Cato Institute: Outsourcing Helps World Economy

[porkrind]

As reported by Yahoo! News:

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=1209&e=2&u=/ap/20040203/ap_on_hi_te/india_outsourcing


The shameless right-wing apologist group "Cato Institute" :puke: says outsouring is great. Choice stuped quote:

More jobs in developing countries would build "larger middle classes and create a larger market for U.S. products in the future."

Yeah, it's great for large international corporations that can take unfair advantage of labor, but it sucks for the American worker. We should banish these unethical corporations as well as their shills like the Cato Institute. They are a cancer on America. :puke:

[Jackpine Radical]

1. So I suppose Cato

will be backing unionization abroad to help build prosperity and humane conditions among all those foreign workers, right?

[Skittles]

12. LOL

good one, Jackpine ! :D

[Dirk39]

2. Are there any U.S. products in the future?

As soon as there are, or in the near future will be any kind of growing middle-class in one of those countries, the corporations will leave and outsource again.

I'm a bit biased about outsourcing for other reasons. Here in Europe, most of the people, who want their work back, are far right-wingers or racists.

Or at least, the right-wing and corporate media are trying to direct the anger of the unemployed people against the workers in other countries, instead of directing it against the global system and the multinational corporations, who benefit from it.

Our enemies are not the people in poorer countries, who get the jobs - our enemies are the corporations and the system behind them, who are blackmailing us against one another.
And I think, there is no way back to protectionism, not even in the USA.

We have to look for a global solution for the benefit of all people.

There are no "bad" corporations, pushing for outsourcing, while others do not. Under the given circumstances, every corporation, who does't outsource, would simply bust and be replaced by another corporation, who does.

Hello from Germany,
Dirk

[Jackpine Radical]

4. Your points are well-taken.

The long-term solution is to internationalize the labor movement so that labor costs become more equal around the world, and are thus removed from cost competition. It will be a long and painful battle, and it has not yet even begun.

[Dirk39]

8. Not to long and hopefully not to painfull...

>>More jobs in developing countries would build "larger middle classes and create a larger market for U.S. products in the future."<<

This is pervert newspeech. The goal in outsourcing is to let people in poorer countries produce things, they can't afford, and to destroy their import-substitute industries to be entirely at the mercy of imports from the USA. Works like this: take low quality wheat from the USA, highly state-subsidized, offer it for nearly nothing in a country with a large high-quality wheatproduction, wait till they are bancrupt and then they will buy your wheat for higher prices, most people can't afford. Instead of planting wheat, they might have started to plant tobacco for export into the USA.
(The IMF and the Worldbank told us so.)

The first delivery of wheat is often masked as "foreign aid" = Genetic modified shit.

There you have it: the "middle-class" in a poor country buying U.S. products in a happily globalized world to the benefit of us all, brought to you by:
CATO,


Dirk

[Skittles]

13. American corporations exploiting third world nations

it's perverted.

Hello Dirk in Germany. :hi: from Susan in Texas

[Dirk39]

18. Hello Susan!

Germany is doing exactly the same.
Take billions of tax-money and give it to your farmers to subsidize their products. Otherwise they couldn't compete.
(Large corporations don't pay taxes anyway, only workers do.)

Don't allow poor countries to export the same products into Germany.
They produce the same products at a lower price and in a higher quality, but we have to protect our farmers, don't we?

Wait a few years and they will import the same products from Germany they once produced in the best quality availabe. And their children and workers - those who are not allready unemployed - will do slave work in our outsourced factories.

As a result, even germans, who can't afford to rent a halfway decent appartment anymore, will still be able to buy some cool sneakers as a proof of belonging to the wealthy few. Those poor people would have to work 2 years to buy these, we're on the bright side of Globalisation.

Idiotic world we live in,
Dirk

[Skittles]

21. It is indeed idiotic

I love the DU because (hopefully) we let people know not all Americans think the way the GOP does. I most certainly do NOT. :D

[Thor_MN]

14. Yes, Oil Exploitation Services...

When someone says that barriers to outsourcing would hurt US services overseas, they are saying that Halliburton (and/or the other big oil corporations) has bought and paid them. The GOP places the wants of big oil ahead of the needs of the people once again...

[The Backlash Cometh]

3. He lives in la-la land.

The poor will never be allowed to rise above their means. Capitalist shitheads like the people in CATO institute will always make sure that cheap labor exists.

[Jackpine Radical]

5. A "capitalist shithead"

is just something that makes a stinky mess when it rolls.

[ramapo]

6. What will we export?

Assume growing middle classes in India and China.

They will want electronics and cars. We won't be exporting electronics since none are manufactured in the US.

Maybe US car manufacturers will build plants in those countries. US car manufacturers will not be sending many cars to either country.

Clothing? Don't think so...

Software? LOL

Appliances? Unlikely.

Furniture? Check where most (inexpensive at least) furniture is manufactured.

So the argument will be that those countries won't want to "waste" their manufacturing on internal sales which may not generate as much revenue (and no dollars). I think their new manufacturing base will expand with more jobs for the "new" middle class.

