(blue_j)
With 96 percent of the top 500 American corporations turning profits this year and stock prices soaring to the highest levels since the recession began, you’d think you’d start to see a dent in that near double-digit unemployment rate. But that’s not so, partially because companies are boosting their bottom lines by moving toward outsourcing.
The AP reports corporate giants such as Caterpillar and UPS are creating more jobs beyond American borders than domestically. Both companies are seeing foreign sales growth rates double domestic increases. The AP cites a Washington think tank that found 1.4 of the 2.4 million jobs created by American companies this year are located overseas.
Has your employer outsourced new jobs to foreign markets this year?
Many U.S. companies are hiring … overseas [The Associated Press via MSNBC]
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That’s what happens when the government passes bills which give tax cuts to corporations who take jobs off shore… So the unemployment rate can be directly blamed on the congress for passing the legislation.
Yes, both major parties in Congress should get lumps for selling the American worker out/short.
The problem is they’ve been doing that for YEARS. The people in Congress do NOT work for you or I, they’ve all been bought by corporations and special interests. That’s who they work for. The “little guy” truly has no advocate in politics anymore. Sure they try to pass certain legislation off as a win for the “average American” but without fail every bill is almost ALWAYS more beneficial to businesses or special interests than the general public.
INDBRD has it right, I have no problems for not taxing a company for outsourcing but giving tax breaks for it? Not only is the labor cheaper, but they pay less taxes on it?
Keep in mind that the 1.4 million american jobs cost more to the company than the 2.4 million overseas jobs.
It’s also what happens when unions invade your workplace.
What is this assertion that unions are the problem? What exactly about unions do people hate? I mean ever since Reagon effectively detoothed unions , they barely have any sway with corporations.
All this hooting and hollering over unions is just a distraction from corporate offshoring of jobs.
But you’re not looking at this with your Republican lenses on. Big corporations are never to blame, it’s always the workers’ fault. Therefore it must be the unions! Damn unions! If they’d just work for three dollars a day like third world sweatshop slaves we’d still have jobs in this country!
Unless you’re some VP level guy, your are going completely against your own self interest by ragging on unions. You’re never going to be the one to benefit from this mass off shoring and short term profit taking that these companies are mixed up in. In fact, you’re going to lose out when the U.S. looses out to China and other countries and our standard of living falls accordingly.
No matter what faux news tells you, giving these companies more money and more tax breaks just lines the pockets of the people at the top and doesn’t create any more jobs in the U.S. as made very apparent by this article. You and I are the ones getting screwed with less pay and fewer jobs yet you insist on defending these scumbags. Their taking away our lively hood and you just repeat a bunch of sound bites and pretend that you’re some how going to be better off because of it.
/facepalm
yes and we’ve been told we have to convince upper management to locate projects here.
In other words, we have to sell our skills and abilities against lower cost offshore workers even when we show we can be more responsive and deliver a better product.
I was told to stop publishing quality metrics on our offshore projects. Management’s bonuses were based on how many full time equivalent positions could be sent to Pune, India and not on whether Pune got the project done correctly. It didn’t matter to management that all the projects took more time and re-work due to language and cultural issues as long as they off shored positions and got their bonuses. “The Power of One”
Yep, only they call it a “global resource hub.” Convenient, huh?
And the Republicans keep saying that if we just keep cutting taxes for the rich and for corporations, they’ll create more U.S. jobs. They argue that corporations just aren’t making enough money to hire.
Uhh, no. They’re making more than enough to hire U.S. workers. But instead, they’re filling the jobs overseas, because it’s cheaper and gives them more profit.
Wrong.
If the Dems stop making it more and more expensive to have workers in America, corporations would hire.
What exactly are the Dems doing that makes this their fault?
The only reason people like the GP post need is that “they exist”. Dems are evil socialist fascist unamerican communists, didn’t you know? Everything is their fault, even the stuff the GOP did.
The GOP only did those things because the Dems made them, after all.
Well for one… healthcare?
Do you not realize that the you pay for the uninsured’s health care already? They go to the emergency room, get treatment which a hospital is required to do. They can’t afford to pay, so the hospital raises their rates to those using their services WITH insurance, and you pay more for your health insurance. Ta-Da! You are already in a socialized medical system.
Too bad we don’t give the uninsured preventive medical care, which is a hell of a lot cheaper than ER care. Then maybe the “socialized medicine” we’re currently paying for wouldn’t be as expensive. But some people think that’s too “socialized.”
