REAL SIMPLE: As long as outsourcing is legal, any new jobs created will be outsourced.

[grahamhgreen]

If it can be done cheaper overseas, any new jobs created will necessarily be outsourced.

Before we even talk about job creation, we must get out of the unfair greed trade agreements and make outsourcing illegal.

Pretty simple.

[AndyA]

1. You are 100% correct.

First, we'll have to find representatives who will actually represent the people, not the corporations. I'm tired of corporate America always coming first.

"We can't do that, because the _____________________ industry will suffer losses if we do."

The fact that the American people, the people who pay the bills, are being harmed apparently doesn't carry as much weight as corporate earnings.

Yes, we have to put America first for a change. Support American jobs, American companies, and buy American goods. No more support for foreign owned corporations, and take away the incentives for American companies to outsource. In fact, penalize them for the loss of American jobs. That will put a stop to it quickly.

If they can't make a profit paying American wages, they need to cut back on the executive perks and salaries. Budget, like everyone else.

[OhioChick]

30. +1,000 n/t

[JonLP24]

2. Unless we cut taxes

So businesses will want to stay here and create jobs. :sarcasm: Typical republican talking points.

BTW, I agree and K&R.

[Kat45]

11. Single payer health would immediately cut costs of doing business in America

Our 'global competition' does not have to pay health insurance benefits because the government covers health care. One would think corporate America would favor single payer for this reason alone, but I guess they prefer having greater control over their employees and keeping them meek because they depend on their job for their health care so are not going to demand fair treatment or a living wage.

[area51]

16. +1

The stupidity of American businesses never ceases to amaze me. They'd save so much money if they weren't expected to offer health care. But they're so fscking determined to have a thumb over everyone's head, in the form of control of access to health care. :mad:

Each day, 273 people die due to lack of health care in the U.S.; that's 100,000 deaths per year.

We need single-payer health care, not a welfare bailout for the serial-killer insurance agencies.

We don't need the GingrichCare of mandated, unregulated, for-profit insurance that is still too expensive, only pays parts of medical bills, denies claims, and bankrupts people. Republinazi '93 plan:

"Subtitle F: Universal Coverage - Requires each citizen or lawful permanent resident to be covered under a qualified health plan or equivalent health care program by January 1, 2005."

"We will never have real reform until people's health stops being treated as a financial opportunity for corporations."

[Junkdrawer]

3. It's all about INVESTMENT and RETURN ON INVESTMENT (ROI)....

Financial services and overseas investments have a bigger ROI, so that's where the money went. Domestic industries in the US were starved of modernization monies and so slowly died. And the middle class died with them.

[unblock]

4. trickle down works after all! a rising tide DOES lift all boats...

... in india and china.

[HughBeaumont]

5. Or inshored. Let's not forget that.

And yes, our corporate leaders really aren't being punished enough for turning America into a low-wage flea market where no one has buying or saving power and household debt is skyrocketing.

[Recursion]

7. "outsource" doesn't have to mean "offshore"

My company outsources its HR work, but to another American company.

[Recursion]

6. OK. How do you make outsourcing illegal? NT

[WinkyDink]

20. With laws?

[Recursion]

23. Give me an example

You'd need to legally define "outsourcing" in a way that preventing it doesn't have huge unintended consequences.

[slackmaster]

8. I've seen companies experiment with outsourcing software development a few times

In every case,

- Costs greatly exceeded budget,

- Deadlines slipped,

- Results failed to meet functional and performance expectations,

- The company ended up paying someone in-house to rewrite the code.

I'm not afraid of outsourcing. If my job as a Systems Administrator gets outsourced, I'll just laugh at the inevitable train wreck and get on with my life.

[Recursion]

10. I've seen outsourcing complete, self-contained systems work

Like, outsourcing somebody to do your payroll software can work, as long as it doesn't need to interact with, say, your CRM.

I like Joel Spolsky's suggestion that whatever it is your company actually does, you need to write your own software stack for it. The rest, if it doesn't tie in very closely with it, you can outsource.

All of which scampers around the point that universally, with no exceptions, enterprise software sucks.

[opihimoimoi]

9. BS...many jobs can be created if them Pubs and DEMs work together...

I can think of 5 million new jobs in 2 years that would be safe...as in ...cannot be offshored...

but the Party of NO...Republicans....still offer resistence ....they are the OBSTACLE toward fixing America

[OnionPatch]

12. What kind of jobs are safe from outsourcing?

:shrug:

[SocialistLez]

13. Car work (mechanics), doing hair, etc.

Of course many service industry jobs do not pay very well.

I'd love to see a global movement toward living wages.

[OnionPatch]

14. But not everyone can do that.

Plus they have to have customers who are working and can afford things like car mechanics and salons. The people I know who work in those kinds of jobs work on their own cars and get their friends to give them haircuts.

