his article:
His article, Mr. Samuelson added, is not a refutation of David Ricardo's 1817 theory of comparative advantage, the Magna Carta of international economics that says free trade allows economies to benefit from the efficiencies of global specialization. Mr. Samuelson said he was merely "interpreting fully and correctly Ricardoian comparative advantage theory." That interpretation, he insists, includes some "important qualifications" to the arguments of globalization's cheerleaders. Those qualifications are not new to Mr. Samuelson. He noted that in a different context, he touched on similar matters as far back as 1972 in a lecture he delivered shortly after he won his Nobel Prize, titled "International Trade for a Rich Country."
All that said there are a few points in the outsourcing debate that I think are overlooked. For one, the Internet bubble bursted so there was a huge amount of attrition there. Also, I think there were a ton of people doing "IT" that were not qualified to do it that ended up losing their jobs (think English majors turned Web Designers). I also think that a lot of the IT industry is terribly inefficient because a lot of IT companies do not follow good design or management practices. All of these things could cause job loss in the statistics but are not really causes for alarm.
As for Kerry's promises of healthcare and Social Security and all that I too believe he has overpromised. There's no way he's going to be able to pay for all of that stuff, at least not in 4 years. Also, the fact that his running mate is a trial lawyer means that we're probably not going to see any tort reform for awhile :roll:
Similarly, Bush likes to parrot the "let's lower taxes" idea in order to stimulate the economy. Tax cuts are good as long as they are not at the expense of things we need. When I see tax cuts that means we either need to cut spending on something or run up a stupid deficit. Lately we've been doing the latter. Will we pull out and be able to get the deficit down? I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that is any more likely under Bush than it is under Kerry.
I think the argument that tax cuts always create more jobs is simplistic and disingenous. Does this mean that if there were zero taxes there would be infinite jobs? What about trickle down economics, how well did that idea work?
This wouldn't be such a problem if we could all move to the boonies where we wouldn't have to make so much in order to live but in general the level of education in most rural areas is pretty poor so most companies have little reason to stay in the United States. On top of that its not like we could move to India or China to work either.
Look at auto manufacturing. Almost all of the foreign manufacturers have factories here because of our trade policy. I'm not saying blanket tariffs are the answer but I am saying that the ignorant attitude of "Let the market fix it" is dumber and more dangerous.
Paul Samuelson, an economics Nobel Prize winner and one of the eminent figures in economics also thinks that outsourcing could end up having a bad net result for the United States. From an article about his article:
His article, Mr. Samuelson added, is not a refutation of David Ricardo's 1817 theory of comparative advantage, the Magna Carta of international economics that says free trade allows economies to benefit from the efficiencies of global specialization. Mr. Samuelson said he was merely "interpreting fully and correctly Ricardoian comparative advantage theory." That interpretation, he insists, includes some "important qualifications" to the arguments of globalization's cheerleaders. Those qualifications are not new to Mr. Samuelson. He noted that in a different context, he touched on similar matters as far back as 1972 in a lecture he delivered shortly after he won his Nobel Prize, titled "International Trade for a Rich Country."
All that said there are a few points in the outsourcing debate that I think are overlooked. For one, the Internet bubble bursted so there was a huge amount of attrition there. Also, I think there were a ton of people doing "IT" that were not qualified to do it that ended up losing their jobs (think English majors turned Web Designers). I also think that a lot of the IT industry is terribly inefficient because a lot of IT companies do not follow good design or management practices. All of these things could cause job loss in the statistics but are not really causes for alarm.
As for Kerry's promises of healthcare and Social Security and all that I too believe he has overpromised. There's no way he's going to be able to pay for all of that stuff, at least not in 4 years. Also, the fact that his running mate is a trial lawyer means that we're probably not going to see any tort reform for awhile :roll:
Similarly, Bush likes to parrot the "let's lower taxes" idea in order to stimulate the economy. Tax cuts are good as long as they are not at the expense of things we need. When I see tax cuts that means we either need to cut spending on something or run up a stupid deficit. Lately we've been doing the latter. Will we pull out and be able to get the deficit down? I don't think anyone can say with a straight face that is any more likely under Bush than it is under Kerry.
I think the argument that tax cuts always create more jobs is simplistic and disingenous. Does this mean that if there were zero taxes there would be infinite jobs? What about trickle down economics, how well did that idea work?