Things like minimum wage and continuing to regard assassinating anyone attempting to form a union as some sort of crime. Fortunately this can be done with impunity in the developing world. They’re called banana republics for a reason.
Lol….heaven forbid we have laws that require people to be paid a wage they can actually live on (although how anyone actually lives on minimum wage is beyond me).
If it weren’t for laws protecting us from corporations, we’d all be making .50 an hour with no benefits.
Fail. employee protection laws and unions are 2 different things. Also Fail on general economics. Why dont we all support a minimum wage of 80,000 per year. that will solve all of our problems right? Wrong. A big mac will then cost 40 bucks and the new minimum wage will all be spent on the higher prices of goods and services. Additionally it will destroy the middle class.
FAIL. Protection laws came about BECAUSE of unions–and now that they are becoming extinct, so are many of those benefits we gained because of them.
You know Canada has a better idea of a living wage than us even with their higher taxes and yet their country isn’t falling apart. So does England and Germany and I’m sure other first world countries are getting it too. I wonder why the US has such a problem with the fact that people need a certain amount of money to live without government assistance.
Also why do people arguing against minimum wage always exaggerate the amount for it? As a minimum wage worker, I know from experience that most of us would be happy with 10-12 dollars and hour and fulltime hours, i.e. 40. That is $9600-$11520 a year. That would cause more of us to pay more taxes, get less back and get alot of people off government assistance. So why is it a bad idea again?
well said.
I don’t think that’s entirely true. No one would work for $.50/hr, even bus fare to and from work would cost them more than they made in a day. The company would have to find a pay rate high enough to get people to do it. This is how the market works. The only jobs that actually pay minimum wage are unskilled work–fast food & restaurants, manual labor, etc. So even having a minimum wage only affects those jobs to start with.
“Unskilled” my ass. I’ve seen a lot of new faces at the McDonalds lately, people who look like they’d be more at home in some management position at a larger corporation, and I’ll be damned if I can even get the SLIGHTEST THING RIGHT on an order, or even get checked out within the hour.
Bring back the “unskilled” labor, if this is what the “skilled” labor looks like.
I actually can imagine it, though it wouldn’t be pleasant.
$7.25/hr * 40 hrs/wk * 50 wks/yr = $14,500/yr
In many parts of the country (many of the smaller cities) you can get a decent 1 bedroom apartment for $500/month, and get around the city by bus (no car needed). You can eat a reasonable (not exciting or great) diet based on grains, legumes, and canned produce (use coupons) for
So you think Colorado Fuel & Iron was in the right for ordering the Ludlow Massacre? I mean HOW DARE those miners desire a living wage, not being literal slaves to the company, and a regard for worker safety. Fucking outrageous!
No, pretty sure the sarcasm was very clear there.
I thought it was pretty clear too, what with the advocation of the assassination of union instigators and all. Obviously sarcasm flies high on the internet if this blatantly obvious form slips by unnoticed.
Wrong.
If both parties would just cut their crap and remember that they are, in fact, Americans that are supposed to be representing the rest of the Americans and not “the bottom line” for corporations or their personal agendas then we’d probably see these problems just wash away.
Both parties suck, and the fed sucks too.
+1
Are you suggesting there might be some middle ground between fascism and socialism? Madness!
Your gray-tinted world scares and confuses me.
It isn’t just gray, there are greens and blues and purples out there. Multiple dimensions along which things and be viewed and analyzed. In fact, there are sometimes *multiple effective and morally acceptable ways* to solve a problem.
Also, it is ok to change your opinion in the face of new information, without it being a sign of weakness, indecisiveness, lying, being bought, capitulation, or illicit back room deal making.
Absolutely. Agree 100%.
Ford won’t hire a bunch of autoworkers just because they got a billion dollars from the govt, they’ll hire a bunch of autoworkers when people start buying more Fords.
Which won’t happen because people don’t have the money because they’re unemployed. Vicious cycle. That’s why it’s a government’s job to SPEND in a recession.
SOCIALIST!
rabble rabble
Uhhhhh….it was Bush & the Republicans that gave tax breaks to companies that ENCOURAGED them to hire overseas
And before them it was Clinton and NAFTA. Neither political party is blameless – both sold us out to the corporations long ago.
NAFTA applies to US, Mexico and Canada. These companies are shipping most of these jobs to South and East Asia.