The US has given up manufacturing and now service jobs in return for corporate profits. The rest of the world will take advantage of our shortsightedness.

[Zero Gravitas]

11. Doesn't matter

They will still get the profits even if the goods are manufactured and consumed outside the US. Thats the point they export the jobs to the other countries to reduce their costs and increase profits. These corporations exist so a small number of people can live in luxury not to provide a living to the American middle class. They don't even care if the American market shrinks as the middle class is undermined so long as their net profit goes up because of the lower costs and larger global market.

Follow this trend to its logical conclusion and you get 95% with low wage jobs buying cheap crap at Wal Mart, the top 0.5% living in luxury, and a small number in the middle providing specialist services to the wealthy.

[ramapo]

24. Wal-Mart's a ponzi scheme

Wal-Mart's are sprouting like weeds here in NJ. Build more Wal Marts so there are more retail jobs so people can scrimp and save enough to buy Wal Mart products.

[bleedingheart]

7. I wonder if the Cato Institute is outsourcing its job to the far east?

I bet you can get economists and libertarians at a dime a dozen in India or China....

[renegade000]

9. no doubt it helps the world economy...

but i think Americans are primarily concerned about the American economy...just MHO ;)

[sendero]

10. When Libertarians speak....

.... only the insane listen.

I pray for the outsourcing of "think-tank" jobs. Clearly, these jokers are not capable of thinking, maybe flipping burgers would be their highest legitimate contribution to society.

[CHIMO]

15. Simple Question

At least in my simple mind.

How large an economy and diversified resources does a people/country require to be self sustainable and achieve the desires of their inhabitants?

[daleo]

16. Sometimes I thing protectionism has an unduly bad reputation

It might not be so bad if people stuck to their own knitting a little more. Face it, the larger the playing field, the greater the advantage of capital over labour. Also, think of the incredible waste of energy that is going on right now, supporting this over globalized economy. Perhaps peak oil will render the whole point moot.

The theory of relative advantage as outlined by Adam Smith makes sense when applied to natural resources, or unique skills, but when the only advantage countries are competing with are intensely exploited labour forces, dogma has supplanted reason.

[CHIMO]

17. AS I

Understand Adam Smith, his thesis was based on the availability of competitors.

Putting this into the equation, then one needs competitors for goods and for labor.

After the plague there was a shortage of labor.


Is nature trying to tell us something?

[JCMach1]

19. Fair trade... not Free trade!!!!!!!!!!!1

:)

[Barkley]

20. The U.S. middle class wasn't created by importing jobs but by ...

... the New Deal Economic policies of the 1930s and 1940s which dramatically expanded the middle class access to higher education, set minimum wage, established social security, established workers rights, workers compensation, unemployment insurance and redistributive fiscal policies.

Unionization also contributed significantly to formation of the middle class.

The middle class development in other industrialized countries followed a similar pattern (e.g. the Marshall Plan for Western Europe).

The U.S. labor force is about 141 million & only accounts for about 2% of the world's population; there are nearly 1 billion people in India; China has more than a billion. Even if we exported all of
our jobs (times two) we'd hardly make a dent.

Creating a sizable, viable and sustainable middle class in India and China will require more than U.S. outsourcing.

Unlike the leveling effect of New Deal economics, outsourcing promises to exacerbate the gap between the haves and have nots in these countries.

Buying "Future U.S. Product" -- what products (other than weapons) will we be making that they will be buying?

[indepat]

22. A malignancy that is spreading rampantly: the dollar's precipitious fall

helps the world economy too, but doesn't do much positive for standards of living at home.

[nolabels]

23. They should move all their jobs somewhere else then

I wonder what they would have to say after that. Really a lot of things could be moved to another country. (or in the case of *, to another planet)

[abelenkpe]

25. Helps world economy

by taking jobs away from middle class Americans. Wanna read something really infuriating? Check out Letters of Salon.com:

http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2004/02/04/pizza_delivery/index.html

I especially enjoy the one from an Indian worker who suggests that Americans should come to India to work.

[Tims]

26. Exploitation - plain and simple

To say we are helping other countries by giving their people jobs at starvation wages is absurd. When you consider that we don't pay these people enough to buy the products they are producing themselves, how can they purchase the products we produce here. The only way to help build a foreign economy is to build factories which produce products to be consumed locally and to build a healthy middle class.

The only reason corporations move operations to these third world nations is because they have no middle class and they can exploit the abject poverty. We simply allow the population to move from starvation to hunger. As soon as the population begins to demand more than the pittance we offer them or the regimes which keep them oppressed fall, we walk away.

The only global economic practices which works are ones which work to develop local economies first and international trade second. But if we did that we wouldn't be able to buy cheap useless crap at WalMart or Nike couldn't make obscene profits making shoes for $1.25 and selling them here for $125.00

Henry Ford had it right (though he backed away from it later), that if you pay your workers enough money they will become your biggest customers. Essentially the extra money you spend on your employees comes back to you when your employees become your customers.

[Barrett808]

27. Since when does Cato care about the world?

I thought they were America Firsters all the way.