TheAgitator.com
Variations on a Theme
Thursday, April 22nd, 2004What the anti-outsourcing crowd lacks in originality they certainly make up for in bile. Just a handful of similarly-themed hatemail sent to me today:
– My wish comes true when your company outsources your job.– Maybe Fox should start doing their news broadcast from New Deli; then we see how fast you change your tune.
– Obviously, it would be no great loss if your job were outsourced to some Indian.
– I vote that we can improve US productivity and quality of life by outsourcing most of the extremist propaganda creation and propagation jobs to low wage offshore bloviators.
– As a writer, you make $15 bucks an hour. If an Indian will write the same article for $2 bucks, I say in the interest of economy, why not ship all the writing jobs to India? Or how about YOU work here for $2 bucks an hour.
– Maybe we should outsource journalists?
– Methinks the Cato Institute would do well for itself if it outsourced policy analyst “jobs” to India.
– I started reading your article on why outsourcing is not bad for America and decided I could get the same or better point of view on this subject by reading the comments of someone like yourself who lives in India or the Ukraine. Certainly, I can get a quality point of view from someone there who makes a lot less money than you. Guess what? You’ve just been outsourced.
– Interesting piece on outsourcing. How do you feel about outsourcing non-profit “educational institutes”?
– I suggest taking a sabbatical from the think tank and work for a couple of years in industry. Maybe take a job that will eventually be outsourced India or Mexico or ? Or maybe we should outsource the Cato Institute and they can rehire you when they decide to employ American workers!
– Continue to think you’re right. See how it feels when your articles are written in India!
And, finally…
You are an obsequious scumbag to the high-tech companies and I hope you rot in hell. There is absolutely nothing worse than someone willing to sell out fellow Americans for a few pieces of silver.Joseph Lee
I’ll show you my check from Fox sometime, Joe. Silver’s overstating it.
Copper, maybe.
I trust these people all exclusively wear American made clothes, drive exclusively American made cars, exclusively eat American made food, and exclusively play with American made toys.
What a bunch of racist yahoos.
What’s with this intense desire to snarkily point out that “it’d sure suck if your job got outsourced” as if it’s some form of valid counter-argument? Yeah, it sucks to get fired. Happened to me once. Tech company realized it was dumping cash in my division on labor costs and proceeded to dump me. I had a temp firm lined up the next day and enough saved to keep going.
People don’t have a *right* to a job. Pointing that out tends to piss them off.
Thick skulls
I congratulate Radley Balko for the big effort and the clear, simple, and easy to understand words with which he wrote his FOX News column regarding outsourcing myths. Considering the negative e-mail he’s been getting, I suppose he’s touched a ne…
I believe it was the famous Senator from Indiana, The Hon. Homer Capehart, who once quipped, “I’ve already made up my mind. Don’t confuse me with the facts.”
The legacy lives on.
The anti-outsourcing arguments are just so irrational, they make no economic sense.
It’s as if these people have bothered to do even five minutes of thinking on the subject and just continued to stick with their gut instinct regardless of baselessness.
What people fail to understand is that if you can do your job better, more productively, more efficiently, etc…it won’t get outsourced. Those critics wouldn’t have read any of that content if put together by a Inidan because there would be no demand for it. Fox News recognizes the need for American writers who write about issues affecting Americans.
If your job can be outsourced however, then it’s time to buckle down and show your company that they need you…or it’s time to find a new profession or company.
I just wish someone would explain why so many Americans who lost their jobs to offshoring/H1B’s had to train their replacements for 2 – 3 months if their replacments are so much more productive and/or smarter.
The intellectually dishonest arguments used against outsourcing is the norm, when discussing politics or social issues; if you can’t win on the battlefield of ideas, attack the integrity of anyone that disagrees with your “feelings”.
meek
ICantExplain- Clever name. Their replacements might not be “more productive and/or smarter”, maybe just more efficient. Maybe they’ll work 65 hours per week for the same price as a 40 hour worker here. But for the company to take on the cost of moving the job, paying for training, causing extreme instability and exposing themselves to extreme risk, they must have seen that efficiency as a large improvement?
Or perhaps those running the companies saw it as an easy way to increase short term profits to make they value of their comp packages go up.
It upset me when people blame the worker for everything yet give those runing they company a complete pass.
Uhhh, ICantExplain, if you can train your replacement in 2 months to do your job how valuable are you really?
I like to say, if I can train a monkey to do the job why should an American be doing it at $40 an hour!
I don’t know what I am worried about, China will just nationalize our industry overthere when enough has been transfered over.
