Re: The Journal News: Flow of jobs overseas has human toll

[Douglas Handy <dhandy1@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Lou,

>    I would hope that at some point, products and services from 
>companies that practice this type of massive outsourcing would be 
>classified as "imports", subject to all of those wonderful 
>regulations and taxes.  

When a company hires an offshore firm to code a project for them and the
software is returned via the internet, how should the tariffs be imposed?  What
if the firm provided support or maintenance instead of a new project?

What if it is just a call center which is moved offshore?  For example, our
small town used to have a call center which employed hundreds of people for tech
support for a major PC manufacturer.  They recently moved the entire operation
to the Phillipines where they are not putting in a 1600 seat call center.

What do you do?  Add international tarrifs to raise the price of long distance
to compensate for the labor rate differential?

What wonderful regulations and taxes apply in a situation like an offshore call
center?  The concept of tarrifs seem to be easier to apply to things like steel,
not that it has saved the steel industry either.

Doug