I just don't see how we can maintain a middle class when most work can be sent to cheap labor countries. Yes, a global movement for fair wages would be the answer but how long is that going to take? There will be an awful lot of suffering before wages even out around the globe at a healthy middle class level. I'd wager I'll be dead and gone before I see that.

[SocialistLez]

31. I understand

"Plus they have to have customers who are working and can afford things like car mechanics and salons."

SO very true.

I think I'll be dead and gone (and I'm 20) before we see worldwide living wages.
That should be the end goal though.

In the mean time, I'd love to urge people to shop local and try to support local crafts people.

::sigh::

There's a lot of things that need to happen and unfortunately the powers that be are a lot more powerful than "we" the little people are.

[opihimoimoi]

15. Construction jobs...from the surveyors, planners, financiers, heavy equipment ops, etc

down to landscapers, painters, architects, designers, agronomists, aquaculturists, energy contractors, energy reclamation specialists, etc....

We need to find ways to cooperate much better....

The Reds must find ways to reconcile and vice versa for them Dems

[grahamhgreen]

18. Without manufacturing, we are only the cleaners of detritus left by industry leaders.

And with guest worker programs, nothing is safe.

It's time to protect Americans jobs and families.

Everyone in the country can not be a service

Any jobs program must drive a stake through the heart of outsourcing.

[w8liftinglady]

17. unless they do like they do in my neck of the woods...no benefits

and "Be Glad you Have a Job" at very little over minimum wage

[dreamnightwind]

19. We need indexed Labor Exchange Rates

I've never understood why we have currency exchange rates, but not labor exchange rates.

A company hiring a foreign worker should have to pay that worker based on an exchange rate. The employer should pay a wage or salary that has been indexed to wages, salaries, and cost of living in the employer's country, and in the same labor transaction, the worker should receive a salary indexed on wages, salary, and cost of living in his/her own country.

That would stop it all right there. They could still outsource, but they'd be doing it to hire more qualified workers, not to take advantage of desperately depressed wage and salary structures in poor nations. For the most part, they would hire local people they could more easily interface with.

[pampango]

21. Just take care of our people like Europe and Canada do and we'll be OK.

It might amaze some what a good social safety net, effective health care, progressive taxation and strong unions can do for the health of an economy and society.

With progressive taxation, saving a few bucks by outsourcing is less attractive because not much of the additional profits end up in the pockets of the CEO or shareholders. They are more likely to do what is best for the company in the long run which is to invest in its employees and domestic market. Now the big shots keep most of the extra profits outsourcing produces so they love doing it.

[JCMach1]

22. What is wrong is a perverse FINANCE SYSTEM that incentivizes and funds

companies that outsource. i.e. in search of the 500% profit, the Finance System virtually forces many companies to go outside the country to reach the level of profitability for funding.

:grr:

Why can't companies, like Apple for example, make their products here and just accept less profit? Why? Finance and shareholders would revolt. Instead, it is slave labor in China.

It is total BS they would have to charge more for their product if made here. They are dead wrong. What banks and shareholders would have to do is expect reasonable returns on investment and not that 500% mark-up per item.

[Fire1]

24. Well, I try boycotting whenever possible. Such as,

AT&T Uverse. When I found out that one of their tech support centers is in India, I cancelled and when enough people do that it will get their attention.

[eallen]

25. You must not believe in comparative advantage

Read Krugman. Or any economist. It's simply <i>not</i> the case that a nation does whatever it can do cheaper than any other nation, nor that every job that can be done more cheaply elsewhere gets done elsewhere.

:hippie:

[femrap]

26. Then the shareholders will

be on the warpath due to shrinking profit margins.

Outsourcing is pure exploitation.

I am disgusted by what has become of this nation. Hopefully Marx is right and capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. Or Mother Nature will slap Globalism into the next galaxy.

[kenny blankenship]

27. The Govt (present & future) will direct US troops to fire level volleys into your protest marches

before they would let you tear those trade treaties up. BELIEVE it.

Even this smiling man, who promised to renegotiate them during the Democratic primaries.

[robinlynne]

28. unless the jobs are gov't jobs, like the WPA. simple.

[grahamhgreen]

29. Agreed. Or service/farmworkers and some others (unless they're on a guest worker program)

But the thing is, if we want to build a real economy, we must end outsourcing, increase trade barriers and pull out of the disastrous greed trade agreements that got us here.

Even if WPA style projects are done by overseas companies or using overseas manufactured goods, as with some of the wind farms, we lose, because we wind up sending our tax dollars overseas.

The "buy American" provision is crucial.

Any conversation on jobs that does not address Outsourcing is a futile one, for the most part, IMHO.