Then the goverment should stay out of business crowd will be yelling for our troops to rescue their assets… The same troops whos parents the put out of work to save a little money.
Radley:
Travis “gets it” — and so do you.
Your e-mailers above must think they have a right to those jobs … they don’t get it, and are part of the problem, not the solution.
To them, I say — how much have YOU done to keep your job … or get a better one? YOU have the power to make a better career for yourself — even if that means changing that career.
My own job could be outsourced — except that I am productive enough in that job to be cost-effective to my employer. The day I am not, not only do they have the right to part ways with me … they have a responsibility to the shareholders to find a more cost-effective provider for my services.
OTOH, my job probably wouldn’t exist without outsourcing … because the products my semiconductors go into wouldn’t be used in anywhere near the volume they are, without outsourcing. They wouldn’t need as many guys like me.
Even within my own employer, outsourcing creates American jobs while keeping costs low — because we sell more chips, for lower prices, by packaging them in Thailand. The silicon “guts” of those chips are made here in the USA, so the more chips we can sell, the more work for us both here and in Thailand.
Frankly … and I know I’ll be considered heartless for saying this … a lot of the complainers about outsourcing took an easier route than I did to get to our respective careers (CS degrees, IMO, are not as rigorous as full-blown engineering degrees, especially when you involve yourself with hardware), then gambling that the Internet/WWW would continue to grow explosively — and the nature of, and need for, their output would not change.
Their refusal to think outside the Window left them unprepared when it slammed down on their fingers.
I am so glad that my son co-oped as an IT geek in a construction company, because it showed him that, when it comes to IT, the money is in the mundane … not at the cutting edge (or as we sometimes call it, the bleeding edge) of the World Wide Web.
ICan’tExplain –
“Or perhaps those running the companies saw it as an easy way to increase short term profits to make they value of their comp packages go up.”
- How really will this increase short term profits when you have to buy a new building or warehouse in another company, train employees from a country you’re probably unfamiliar with and lay off those employees whose jobs you’re replacing? These companies are worried about long term profits, and they should. They have an obligation to shareholders to maximize wealth. It’s capitalism. They’re not saving the Manatees.
“It upset me when people blame the worker for everything yet give those runing they company a complete pass.”
- The companies are OWNED by the people running it, either directly or indirectly! Since when did it become okay to tell someone what they should do with their property/money/car/house?
“Or perhaps those running the companies saw it as an easy way to increase short term profits to make they value of their comp packages go up … It upset me when people blame the worker for everything yet give those runing they company a complete pass.”
No one’s giving the company a pass … especially the marketplace. Companies who think like that will continue to act in accordance with that stupidity across-the-board, whether they outsource or not … and they will crash and burn.
I know … my employer before my present one was playing similar kinds of games … selling off highly profitable divisions to put their money into bleeding-edge technology, hoping to invest in the next Microsoft in terms of explosive growth.
When I joined them, their stock was trading at $45; when they sold off my division, it was trading at $8.
BTW, the new owner laid me off ten days later, along with 700 others. I hit the ground running, and two-and-a-half weeks later, I started at my present employer.
So Radley, what does Fox pay your for your column? You can’t just bring it up like that and then not tell us!
Ouch, sorry Radley. I’m still laughing at ‘New Deli’ :)
We are interviewing people at my company for a 6 mo IT contractor position. I understand completely why some sysadmin jobs are going overseas. Out of about 15 guys we interviewed, only 4 or 5 really shined. The rest were just hideous.
How do we know for sure this blog hasn’t already been outsourced to India?
What’s interesting is that most Foxnews readers, including those that wrote back, are probably “right”-leaning. Just goes to show you how a large chunk of the right has no understanding of economics and is not interested in freedom of association.
Yet, I’m sure a lot of Agitator readers will dutifully vote in common cause with these anti-market ignaramuses for Republican politicians this November.
So, Jonathan … who do you suggest we vote for?
From what I see, the only electable choices for the vast majority of us are Republicans — who preach free market, but too often subordinate it to either populism or the politics of corporate welfare — or Democrats, who tend to be true believers in the very economic error you decry.
Until we decide to push both parties off the cliff, which one would be easier to turn to the right way of thinking?
What’s your alternative?
Wilde, if you’re not voting with some anti-market ignoramuses then you’re just wasting your vote.
Rich,
I don’t vote. I believe voting to be immoral and also completely ineffective.
But if you’re gonna vote, you should vote Libertarian. At least that way the Republicans don’t get to treat you like a “useful idiot” in the future.
Rich, you’re missing the most obvious alternative. If you outsource Congress to India you can get a much cheaper government which will have no qualms about offshoring American jobs.