Gee, excuse our desire not to work 20 hours a day with 2 bathroom breaks and meals squeezed in where-ever a minute is found.
Is this your job?
http://www.alternet.org/media/149197/are_right-wing_libertarian_internet_trolls_getting_paid_to_dumb_down_online_conversations/?page=2
Time out one second. Why can’t our American companies go global without being accused of ‘moving’ jobs overseas? Why are these our jobs? We have a growing middle class in numerous parts of the globe that in the last 30+ years have seen tremendous growth and desire for new products that we Americans have been enjoying for years. Because of this, the market is growing overseas, and they need to have factories, support, and employment there as well. We’re not the economic powerhouse we used to be. We have our jobs/factories, they have their jobs/factories. These American companies are not simply staying American, but rather are going global. We need to be conscious of this and find other ways to gain a competitive advantage in the marketplace. We’ve see this coming for years – it’s not outsourcing. It’s expansion.
Ding, ding, ding!
We are not going to manufacture goods here to ship to China. Same way Toyotas sold here are made mainly by US workers.
The company I work for doesn’t manufacture goods, but yeah, this — there’s huge growth in what the company does, in Asian markets (China and India especially) and in South American ones. Meanwhile it’s pretty thoroughly saturated in North American and Western European markets. End result? Most of the company’s job creation since 2008 has been international, even though there’s still a big US presence.
I don’t like much of what the company I work for does, but I can’t fault them for going where the money is. That’s the point of business, really.
I see where you’re coming from, but there’s one wrinkle: the world is not one big economy. Yes, economies are tightly linked in ways that vary from one country to another. But as long as goods and services can’t freely move over borders, some countries will always be screwed over when trade happens.
For example, we can see that an American company is almost completely free to employ someone in, say, India. They pay them pennies an hour, because that’s what the market can bear in India. Meanwhile, that company sells those goods in India for $1, while selling it in the U.S. for $20, because that’s what the market will bear in the respective countries. But can another corporation or person simply buy a bunch of those products in India and sell them in the U.S. for much less than $20? No, that’s not allowed.
My point comes back to the fact that we are not in a completely free market in the U.S. or in the world. So while we may look at very specific issues and wish the market were free in those instances, the fact that the market is not free in another instance will mean that someone is unfairly screwed over.
I honestly think we’ll see that $19 difference rapidly shrink (next couple decades). I think we (all individs and corps) are competing on an increasingly global scale and if we want to keep up, we have to be smarter and/or provide a service that can’t be cost-effectively gotten somewhere else. If that means all the manufacturing jobs move to China, then we have to figure out what will fill that gap with new goods/services, not figure out a way to get them back over here.
And Americans workers are of course not free to go work in India.
In the foreseeable future, the middle class will disappear. A few of those in the middle class (the “outliers”) will become rich. The rest will sink into poverty and homelessness over time. Then the “global” American companies will no longer be able to sell their products here at $20 a pop, but will have to take $1 or simply have no sales whatsoever. Then the executives will scratch their heads, saying, “Herp a derp!” as they try to figure out why their sales figures and bloated compensations aren’t rising meteorically. And in order to compete with other countries, we will be forced to abandon years of labor laws and regulation. Say goodbye to staycations: welcome to workcations.
Some experts actually argue there is a shrinking middle class, and specifically a growing divide between the rich and poor. In other words, the gap between the rich and poor is increasing, and the middle class is thinning out in between. The poor are poorer than they used to be, relatively speaking, and the rich are richer than they were before, compared to the poor.
“We have a growing middle class in numerous parts of the globe.”
They were talking about the growing middle classes in OTHER countries.
Reading Fail : – (
I agree. We should maneuvering to compete against china and india…where we have laws to ensure worker safety they have none. As soon as we can reinvigorate our youth (those 5-13 years old) to begin working as hard as the chinese and indian youth , we will be back on top.
also, we should allow monopolies in order to compete more effectively against the chinese and indians…they allow them, why shouldn’t we if it will allow our corporate overlords to profit more than they are now (2010 profits are back to where they were in 2006 but WE CAN do better to increase corporate profits even more…if we weren’t so selfish about “free time” and “child labor laws”).
I have no problem with American companies increasing workforce hiring in foreign nations to serve market growth in those in those areas. The problem is that American corporations have been outsourcing jobs that support American markets for several decades simply to maximize shareholder profits (which drive CEO salaries) via cheaper labor and regulatory costs. This is good for shareholders & CEOs but bad for the rest of America (especially the middle class).
