RE: Trade debunking -- MIDRANGE-NONTECH

Well hang on there Joe because Senator Kerry is going to add 10 million jobs
in 4 years if elected. And I think he meant adding them here is the U.S. ?
;-)

And what a lot of folks don't talk about is the threat from China landing
all of this. Study China's "politics" and their statements and it is truly
scary where this could be heading. And I am not paranoid or anything. Maybe
not today, but the future should be interesting...

Chuck

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-nontech-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Thursday, April 01, 2004 6:03 PM
To: 'Non-Technical Discussion about the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: RE: Trade debunking

> From: rick.baird@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> 
> While true, this has always been true and
> we've always found our way out of the problem.  Forward thinking
societies
> will find something else they are better at than the rest of the
world.

This time around is different.  Typically, the jobs that were being
farmed out were fairly low on the food chain - they tended to be those
jobs which relied more on labor than brains.  As these jobs were
offshored, it freed companies up to employ more of the higher-paying
jobs that required more education or training.  At the same time, the
money that was saved was poured back into the economy, because the
companies continued to pay American workers higher salaries as they
moved up the rungs of the pay scale.

This created the concept of an "upwardly mobile" population, wherein the
idea was to continue to make companies more profitable so that they
would in turn create more high-paying jobs for American workers to
settle into.  That was the unspoken contract.

Unfortunately, the American companies, especially the multinationals, no
longer live by that contract.  Instead, the profits generated from cheap
labor (as well as all the other cost-cutting we've seen over the years
in things like managed health care) no longer go to generate jobs.  They
instead are put into the pockets of the shareholders and the corporate
officers.  Officers receive huge bonuses while laying off thousands of
workers.  This is reprehensible.  No company should be able to pay
bonuses while shedding payroll, but that's what we do because the boards
of directors don't really care what happens to the American economy.

Outsourcing and visas are doubly exacerbating because not only do you
have the upfront loss of the worker, you also lose that person's tax
income into the economy, as well as the costs of real estate and
equipment in the case of outsourcing.

My problem with the phrase "this has always been true" is the fact that,
no, this has never been true.  In the last four years, we have added
only two million jobs to the economy, the lowest number since 1956-1960.
No, this isn't the same concept.  Unless we start seeing growth of
300,000 jobs a month in the next couple of months, we may not be able to
recover.

And that doesn't even address the fact that others have outlined that,
by outsourcing the high-level jobs, you remove the motivation for
youngsters to enter the field, thereby losing it forever.

Please, write your Congressional representatives.

www.fairus.org
www.numbersusa.com

Joe