It might lead to some interesting foreign policy changes toward Pakistan, but these are minor considerations.
**Please note that your erudite correspondence to the author has been typed on keyboards produced in Asia.
Bernard, as usual I enjoy reading your posts.
;-)
I have had many discussions regarding free trade/globalization with the ‘anti’ crowd. For some reason they see no problem with free trade going on between two villages/towns/cities but if those are X number of miles apart, across some line drawn on a map, well then, it’s a different story.
Using the logic of the anti-globalist, we should have customs & import/export bureaucrats impeding all trade going on between Washington DC and NYC. I mean, there are Indians in NYC and it would be just un-American to buy goods, which were not produced in the nation’s capitol.
Better yet, I think there is a need for a gov’t employee to monitor the flow of goods between my garage and my basement. God forbid, if I should take a can of paint downstairs without a permit and avoid paying my fair share of taxes in the process.
Joker, gracias :).
On a more serious note, my recommendations to anti-globalists are the same as my recommendations to environmentalists and any others. Exert pressure through market forces.
If people really don’t want jobs done by foreigners for whatever reason, sensible or otherwise, the best long run solution is to apply pressure to those companies whose products they buy. I’m not a ‘no regulation whatsoever’ proponent, but I’m firmly of the opinion that regulation should be an absolute last resort and, in this case, people have every opportunity to demonstrate their patriotism in the products they buy. This gives people the chance to really see how much an All-American or an All-British (for there are at least as many neo-luddites hereabouts) supply chain might cost them.
If efficiency wins out over parochialism and certain jobs continue to move, people will adapt or disappear as they always do.
Additionally, the decision makers in these companies aren’t stupid. They know that the American consumer relies on a stable environment of job creation to sustain demand for the products they are wanting to make efficiently. If the horror stories about the middle classes disappearing proved true, and the economy collapsed, Wal-mart et al would be buggered too.
Keep up the good work, Radley! Don’t let the benighted rabble dissuade you from the truth.
As someone remarked above, some of the abuse comes from the “right”, which is a handy reminder that there are plenty of economic dunces on all sides of the political map. I wonder how many of these folk are registered Republicans?
Ah, bloody hell, what did you guys expect? It’s Fox News Channel, mang! The mindless, illogical, emotionally charged drivel that embodies those e-mails is precisely what I would expect from FNC viewer/readership. I mean, not to stereotype or anything, but honestly, anyone who’s ever watched Fux n Friends or O’Really? should know that illogical, emotionally charged drivel is par for the course. O’Really is the champion of the ol’ “What about the children! Won’t somebody please think of the CHILDREN” vitriol. Hell, he named a book “Who’s looking out for you?”. He’s a junk populist. Fux n Friends are Bush/war cheerleaders and tabloid monkeys. Every day, as special guests, they have A) a bush administration official who spouts out rhetoric without opposition while the “news” anchors sit there and nod and lob them sweet set-up questions, and B) a hawkish retired army general who smacks of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, and who is presented as an “expert” on Iraq because he was once in the military. Not to mention the subtle-but-sickening fact that, whenever they are reporting on Iraq, they post the subheading of “war on TERROR!”.
Yes, I watch Fux n Friends every morning. It gets my blood going, wakes me up, pumps me full of adrenaline. My Favorite Quote: during the run-up to war, E.D. Hill, one of Rupert’s ex-beauty-queens-turned-lip-glossed-anchor, said, “if you oppose the war on Iraq, then you support the rape and oppression of women”. Yes, these are quality journalists, my friends…fair and balanced neocons.
Many of the old sheep who watch this drivel (aside from those, like me, who watch it to get their blood boiling) are the same ones who ride around in their Ford Behemoths with the merkan flag stickers on the back. And you expect these non-thinking sheep to actually hold intelligent debate on an emotionally charged issue like outsourcing? Ha. Ha. Ha. As I said, par for the FNC course.
Could someone point out to the inane posters that the personal computer used, to write their screed, was designed in ‘Merica, parts out-sourced/built in Asia, and assembled back in ‘Merica.
If not for this out-sourcing of CPU parts, the internet and the ability to connect to it, would still be a realm for the rich. In 1985 the ‘new’ technology of CD-Rom drive cost ~$1000.00. A 1981 IBM PC was $3000.00–without a modem.
I gotta nominate ewilliam for post of the year.
I work for the government. My job will never be outsourced or downsized. Plus, I have great insurance, lots of vacation time, and a good parking space. The only downside is that I have a LOT of bosses, and I can lose my job based on who’s in power.