Our economy used to be based on manufacturing & engineering and we were the best in the world – now our economy is based on consumerism (buying things made in other countries for the most part). When there are no jobs left in America and no one has income to buy more foreign goods, our economy will collapse – the American dream will end unless we can create a better basis than consumerism to drive our economy.
Don’t worry, the government is growing. Who needs to rely on private enterprise? The IRS will be hiring….
good. the IRS needs to be hiring – to Audit and stop the Pay-No-Taxes by the Millionaires/Billionaires – and Corporations.
“The Bush administration will eliminate nearly half of the lawyers who handle gift and estate tax returns, which are filed for the wealthiest …”
“top 400 taxpayers rose by 31 percent — from an average of $263.3 million to an average of $344.8 million per year” — “”Their effective income tax rate fell to 16.62 percent, down more than half a percentage point from 17.17 percent in 2006″
“Most U.S. and foreign corporations doing business in the United States avoid paying any federal income taxes, …”
So yeah the IRS needs to get hiring.
Well, no shit, Sherlock.
Thank you. I was also going to pose the question: “And this is news???”
Not only are offshore workers less expensive, but the innovation and capacity to think are better in many less developed nations as well. Take China and India for example: the people are generally more hard-working for a lower wage. In addition, the level of education is consistently getting higher. That’s not true at all in the US. Our levels of education are consistently getting lower and people generally have a more entitled attitude, which leads to them not working as hard (I’m generalizing, obviously, and I realize I’m the same way as well). Overall, this finding doesn’t surprise me. Americans in general need a huge attitude adjustment, we’re just not the best anymore. I think protectionist measures (like higher taxes for corps moving jobs offshore) would just be grasping at straws because corporations will move their entire company offshore and outsource to the US for whatever skills cannot be had overseas. /Born and raised in the US.
“That’s not true at all in the US. Our levels of education are consistently getting lower and people generally have a more entitled attitude, which leads to them not working as hard.”
Source? The percentage of citizens with a high school diploma (and even college degree) has seen an upward trend across history. It has started to level out over the past 25 years, but that is to be expected (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=27).
As for the quality, the decline you are referencing is really not there (http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=38). If you are comparing US education to those of other nations, it is also important to remember that the US requires children to go to school. Some nations that out perform us don’t. The under-performing kids are sent to work rather than further their education.
I don’t think he was talking about the number of people walking around with Diplomas or Degrees, but rather the quality of the education that resulted in said degree. Sure it’s not hard for a U.S. student to get a high school diploma these days, but because of things such as No Child Left Behind we’ve made it pretty much impossible for any kid to NOT be able to graduate.
You aren’t necessarily “well educated” just because you went through a ceremony and got a piece of paper. The quality of education in this country, from elementary school through post secondary has been declining for a long time and that’s starting have a serious impact on Americans.
Read the final paragraph of my original comment. I also suggest actually clicking the link.
I might argue that it’s not so much the education, but the willingness of the “best & brightest” to jump into the field where there’s the greatest demand (right now, software, engineering & related technologies). Many of our brightest decide to follow the bucks and jump into finance (even after getting that engineering degree at MIT) or other lucrative fields. So many promising students dismiss the technology sector as “uncool” and don’t prepare themselves to play a role in the global economy.
I don’t have a source to cite you, you can just talk to high school students and see the quality of education is much lower than when I graduated, less than 10 years ago. Also, I have many friends that are teachers in elem and high schools and they confirm what has been my observations. Also, I live in one of the wealthiest and most highly educated counties in the country (Fairfax County, VA). My HS teach friend said some of his students are barely literate, but he still has to pass them because of No Child Left Behind. Talk to a kid fresh off the boat from China or India and talk to an American kid. The difference in their ability to intelligently consider something and put effort into understanding something that they don’t is so obvious it’s astounding. I think the #1 prob with most American kids is that they feel entitled, which often leads to less effort. Again, this is a generalization and I certainly know American kids (though not that many) with good work ethic and that want to learn.
So, from a small (and not random) sample size, you have come to a conclusion that you will attribute to the rest of the population? Instead, please use reliable information that actually can be quantified and thus be used to draw accurate conclusions. I provided links to studies that disputed your claims about the quality of education. If you want to consider anecdotes, then recall that EVERY generation feels that the one below it is ruining the world (regardless of any advances in technology, diplomacy, education, and overall quality of life).
