Originally posted by: Cairoswordsman
Originally posted by: StormRider
Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper
Originally posted by: dahunanHow can so many of them sit up on their high horse in the economic hierarchy thinking the Blue Collar workers should quit whining about illegals etc..
I've read comments from some blue collar workers who have asked why they should be concerned about white collar jobs being outsourced to India when no one cared when their jobs were sent to China. Actually, some legal industry and presumably, accounting jobs and financial analysis jobs, have already been sent out to India and no one seems to care.
If illegals came in and began taking white collar jobs I predict that few people could care. Many of the displaced Americans would flagellate themselves for not being competitive enough and continue to maintain their dogmatic belief in "free trade". It's politically incorrect and rather unsportsmanlike to acknowledge
the very simple reality that blue collar laborers are able to understand--you're better off without the competition--you'd be better off if your competitors never existed or if a great big wall separated them from the market you want to work in.
So, without competition, everything is better? Maybe from a selfish individual perspective (The people at the top of the chain stays at the top and the people at the bottom stays at the bottom -- because if there's no competition how can this ever change?) but from a global perspective competition helps everyone.
And competition can help in the individual sense too. What happens if Yao Ming stays in the protective environment in China and not come to the US to compete against US players? Would he be as good of a player as he is today? Competition can bring the best out of us -- helps us reach our full potential. No competition means that we can just lax off -- and that doesn't help anyone.
Perhaps you misunderstand a crucial point typically overlooked when discussing this topic and "competition". The competition isn't on a level playing field when there are others able to work for a far lower wage because of a severe delta in the standards of living (prosperous vs barely able to feed a family/not able to participate as a consumer of goods). The competition that you so casually refer to is the result of exploiting others.
Who knows, though, outsourcing lawyers and accountants could bring a benefit of reintroducing some integrity and intelligent thought into those cesspool careers. On average, porn stars typically have higher moral standards than those people :disgust:
*sign* If someone can/wants to do the same work for less then that's perfectly fair. Let me ask you this: Would you feel that an employee from West Virginia who is willing to do a job for less than someone in California (which has a much higher cost of living compared to West Virginia) to be playing unfair?
For example, let's say the West Virginia guy would get 35K but the California guy would get 45K. Are we exploiting West Virginia workers in this case? Should we prevent this job from being outsourced from California to West Virginia to protect West Virginian workers? Should we impose a tariff on the company to equalize the pay? In other words, if the company wants to employ workers from West Virginia, should we impose a penalty of 10K? Or should we force the company to pay the West Virginian worker 45K? To me it doesn't make sense to force the company to pay West Virginia workers 45K if they were willing to do it for 35K. 45K might be a ridiculously high pay in West Virginia for that particular job with their cost of living.
If you do the above, the company will have no incentive to outsource jobs to West Virginia. All the jobs will stay in California. But what does this mean? Well, no jobs will ever go to West Virginia. West Virginia will be stuck at the poverty level. And consumers will be stuck with paying higher prices.
What happens if we allow outsourcing? West Virgina will get jobs. Consumers will get lower prices. The standard of living in West Virginia will increase. As their standard of living increases, their workers will demand higher wages. Eventually, the wages will rise enough so that California will become competitive again and jobs can flow back. But the end result is that we helped West Virginia raise their standard of living -- and consumers benefited from lower prices. The drawback is that California lost some jobs -- but this should be temporary. Another benefit is that West Virginia now has a larger base of potential consumers -- which could provide more jobs for everyone.
Outsourcing can help poor countries move up from poverty. It can provide lower prices for consumers. The drawback is that it can cause some areas to lose jobs -- but I think this is temporary. For example, we lost automotive jobs from Michigan and textile jobs from the South. But we also gain automotive jobs in the South as Japan later opened car factories in Tennessee and Kentucky. In the long term, new jobs will flow back. And the formerly super poor countries will have a higher standard of living and provide a larger pool of future consumers which can result in more jobs for everyone in the long term.
You can sit in front of your nice computer, having eaten a nice dinner and type about how you want to protect people in the third world from being "exploited" through outsourcing but the real outcome of your proposal is that it will maintain the status quo of keeping all the wealth in the US and keeping the rest of the world in poverty.
I honestly feel that most people in the third world don't feel that they are being exploited with these outsourced jobs. Rather they feel they are being given an opportunity in this world for a chance at a better life. That's why you see millions of people flowing from villages in China to look for jobs in the cities. Why would so many want to do these jobs if it didn't offer an improvement in their current lives?
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