Outsourcing Jobs
Earlier today on Wolf Blitzer(sp), a man was pushing his book, I believe it was called ‘The Earth is Flat’-by Fischer or something similar. He asserted an opinion that I’m certain is quite common in some political circles. The opinion was that outsourcing jobs is really no different than advances in robotics or machinery and computers. He stated that jobs were lost then as well and our economy handled it, as it will today. The difference, in my opinion, is that advances in technology and manufacture techniques also create jobs in our society. It may not be as many, but it helps offset the initial loss of jobs.
Outsourcing jobs is a cheat. As much a cheat as slavery or child labor. It seeks to cut corners rather than to develop new ideas to bring down the cost of production. It’s a cheat on the market, making the bottom line look a little more friendly to investors. Money pours out of our nation to bring short term gains to the companies in question. Rather than investing in R&D, they now can get what would have been a long term payoff overnight.
A few months ago, I had the fortune to catch part of a documentary on the technology of Ancient Greek. It was on discovery or history channel, or one of those cable programs that have slowly been selling out (I don’t enjoy watching people build motorcycles or decorate homes for several hours in a row, where are the aliens?). The show held an interesting thesis, that if it were not for slavery, the industrial age could have occured in ancient greek. How different would the face of history appear if this had been so? The ancient greeks had an early form of the steam engine, though more of a novelty than anything useful. They also had a complex series of ropes to control stage mechanics in theater very similar to an early form of computer. The problem, was that slave labor was so much easier to have there was no need to develop technologically and allow an industrial age to emerge. They had the technology, but not the drive. And that is what I fear may happen (in part) today. Rather than developing the skills we have to overcome problems in cost and production, rather than developing at all socially, we are seeking a cheap way out. The short term gains to outsourcing labor may be enormous, but in the long term it will only hurt us all. Eventually the economies will balance out and we will be back to where we are now. We may find in a decade that outsourcing to India has become too expensive and instead choose a cheaper developing country, but eventually we will run out of those as well.
When we spend money in america, it goes back into america. Employees who work in the U.S., spend money in the U.S.. Even if there is a decrease in jobs due to technology, the money we spend on that technology still exists here. When exporting jobs, none of the money is truely recapped. People still spend the same amount, they simply may be able to buy more when they get a new TV for $50. Someone could argue that being able to buy more stuff equals more jobs, but that would only be true if they were actually spending more money.