As for the foreigners you encounter, it is important to remember that the ones you see are not a representation of the ENTIRE population. Only the best and brightest of a nation may have the means to study in a quality U.S. institution, and (for those who even travel here post-graduation) obtaining legal US citizenship (or even just residency) isn’t exactly cheap.
I will continue to ignore your comments about the quality of character. Until you can actually back up your claims with studies, your claims are about as reliable as me saying that this bright generation of young, US innovators will bring us to a new and better future.
I think you’re forgetting the bottom line. If it’s cheaper to employ U.S. workers, companies will shift back to the U.S. Companies do not care that much about quality of workers. Their customer service is evidence of that.
This is completely accurate. While people clamor on about how the U.S. is the best country in the world and every other country’s way of life is inferior, they fail to see how those same countries are completely skyrocketing past us in innovation, education, and work ethic. Until we realize that we are no in a position to be the sustained number 1, then we are screwed.
It’s also a bit too convenient that we don’t want to properly fund education or encourage science education (and I would argue, one party is borderline anti-science), and then when we don’t have the talent in place to do the important research, that we need to shift that off shore to low paying countries.
That educational strategy will make companies a few extra dollars (or save them) in the short term, but in the long term it will hurt the US economy. The ones makeing the decisions will be fine, they can pay for their education. But you risk making the US into a quasi-third world country with a small ruling class and very small middle class and a large lower class. The only difference is that the lower class have bought into the idea that if we just give the rich more money and let them do whatever they want, then they might give us a decent job. Reaganomics, Offshoring, and the recession have shown that is not the case.
“Creating more new jobs overseas” does not necessarily equal outsourcing.
Here’s a clue: “Both companies are seeing foreign sales growth rates double domestic increases.”
Which means they’re possibly adding jobs where the business is, not outsourcing business to other countries. If they kept those jobs in the US, then they’d be outsourcing here.
Someone read the article…
Lets do a simple thought problem – if you are seeing sales growth in Texas at twice the rate as in California, you’ll probably going to be hiring people in Texas, right?
Now just change Texas and California with China and the US.
Then why does my customer service person sound like they are from India? Oh right, because they are! Not from the United States. So your analogy doesn’t work out quite right.
It’s rooted in logic, but companies are over-hiring foreign workers and not keeping enough domestic workers to match their domestic customer base. They are relying on their foreign workforce to take care of their domestic customers are much as possible.
No, his analogy is perfectly fine. Read the article – the article talked about UPS and Catepillar creating jobs overseas. First notice that the reason both those companies are creating more jobs overseas – because they have much more growth overseas. And it makes sense, doesn’t it? UPS can’t exactly hire someone in the US to deliver packages in China. So his analogy is good.
Second, the article said that they are creating more jobs overseas than in the US – but that implies they are creating jobs in the US as well, but just not as many. But we don’t have much growth here – so even though our own economy sucks, because it doesn’t in China/India, we get some jobs here as well. Cool.
Depends. Do I already have a sales infrastructure that sells my product in Texas (stores, gas stations, Wally-World), and now they’re selling more? Do I have a reliable means to convey my product to Texas? Then I don’t need to outsource a single job to Texas, or perhaps very few (i.e., sales droids to bring in new distributors-they’d cover sectors or territories). If I provide a service, then perhaps I’d send the individuals that provide the service, for however long they’re needed. These individuals are based out of California, live here (when they’re not traveling), and provide services in Texas when needed. Again, all without outsourcing the jobs to Texas.
Unfortunately, neither of these scenarios are what people are commonly referring to as outsourcing, nor is it what companies are doing. The thought experiment fails.
I would only really call this outsourcing if they moved the laid off American jobs overseas. Otherwise it is really just expansion of a global [evil] empire*.
I actually don’t really have a problem with this if it is just expansion. it is what a company has to do to stay afloat. I would have a bigger problem if the companies that are doing this are the same ones who took govt. bailouts and promised American jobs in return.
[sarcasm] *Ok well maybe not evil, but I bet at some point one of the CEO’s of these companies wore a dark hood, cape and laughed maniacally. [/sarcasm]
“I would have a bigger problem if the companies that are doing this are the same ones who took govt. bailouts and promised American jobs in return. “
“JPMorgan Chase to Increase India Outsourcing 25%” — “JPMorgan Chase, the recipient of $25 billion in TARP funds – is going ahead with a $138 million plan to buy two new luxury corporate jets and build “the premier corporate aircraft hangar on the eastern seaboard”
“
Some companies make it unbearable for US workers and then cry “No US workers available, we have to go offshore.” Re: great example is in medical transcription moving US home based jobs offshore to India brick and mortar business based jobs for 1/4 the cost. But the companies still charge US hospitals/health care providers the same price for transcription.