Can’t you see?! The government WANTS everyone to eventually work for them! It’s a ploy! I can’t leave my job, because it’s so great to have this kind of security and benefits. Just watch — in 20 years, every one of you will have a government job.
How is voting immoral?
America – Land of Freedom for me, not you. Home of the Bravely Entitled.
Hey, thanks, Scared Stiff!.
How come you never touched on the quality of the products that have been produced by the “offshoring” of jobs? Speaking from the tech side of the working class, how soon we all forget that this was done in the early 90′s – many tech jobs or projects were outsourced to Indian companies. Before long, it was found that the products or code they produced was, for lack of a better term, CRAP. Many, if not most, of those projects had to be brought back to America where Americans had to either start these projects from scratch or find a way to put band aids on until the next full release came around.
The same thing is happening today. Companies, it appears, are looking at the “here and now” benefits of offshoring these jobs. In reality, these companies will incur a great deal of costs in management alone. Then, you have to factor in international laws, trade laws, etc. Do those costs really outweigh using homegrown talent?
I have a feeling, that before long, we will again be fixing the problems that offshoring has caused.
How come nobody mentions that?
I’m in the middle of the outsourcing issue. Both sides have valid points and those with jobs generally denegrate those who lost them. Funny how us IT workers used to scoff at the notion and now were are up in arms.
Has anyone looked into US companies exploiting foriegn labor here? In the US. I worked for an International finanancial organization that I will not name and the consultants were mostly Pakistani and Indian and they were getting exploited by their Visa holders. Being forced to pay both halves of their FICA and payroll taxes while the slimebag management drove ferrari’s. I believe in free market but not exploitive practices which have become more frequent in these H1-B worker shops.
michael – “How is voting immoral?”
That’s what I’m screamin’
Sean: If you’d actually read many of the posts, or any of Radley’s articles on the matter, you’d realise that people HAVE mentioned the quality issues. You only have to read a little to see that people here have consistently mentioned them. It has been said repeatedly that sometimes companies who outsource don’t do their homework properly, and that sometimes they end up getting things wrong.
The key to a free market is that companies are allowed to get things wrong. When companies outsource their technical support lines to India, and the service gets worse, customers switch to companies with better service. If those companies with better service have better service because they employ Americans, then the companies which employ Americans get more customers, and more Americans get jobs.
‘But what about the quality’ is an utterly erroneous rebuttal to the ‘companies should be free to outsource’ argument. An analogy would be along the lines of ‘sometimes car companies buy inferior steel, and customers complain, therefore the government should regulate the raw materials car companies can buy’. It’s transparently anti-competitive.
In summary:
‘Why does noone ever mention it?’ We do.
‘Why do you still support outsourcing if you know about this?’ Because your point is utterly irrelevant to the fact.
“Has anyone looked into US companies exploiting foreign labor here? In the US. I worked for an International financial organization that I will not name and the consultants were mostly Pakistani and Indian and they were getting exploited by their Visa holders. Being forced to pay both halves of their FICA and payroll taxes while the slimebag management drove ferrari’s. I believe in free market but not exploitive practices which have become more frequent in these H1-B worker shops.”
The only villain in the situation you describe is the state. The fact that the state assigns a burden to the employer creates no moral obligation for the employer. If someone is willing to voluntarily pick up that tab to work for them, there’s nothing immoral about that arrangement between employer and employee.
Maybe it’s good that FoxNews is providing you with “copper” — another article or two with this kind of reader response, and you’ll need that copper to form a new lightning rod.
eviliam:
I sound nothing like Radley’s e-mailers (see my posts above) — yet I drive a pickup (Chevy, not Ford) with an American flag on the tailgate, and prefer Fox News to the “it’s not liberal, because we who are intellectually superior to you think it’s NORMAL” bias of ABCNNBCBS.
Oops, Evan — my eyes must be going bad, for I read “ewilliam” as “eviliam”, which would be a rather catchy alias.
Please accept my apologies.
Try and argue with this for a while: Your tax dollars at work help you loose your job.
Congressman Sanders (I-VT)on US Corporate Welfare Giveaways
The US federal government is guilty of making huge corporate welfare handouts. Taxpayers are forced to pay for ridiculous things, including handouts to Enron, General Motors and AT&T.
Here is a new article by Representative Bernie Sanders. It appears here with the permission of BuzzFlash.
The Export-Import Bank: Corporate Welfare At Its Worst
by Rep. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)
This country has a $6 trillion national debt, a growing deficit and is borrowing money from the Social Security Trust Fund in order to fund government services. We can no longer afford to provide over $125 billion every year in corporate welfare – tax breaks, subsidies and other wasteful spending – that goes to some of the largest, most profitable corporations in America.
