I see the point of the OP, it has become a moral issue. This is coming from someone whose ACCOUNTING job has just been outsourced to India. And this by the top education company in the US 2.6B sales and over 500M operating income. Better days will come I guess... But something has to get done about this outsourcing problem.
And what might that be?
Do we pass laws that make it illegal? Do we tax and fine corporations that outsource? I suppose we can make it too expensive to remain in business and so we increase the problem by adding more folks to the unemployment line.
So what exactly do you think we should do?
Perhaps we go after foreign corporations, too. After all, they make products we buy by the millions. Perhaps a nice tariff or two to punish them? Then what? Trade wars are terrible and if we punish "them" they do the same thing and costs go up.
I remember when Harley-Davidson asked the government for tariffs/trade relief against Japanese manufacturers of big bikes. They got their way and eventually asked those tariffs to be removed because HD stepped up and found out how to make better bikes, faster and cheaper.
By the way, I suspect that many fine old-line American corporations would have outsourced from the beginning if it were practical to do so. Just a guess.
What about parts? Do we tell manufacturers that to avoid fines and higher taxes they must not outsource their parts? HD uses American speedometers but the parts they are made from are not likely made here. How far do we go?
We need to remove the barriers to manufacturing things here. We need to make more stuff here and I know we can do it because I worked for four corporations that made millions of products. We did it faster, cheaper, and better than those in China.
If I currently make Widgets for $12.00 in the USA but I can have them make in China for $2.00, one might say I am greedy for reducing my CPU to ten bucks, thereby adding more to my bottom line.
Do we make rules that say I can't make more money if it costs American jobs?
Let me let you in on a big secret: manufacturers do not manufacturer things to give people jobs. They do it to make money and sorry to be blunt, but employees are simply part of the manufacturing process. Find a cool machine to make products better and faster and for less cost and jobs go away. OR in our case, we designed a cool machine that actually reduced the number of products sent to packaging and increased jobs because of the need to fix products made with our blessed machine.
This is a problem that can largely be solved with a renewed pride in this country that is more than capable of making things better, faster and quite likely, for a reasonable cost. We need to make it easy to make things here.
We can built TVs here but Plasmas might be a problem due to environmental laws and pollution issues. Another part of the problem is laws that are useless and they also cost us jobs.
Any suggestions?
Bob