Yeah, the company I used to work for was partially in the transcription field, and laid off half their workers last year because labour is so much cheaper on India.
Of course, the quality is crap and there are all sorts of spelling errors in the end product, but I imagine when you’ve reduced your labour costs to a tenth of what they were before you can lose customers but still pull in bigger profits.
Outsourced? In a sense. The company I work for is having a massive software project constructed by an Indian s/w firm because “there’s just not enough resources locally to do the job, let alone at this price. We could never build it with the people working here now.”
It’s such fun! We’re well into the “that’s now how WE read the (hopelessly vague written by a zero-IT lawyer) scope document” phase. Sigh.
I’m quite sure, in the end, my employers will get the system they deserve.
Or they’ll end up paying more than they would have originally to redo it.
It will be lower quality and end up costing more than you thought (but less than if you did it correctly). So the executives will high-five each other for saving money on an inferior quality product. However, all the wasted time and expense dealing with crappy software is a “soft” cost and doesn’t count towards their bonuses. However, it does measure against a regular workers’ productivity. If you blame the software, you will be chided by the same executive who approved the bad decision (he can’t admit his mistake after all) or will just say that you’re just lazy (to keep the Republican/Fox News meme going), and then shift the work offshore, to do the work even more poorly for less money (but again, those are soft costs and don’t really count). Then they’ll high five themselves again for what they think are further cost savings, but really aren’t. When the company new revenue stagnates due to inefficiency and poor customer service, they’ll cut even more US workers and shift them offshore again, and give themselves a high five because they cut costs further.
….welcome to the modern business world.
Well when the government gives them tax credits for it what do they expect?
1.4 jobs compared to 2.4 million is actually a really favorable ratio. I want to know how American companies created 40% of a job though. Must be part time. 16 hours a week.
1.4 is not a percentage but is a condensed full number meaning 1,400,000 (One Million Four Hundred Thousand).
Thanks for playing.
Thank you, Republicans, for caring more about making businesses successful than the manner at which they become successful.
Right, those republicans in power! wait, what?
Those Republicans that have stopped as much legislation as possible these last 2 years, and dumped as much deregulation as possible the 8 years before that to crippled the economy. Yes, those Republicans.
110th congress was a democratic majority. 111th congress was a democratic majority. Those republicans you refer to had no voice to stop legislation.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/110th_United_States_Congress
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/111th_United_States_Congress
Did you mean to say that there were democrats who opposed job creation?
Cloture much?
The Democrats just need to learn from the Republicans – next time there’s a democratic majority, they need to screw compromise and simply ram everything down the Republicans’ throats.
Because that’s what they’re going to be accused of anyway.
It’s naive to think that any single edition of Congress is to blame for any current predicament. Problems develop over time. Which is why it’s pretty moronic to blame Obama for problems that have been mounting for at least a decade.
Also, according to that website, the 110th was the first Democratic majority for over a decade. Exactly what were the GOP doing during that decade?
Right, deregulating banks:
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act
•The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), also referred to as the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, repealed part of Glass-Steagall, tearing down the walls between banking, insurance and investments. Companies could now merge, partner and operate freely within each other’s industries. The act also made it possible for the financial industry to group mortgage and other portfolios, selling them as investments.
http://www.ehow.com/about_5413083_history-bank-deregulation.html
You are missing the point. It isn’t a partisan issue, it’s the cost of labor and the creation of new markets. You took a cost/benefit issue and made it a political one.
It’s OK as long as the person you’re blaming is Repulbican though, such as Obama blaming Bush for everything, right?
It’s also naive to blame a single political party when there is little difference between them. Your argument reminds me of the old Star Trek episode with the planet embroiled in permanaent race war – each side was black on 1 side/white on the other, but they defined each other by which side was black or white (right or left). Politicians of all stripes still have stripes – the color of the stripes is irrelevant other than how they use the issue to distract us from the real issue: one is no different from another.
Actually, the minority in the Senate has a huge hand to play in stopping legislation (in the Senate you need 60 votes to stop a filibuster) The Senate rules force a lot of compromise and can be used to derail a lot of legislation, especially against a more philosophically divided party like the Democrats.
