Hooray for Outsourcing!! NOT!!!
In other news today, Mattel has had to recall about 1.5 million Fisher-Price toys manufactured in China because they may contain lead paint. This is on top of the pet food thing a few months ago and other lead paint issues from China in June. Hmm, maybe it's time to STOP OUTSOURCING TO CHINA AND BRING JOBS BACK TO THE US WHERE THEY BELONG!!! See the article here...
I spoke to a rep from Mattel who was very nice and forthcoming. My kids don't have any of the dangerous toys, but she was kind enough to offer to mail the information packet with pictures of the toys to me. I will post the pictures when they arrive by mail. If you have kids or know someone who has kids or you know someone who knows someone who has kids, please make sure they know about this...The toys would need to have been purchased between May 1, 2007 and August 1, 2007.
This has been a public service announcement from Am Kshe Oref...We now return to our regular programming...
9 comments:
thanks for linking me here about the matell stuff and holy ranting batman, what a blog!!! I'd read some of your posts before a while back but these late ones have a trend!! cathartic enough for ya?
Anyway, outsourcing is a great thing in the long run if you look at stats for Britain and the Us. In the short run, people need to lose their jobs-- sometimes---But, a job gained overseas doesn't always mean a job lost at home. The growing domestic economy will demand more workers.
The 2 biggest outsourcing countries are actually closest to full employment currently, negating any short term problems with outsourcing-- not to mention the insane number of benefits from outsourcing, sad about the lead problem though and thanks for letting me know.
soory about typos-- typing with one hand! :)
ps---- Bruce Bartlett had an article on Free Republic about my feelings on the issue (yes, he based it on my feelings--- tee hee). Let me find it asnd quote the part I like for ya... specifically he referenced IT jobs and India, but the same applies to
Mattell etc-
"But how did the U.S. and other wealthy countries get that way? It was by being the low-cost producer in some area. No doubt, the European farmers of the 18th century were bitter about being undercut by American farmers, whose cost of land was a fraction of that in Europe. They must have felt that this was as unfair as unemployed IT workers feel about India. But as time went by, costs equalized as capital and labor migrated to other countries and other industries. This is all part of the process of economic growth.
An article in the February issue of Wired makes this point well. It points out that Indians now doing jobs outsourced from America are seeing a rapid rise in their wages and standard of living. In the process, they are becoming more like Americans, which is translating into demand for American goods and lifestyles. The Indians also know that they can't compete only on price; the quality also has to be there, and they believe that they are delivering it.
Yeah, full employment if you count flipping burgers at MacDonald's and working for Wal Mart, with no benefits and really low pay. Stats are great as numbers, but not as reality...And while a job gained overseas many not necessarily mean a job lost here, it usually does, or forces the US worker to have to work at crappy places like Wal Mart or MacDonald's...
Barak, much as you may think stats do not reflect reality, they certainly do a better job than anecdotal evidence. And outsourcing expands the economy, which creates a bigger pie to be divided in the long run.
Not to appeal to authority, but there's a reason that pretty much all economists, regardless of political leanings, support free trade.
The protectionism that you're advocating may feel better in the short run, but would hurt the U.S. economy. If India can produce products at a lower price, eventually they will dominate the market for that product. When U.S. companies outsource, the profits return to the U.S.
Why would you be willing to pay significantly more for products just because they were made in the US? That would mean that you'd have less money to buy other things. Which means fewer things would be bought. Which means production would be reduced. Which would cost people jobs.
Sorry if I'm being longwinded. But I think you're being a bit of a demagogue here.
As I've mentioned before, read Senator Byron Dorgan's book, Take This Job and Ship It, then talk to me again about how wonderful outsourcing is...
You seem to be espousing Trickle Down Economics, a theory that was a bust when Reagan created it, and is still a bust today, over twenty years later. You think all the profits Wal Mart is bringing in is benefitting the US? The poor? The uninsured? Those who have crap jobs at Wal Mart because their jobs got outsourced to China or India?
Read the book, then we can talk...
Two can play that game. Read an introductory economics textbook then we can talk.
You can call it trickle down economics if you want. I know that you're quite partisan, but it's really not so simple of a thing to say that Reagan's policies were a bust. In any case, that relates more to taxes than to more basic concepts like comparitive advantage.
Maybe you can Wikipedia this or something, but basically it goes like this. Even if the United States has an absolute advantage in every single industry, if India has a comparitive advantage in something like IT, that means that if India focuses on IT and the US focuses on something it has a comparitive advantage in, there is more economic output total.
Regardless of the fact that the pie is not divided equally, more pie total is good for everyone. (If you believe in wealth distribution, that means there's more with which to work even after taxes create their gaps in output.) I can't really see why you would advocate a policy that would very clearly result in reduced US output and less employment and income as a result.
"The economic concept of "comparative advantage" is the holy dogma of "free trade", economic globalization, and offshore outsourcing of jobs. Although comparative advantage is generally true for what economists traditionally measure, economists have ignored some important counter-factors. It indeed does optimize economic output under ideal conditions. However, there are important factors which make the situation less than ideal:
Disruption of distribution or communications paths
Restrained flow of labor
The theory mostly addressed output (goods and services); ignoring job availability, stability, bubble risk, and other important factors.
Past trends may not be indicative of future trends.
Distribution of the benefits of free trade can be very uneven.
Some countries are more interested in military advancement than in consumer prices, and subsidize certain specialties.
Some countries sacrifice benefits, retirement programs, safety, environmental safeguards, and human rights to achieve low labor rates. In other words they scorch both people and planet to "beat us"."
For more, go here.
I'm glad you think the economy is doing so well here, and you'll probably base it on things like the DOW Jones. This inflation is meaningless, and may even be a bad thing. Remember the Great Depression? It was preceded by an over-inflated stock market as well...
You and I will never agree about this, and that's fine. You can give me arguments, and I can counter-argue, and I can give you arguments, and you can counter-argue as well. We'll both be able to back up what we're saying.
I do very highly recommend Senator Dorgan's book.
I'm glad that you recognize that the issue is not black and white as you originally presented it.
Markets definitely don't work perfectly; they are only models. But they have done a pretty good job at describing the way that economies work.
Try to remember not to mix up descriptive and prescriptive.
And for Dorgan's book, we can name 10 books who can back up the opposite of what he proves. So it's not black and white. Some poor schmoe might get laid off from a higher level job and then after years of unemployement, do nothing but flip burgers. But how do we know that the poor schmoe who got a poor deal isn't the next Lee Scott? Wasn't he the son of a gas station owner for heaven's sake? He had to pay his own way through college. Yeah he took a "sucky" job at walmart and look at him now. I love Scott's story--- it's an inspiration for people to find their baileywick, WORK at what they do and climb the ladder. Employers don't owe us diddley. We owe it to ourselves to work to BECOME the employers. Some people are going to get a raw deal, and they may actually have to re-arrange their plans and work to head up the ladder. But look at how many jobs will be created by the Americanization of India, for instance.
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