One of the most egregious forms of corporate welfare can be found at a little known federal agency called the Export-Import Bank, an institution that has a budget of about $1 billion a year and the capability of putting at risk some $15.5 billion in loan guarantees annually. At a time when the government is under-funding veterans’ needs, education, health care, housing and many other vital services, over 80% of the subsidies distributed by the Export-Import Bank goes to Fortune 500 corporations. Among the companies that receive taxpayer support from the Ex-Im are Enron, Boeing, Halliburton, Mobil Oil, IBM, General Electric, AT&T, Motorola, Lucent Technologies, FedEx, General Motors, Raytheon, and United Technologies.
You name the large multinational corporation, many of which make substantial campaign contributions to both political parties, and they’re on the Ex-Im welfare line. Needless to say, many of these same companies receiving taxpayer support pay exorbitant salaries and benefits to their CEOs. IBM, for example, gave their former CEO Lou Gerstner over $260 million in stock options while they were lining up for their Ex-Im handouts.
The great irony of Ex-Im policy is not just that taxpayer support goes to wealthy and profitable corporations that don’t need it, but that in the name of “job creation” a substantial amount of federal funding goes to precisely those corporations that are eliminating hundreds of thousands of American jobs. In other words, American workers are providing funding to companies that are shutting down the plants in which they work, and are moving them to China, Mexico, Vietnam and wherever else they can find cheap labor. What a deal!
For example, General Electric has received over $2.5 billion in direct loans and loan guarantees from the Ex-Im Bank. And what was the result? From 1975-1995 GE reduced its workforce from 667,000 to 398,000, a decline of 269,000 jobs. In fact, while taking the Ex-Im Bank subsidies, GE was extremely public about it’s “globalization” plans to lay off American workers and move jobs to Third World countries. Jack Welch, the longtime CEO of GE stated, “Ideally, you’d have every plant you own on a barge.”
General Motors has received over $500 million in direct loans and loan guarantees from the Export-Import Bank. The result? GM has shrunk its U.S. workforce from 559,000 to 314,000.
Motorola has received almost $500 million in direct loans and loan subsidies from the Ex-Im Bank. The result? A mere 56 percent of its workforce is now located in the United States.
In fact, according to Time Magazine, the top five recipients of Ex-Im subsidies over the past decade have reduced their workforce by 38% – more than a third of a million jobs down the drain. These same five companies have received more than 60 percent of all Export-Import Bank subsidies. Boeing, the leading Ex-Im recipient, has reduced its workforce by more than 100,000 employees over the past ten years.
Here are a few examples of your Ex-Im taxpayer dollars at work:
The Export-Import Bank has provided an $18 million loan to help a Chinese steel mill purchase equipment to modernize their plant. This Chinese company has been accused of illegally dumping steel into the U.S. – exacerbating the crisis in our steel industry.
Since 1994, the Export-Import Bank has provided $673 million in loans and loan guarantees for projects related to the Enron Corporation, leaving taxpayers exposed to $514 million. The Ex-Im Bank approved a $300 million loan for an Enron-related project in India even though the World Bank repeatedly refused to finance this project because it was “not economically viable.”
The Export-Import Bank is subsidizing Boeing aircraft sales to the Chinese military. According to the President of Machinists’ Local 751: “Boeing used to make tail sections for the 737 in Wichita, but they moved the work to a military factory in Xian, China. Is this Boeing’s definition of free trade, to have American workers compete with Chinese labor making $50 a month under military discipline?”
The Ex-Im Bank insured a $3-million loan to aid General Electric build a factory where Mexican workers will make parts for appliances to export back to the United States. This project is responsible for the loss of 1,500 American jobs in Bloomington, Indiana.
And on and on it goes. The bottom line is that if the Export-Import Bank cannot be reformed so as to become a vehicle for real job creation in the United States, it should be eliminated. American citizens have better things to do with their money than support an agency that provides welfare for corporations that could care less about American workers
Sorry I’m entering this discussion so late, and most of you have moved on to other topics of interest, but here is my comment.
I remember, before most of you were born, similar arguments for and against automation in the workplace.
Substituting terminology, comments for and against, then and now, are interchangeable.
Please visit some relevant information about texas holdem texas holdem http://www.ppp-poker.com/texas-holdem.html http://www.ppp-poker.com/texas-holdem.html .
Please check out some relevant information on money com pacific play poker money com pacific play poker http://www.2002sogwipo.com/pacific-poker.html http://www.2002sogwipo.com/pacific-poker.html .
getsmart visa getsmart visa