“Despite President Obama’s pledge to retain more hi-tech jobs in the U.S., a federal agency run by a hand-picked Obama appointee has launched a $36 million program to train workers, including 3,000 specialists in IT and related functions, in South Asia.”
http://www.informationweek.com/news/software/soa_webservices/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=226500202
“USAID is also partnering with Sri Lankan companies in other industries, including construction and garment manufacturing, to help create 10,000 new jobs in the country, which is still recovering from a 30-year civil war that ended in 2009. “
So they are trying to boost a damaged and war-torn country. Bastards.
When the US invated Afghanistan and deposed the tyrannical Taliban regime, we boosted their economy by turning them into the world’s largest producer of opium. Does the good of helping another nation’s economy outweight the evils of how it was done?
Tax cuts that supposedly “incentivize” companies to move jobs offshore are only icing on the cake. China, India, et. al have far lower regulatory and labor costs – those are the real motive force behind this.
I wish people would stop blaming Presidents for what is really a profit-driven structural trend that’s been happening over several decades.
The financial/credit crisis is rooted in the destruction of good-paying middle class jobs. Is it any accident that “easy credit” emerged just as those jobs were being destroyed and offshored? We had to keep our mega homes and mega cars somehow right?
I’m a conservative free-marketer, but I’m starting to say, “enough is enough” This is going beyond prudent corporate management into the realm of naked greed.
Don’t these C-Suite decision makers realize that at some point if they don’t start re-hiring aggregate demand for their products and services will remain low?
I agree with you. I’m a free market guy, too, but the unabashed greed that has been behind the majority of corporations for the last 20 or 30 years has gotten absurd. I don’t think it’s US public policy that pushes jobs overseas so much as far lower labor costs. You’d never get away with paying an American worker what an Indian or Chinese worker will accept.
But at some point, nobody over here is going to have any money to buy anything. Then what?
The problem seems to be that the people in these companies aren’t taking the long view. Executives want bonuses and shareholders demand high profit no matter the state of the economy. They then sell off tomorrow for profits today. Sure, it will cripple things down the road, but doesn’t this quarter look awesome?
And hey, now that they’ve gotten the praise, promotion and bonuses, time to look for a better-paying job elsewhere and let someone else deal with this when the chickens come home to roost.
Now imagine every company behaving that way. Just like the banking fiasco, it’s a game of musical chairs where everyone thinks they’ll have cashed out before things crash.
I used to be fiscally right-wing when I was younger, but I’m seeing the future and it doesn’t look pretty. Letting companies do what they want doesn’t seem to be working when they refuse to act in their own long-term interest. Time to bring in a heavy stick before we all end up retiring in a third world country.
Yeah we laid off one programmer and hired out a team in India for a Fraction of the cost. Now I get to deal with people that are not only half way around the world, but have accents I can’t understand half of the time.
If it’s of any consolation, your Hindi sounds pretty ridiculous to them.
I’ve never had a trouble understanding Indians on the phone. What I *DO* have trouble understanding are their written comments.
Think of the benefits of working with them though. You get an opportunity to interact with a new culture. Plus, if you hit it off with any of them, you could end up with an invitation to come over and visit them! My dad (who works in Australia) became good friends with some other workers in Spain. He ended up staying with one when he traveled to the country, and then they treated him to a week in Amsterdam.
Well, as far as UPS is concerned, if they are higher out of the country, its most likely for business outside the country. I guess they may have some customer service jobs that may be outsourced, but the business is transporting packages. You can’t hire some guy in India to load a truck in Edison NJ.
UPS used to source out a lot of their international deliveries (so Europeans would think they weren’t using a US company), perhaps now they are just being UPS worldwide, and that translates into more jobs abroad. But overall, I can’t see to many prospective UPS employees are losing jobs to people overseas.
Outsource jobs so that you dont have to pay more to the people you are making the product for.
Is the savings more than the potential loss of sales?
Keep in mind one very important line of the article: “Both companies are seeing foreign sales growth rates double domestic increases”
If they’re growing their business overseas, it makes sense for them to add overseas jobs to support that growth. Just as we (Americans) aren’t particularly crazy about calling a customer service center located in India, for example, people in the UK aren’t too wild about calling a customer service center located in the United States, either.
