The solution to offshore outsourcing is simple...

[rfranklin]

All we have to do is allow corporations that send jobs overseas to bestow USA citizenship on their foreign workers. All jobs are now kept by Americans!

[gulliver]

1. Use a formula to add tariffs to foreign goods and services

Solve for a zero trade deficit and adjust for the foreign cost of living, worker rights, and environmental policies. The tariffs could help defray the U.S. deficit and reduce our taxes.

So if a widget costs $10 to make in the United States and only $5 to import from China, you would just apply the formula. Bad environmental policy in China, add $1. Child labor problems, add $1. High trade deficit with China, add $2. And so on.

What's China going to do about it? Retaliate by not buying Kentucky Fried Chicken? I don't think so.

[NewJeffCT]

2. china retaliates

By not giving US corporations tax breaks for doing business in China...

Not only do they have cheap labor over there, they have all sorts of programs to help you export goods cheaper.

[TX-RAT]

3. twice as much

So your solution is for everybody to pay twice as much?

[rman]

4. more like forcing US corporations to go back to the US

so that Americans have jobs so that they can buy stuff from these American companies. economy fixed at the expense of not making CEO's even richer then they already are.

[TX-RAT]

5. forcing corps

How do you force a corp to do business in the US without penalizing the consumer?

[Robin Hood]

6. The consumer is already being penalized before they consume.

They are being penalized by stagnant wages and declining standards of living. In the pursuit of the cheapest thing the consumer is helping to dismantle the country piece by piece, death by one thousand cuts.

I would tell corporations that if they want to sell their stuff here that they have to make and support their stuff here, or they can go and sell their stuff to the damn Chinese or whom ever. See if the Chinese will buy this crap.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

7. What good is having cheap imports

if the population has no job or money with which to purchase them?

[AP]

9. and the imports aren't even cheaper for consumers.

They're just cheaper to make, and the corporations charge as much as they can for them, kind of like Haliburton billing the army for food -- charge as much as you can until the pips squeak.

[Kathy in Cambridge]

13. I was looking for cheap baskets the other day-most are made in China

and the cheapest one was $16.99. They have gone up $5 from last year, and I'm sure the cost to produce them (by either slave or sweatshop labor) is minimal.

I have been buying baskets for storage and to make gift baskets for years, and have watched their prices steadily increase.

[AP]

16. This is why corporate profits are up and personal debt is too.

We are transferring the wealth of this country, produced by the labor of people who have little more to give than their own labor, straight to the top, passed on to corporate insiders in dividends and stock options creating capital gains taxed at 15%, while Americans pay their income taxes of over 30% with credit cards, and we go into debt, and pay interest on the debt, which is more profit for the banks.

[Cleita]

19. I don't think it will make a difference.

Manufacturers are not passing their savings on to the consumer from outsourcing, but posting surplus profits instead. Having been involved in retailing in the past myself, I know that the wholesale price of goods is on an average one third of the retail price. Some retailers find they can sell stuff with a smaller markup and still make a profit. The problem with outsourcing is that they are making huge markups now and the consumer is probably only benefitting from a fraction of surplus gross profits.

If those people out of jobs in the USA today had spending money from being employed, the retailers would be making much more money because there would be more volume. So although I agree with the poster that tariffs need to be imposed, it's only a portion of the solution. If manufacturers want to sell their product in the USA, without tariffs, they need to meet some standards to indicate that the goods are manufactured to USA standards, like quality control, fair wages for the overseas workers and that they are incorporated within the USA. Then and only then could the tariffs be lowered.

Anyone else should be considered a foreign goods importer and pay tariffs accordingly. I think if these measures were put into place, the manufacturers would see that it would be more in the interests of their bottom line to bring the jobs back to America.

[AP]

8. if people can't migrate freely, jobs shouldn't either.

And I mean not only, Americans should be able to freely move TO a country with jobs, I REALLY mean, if labor can't move FROM a country with super low labor rates, we shouldn't be trading with those countries.

If there isn't a FREE and FAIR market for labor, there shouldn't be one for capital.

[Zero Gravitas]

11. agree 100%

[AP]

14. This is actually the core of the issue.

They're moving jobs to countries with less fair labor markets, where people are even more desperate and have fewer protections and fewer options (if you can believe that).

Labor can't compete in those other countries. We shouldn't be trading with countries where labor doesn't have power.

That was John Edwards's position. No trade deals with countries where labor and the environment were exploited. America shouldn't be in a race for the bottom competing with countries like that, and those countries shouldn't have access to American markets.

[Zero Gravitas]

10. Cap CEO pay

to be say 50X the average pay of their workers.... worldwide.

The disparity is big enough between the top executives and those who actually do the work in the US, but just imagine if that CEO had his pay based on the salaries of outsourced workers!

[AP]

12. There are less controversial ways to achieve same end: limit deductibility

of high executive incomes, or create tax incentives for increasing salaries for non-executives, or just have a tax code which progressively taxes incomes so that there isn't such a huge windfall for super-high income earners (and so that you might encourage more employment at lower income levels).

[SoCalDem]

15. There was never a "hard and fast" rule, but it USED to be that way

The ones at the top are in some kind of a "sports mentality" race to have the "most" .. As long as they control the means to GET IT, we all lose..

One way to stop the nonsense would be to UNIONIZE ALL WORKERS.. If all workers had collective bargaining, a lot of the workplace crap would STOP..

As long as employers "can" get cheaper workers abroad, they will..

Companies used to be a part of their communities, but the merger-mania of the past few decades, traded piles of cash, for community..As more and more small and mid-sized companies became just part of the larger corporation, local concerns just went away.. If the guy "in charge" of your hometown company in Paducah..is in SanFrancisco, why would he care about the fact that 400 local people will be out of work, lose their homes, and have to beg for food..?? He sees it as a "cost-cutting" measure for the whole conglomerate..

The rationale for breaking up the phone company was because they had "gotten too big".. yet no one sees a problem with what's happening now?? At its biggest, Ma Bell never outsourced...

It's just plain ole greed, folks.. Welcome to the RobberBarronRevival,,,enjoy your stay at the poorhouse..:(

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Loss of community spirit

Yup, that's what happens.

Just a tiny example was Coffee People in Portland. When they were locally owned, they were great contributors, especially to non-commercial radio stations (one of which I volunteered for). When the company was bought out, all of a sudden they not only stopped contributing cash, they even stopped supplying coffee and pastry for pledge drives.

I'm pleased that Minneapolis has two locally owned coffeehouse chains, which are so well-established that Starbucks is only the second largest chain in the area.

[AP]

20. More on loss of community spirit -- NPR did a story about a company

in Wisconsin that had been sold to a conglomerate. The first thing to go was the office symphony orchestra.

Corporations were terrible public citizens 100 years ago. In the 30s and 40s they started doing things like participating in the life of the community in order to make up for how awful they'd been.

Now there losing that sense of responsibility to the community again (which manifests itself in things such as ripping off their own pension holders and ripping off the public markets).

I get the impression that things are coming full circle. Those symphony orchestras will be back in about 2025, I'm guessing.

[TX-RAT]

17. Cap CEO pay

I totally agree on the CEO cap, but that doesn't solve the whole problem. I do think AP is on to something.