Sway the Undecided

[John]

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.

True, and this is why we should stop embracing the "victim" perspective and work towards a solution that will further our economy by moving forward towards something where we will have a comparative advantage.

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...

Tariffs for the longest time hurt the consumer more than the American worker in my opinion since it limited the consumers choices on particular price points. But the largest impetus for many European and Japanese manufacturing to move here is because their labor costs more in their own country than it does here. So now the U.S. produces many "European" and "Japanese" cars for the entire world, not just the U.S. and Canadian markets.

...but I am saying that the ignorant attitude of "Let the market fix it" is dumber and more dangerous.

No, you're right to a certain extent, but the more regulation you impose, the more you hinder the market. You have to find a the fine line of balance for regulation to help direct it in order to maximize your "win-win" scenario.

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.

Very true. Many of those people contribute to my "volutarily unemployed" classification. You are correct in the mismanagement that plagues our corporate and government sectors though. The market faster than the corporate governance (including all levels of management) could mature.