The question we need to ask ourselves is, how do we get product growth (either via sales or exports) within the U.S.? We’re still IMPORTING way more good than we’re EXPORTING (to the tune of $380 billion in 2009, $227 Billion of that going to China ALONE! (That iPhone that you may be carrying? That phone alone caused a $2 Billion trade deficit with.. you guessed it.. China.)
And then we have companies that have a SIGNIFICANT U.S. presence, like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, who use tax loopholes like the “Double Irish” and the “Dutch Sandwich” to pay almost ZERO corporate taxes in the U.S. (Google alone used the above tax loopholes to get out of paying $3.1 BILLION dollars in U.S. corporate taxes.. Kinda funny, coming from a company whos motto is “do no evil”.. I guess they should add “unless it saves us money”).
Folks that bitch about how high their taxes are then brag about their off-shore tax shelters have a SEVERE case of “needs a punch to the face”.
There is no known cure for needs a punch to the face other than a punch to the face.
I actually LOL’ed
Not to inject politics into this (although others already have), didn’t Obama try to close some of these loopholes as a means to pay for some of his programs and it couldn’t get pas the fillibuster in the Senate (I have a link for each political persuasion).
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2009/05/04/4425376-obama-calls-to-eliminate-tax-loophole
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/05/04/obama-unveils-plan-close-tax-loopholes/
In 2 days my employment with a Big 4 accounting firm will end due to “Global Strategic Sourcing”. 800 highly technical and highly paying jobs are going to Tata so my soon to be former employer can save money. They’re not losing money on IT…they just want to pay less for it. From what I’ve been able to tell they’re also giving up a bunch on service.
Yes, as I mention in another post, poor service, poor quality, etc. are “soft costs” that can hidden, distributed, can’t be proven beyond all doubt, etc. What really counts is that the executive saved X amount of money in his department and now he gets a big bonus.
I don’t think economists considered in the level of greed/ lack of morality that is taking over our economy. It’s always been the primary driving force, but it may be off the modeling charts even for the most UofC economist.
A company can only strip mine the US middle class for profits only so long until the mine/money plays out…
Free market is effect! For those of you complaining, please ask yourself “why do you hate America and the free market?”.
Publicly traded companies cannot allow ethics, morals or patriotism impede their ability to coup as much profit as possible, at any expense.
looking for US Companies – paying and hiring US workers. I wish there was a website/database with this type of info.
My most recent mostly-incompetent Customer Service with US profit-making companies – were in India (Verizon), Phillippines and India (Banks and Mortgage), Nicaragua (Kohls,com) – Guatemala, etc.
As an American company who employs thousands of people, I can tell you, American workers are EXPENSIVE to hire. Plus we go through 10 employees to get one good one. With all the benefits, insurance, HR costs to keep employees happy, dealing with prima-donnas who we would fire if we weren’t afraid of them taking us to the labor board because of some perceived wrong as they threatened…
Outsourcing looks great to an employer.
Add Experian to that list. They laid off a huge chunk of employees to send those jobs to Santiago Chilie. Theat means people in South America has access to everyone’s personal credit information.
Have you ever watched the movie “Outsourced?”
Not the TV show, the movie it was based on?
In one scene, the woman at the call center has a man yelling at her about how outsourcing is costing Americans their jobs, and how pissed he is about it. She tells him she is aware how some Americans feel, and has located amrican-made products very similar to what he is ordering. He asks if the price is similar, and she say, “No, the American-made one is $216 dollar more.” Guess which one he buys?
If you really oppose outsourcing, don’t buy goods produced overseas. Buy the more expensive American-made versions. Don’t buy the Dell warranty, bring it to a store in your town when it breaks. And so on.
I remember when my company had 350,000+ US employees, we’re now down to less than 100,000 in the US. Jobs have gone everywhere where labor resources are cheap – Brazil, Argentina, India, Slovenia, China, Vietnam, Mexico and more. We now have nearly double the number of US employees in India. Everything (except high-level executives) is under consideration for moving offshore. We expect to be down around 35,000 US employees in a few years.
Quality no longer matters, being able to deliver on time doesn’t matter, customer satisfaction doesn’t matter, productivity doesn’t matter, employee turnover doesn’t matter, skills don’t matter either – all that matters now is getting cheap resources, often without the ability to do the job. US employees are stuck having to clean up their messes, rewrite their poor quality code, an prevent failures.
We are losing accounts because these global resources have poor productivity, delivering poor quality, and delivering late.