The Outsourcing of American Jobs (an article that I wrote back in 2011)

http://voices.yahoo.com/the-outsourcing-american-jobs-7997014.html?cat=3



The Outsourcing of American Jobs




Today, I believe I will once again write about the outsourcing of American jobs.
I will take a few moments first to quote an article written by Karen Krebsbach, she wrote this article in a March 2006 issue of US Banker.




"Most American jobs are being outsourced -$18.4 billion in global IT work and $11.4 billion in business-process services have been shifted abroad to date, according to the McKinsey Global Institute, only one-tenth of the potential offshore market, a figure certain to surge in the next decade.




And as more higher-paying union jobs in manufacturing and services shift overseas, an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants-estimated at between eight million and 11 million today-are competing for lower-level jobs in this country, pressing down hourly wages even lower, and minimum wage is installed at $5.15 an hour, though many states have raised it to remain competitive."




The above quote is several years old as this is now the year 2011. However, the affects of outsourcing American jobs, is now being felt on many levels. There have been massive plant closings, bankruptcies, foreclosures and a general uncertainty for the American people.



Outsourcing of the majority of American jobs, has now led to a shortage of jobs in America. A shortage of jobs has led to many families filing for bankruptcies, losing homes due to foreclosure, or inability to pay the rent. The jobs currently available in America encourage illegal immigrates, as migrate work in rural areas is for the most part easy to get. In most cases all you must do is show up.



Americans used to working in factories, offices or other buildings or in cities are less likely to have any working knowledge of migrate work, also the wages for migrate work is often far below even the minimum wage quoted in the above news article.




American workers are not only less likely to comprehend, have knowledge of or desire to do most types of migrate farm work. This combined with the outsourcing of technical jobs, and manufacturing jobs leads to lower wages, for most everyone. Every job that is sent overseas is a job loss for an American worker.



When jobs decrease, and thereby personal income decreases, a ripple affect occurs. As people use up their resources, and begin to lose their homes, file bankruptcies, and foreclosures increase, so too, will there be an increase in crime.




Also besides the obvious that is quickly noticed by those who have lost their employment due to outsourcing, you may find over time, that many if not all jobs in a particular category are shipped out of country.




Increasingly the jobs that are outsourced are those which traditionally pay higher wages. With the higher wage jobs leaving, this has resulted in the already lower paying jobs to not raise wages, and also in some cases to even decrease wages. The wages are decreased not only by amount paid per hour but also by shortened work hours. Employers may also require workers to take on more job responsibilities.




The outsourcing of technical jobs, and business processing jobs, has led to an increase in unemployment within the United States, it has also resulted in the increase of illegal immigrates indirectly.




As more of technical and business processing jobs are outsourced there lies the distinct possibility that some products will no longer be made at all within the United States. This may not on the surface seem like too much of a problem.



The economics of business is to do the best job you can with the least outgo as possible. That is just good business sense. However, here lies the problem, say you outsource all of a nations financial records, or all of a nations micro-chips or all of the manufacturing of a particular medication, like say insulin, or a thyroid medication, or any medication used by large sums of people-, what happens when all of this is outsourced to a country where manufacturing is less expensive, but the standards are not of the same quality.




When the quality of some items go down, it's no big deal, however when it comes to medications, financial records, technical components used by businesses, hospitals and the government- it suddenly becomes of more interest.



Doing business in another country may be profitable due to less or no regulation by environmentalist, zoning boards, quality engineers, laws and so forth- however, in these countries with little to no regulation, you may also soon find the government is either a dictatorship, as in communist China for example. You may also learn to late that a governmental collapse will have a direct and swift impact on nearly every business within that country.



Also if a country is heavily dependent on a particular product, and by default only one country is making a particular product that country will have an advantage over a country that needs that product.



Let's take an extreme example, let's pretend that the sole source of insulin had been manufactured in say Iraq. Also let's assume for this hypothesis that no other country even knew how to go about producing insulin. Let's also assume that the entire American banking information, and technical information, and micro-chips had been outsourced to Iraq. Can you see where I am going with this?




Well let's look at things this way; we have been at war with Iraq for several years now. If those we are fighting with, had the above mentioned resources, they would have an advantage over America, which is very scary to even mention.



With sole control of a particular medication or several medications, banking information, technical information, and also the sole manufacturing of say components needed to operate the power plants, communication systems and water systems. The people causing the disturbance in Iraq would soon be able to wreak havoc on the American people.




The outsourcing of American jobs should be outlawed, and condemned as a possible threat to the security of the people of America.



Reference:
Krebsbach, Karen. "Changing the Way We Work: Globalization is wreaking havoc on America's labor market, with more jobs lost to outsourcing and wages of remaining jobs lagging inflation. The U.S. must adapt or die." US Banker 116.3 (March 2006): 22. InfoTracOneFile. Thomson Gale. Apollo Group. 11 May 2006