If you are following the latest flood of “Experts” telling the American Public why losing jobs to other countries (India, Pakistan, China …..) then you know the race is on. BIG Business is on the move to create a LIE about why we are better off to have jobs leave this country than to grow jobs.
You can’t borrow your way out of debt and you can’t achieve full employment by laying people off.
How many jobs will be lost over the next 10 years? According to a major research firm its 15,000,000. The trend is shocking considering the same firm thought it would be 3.5 million just a few years ago.
But the number is far greater than $15,000,000 because it does not account for the number of jobs that will never be created here because of this displacement. Nor does it this projected loss of jobs account for the drain on all of us as those displaced look to unemployment and even welfare to survive.
Sure the cost of TV’s and other technologies will go down but you need consumers to sell it too.
Yet there is a greater moral issue at stake here. The USA has created laws that we must believe are good and just to protect its citizens from scrupulous employers. We have OSHA, the EPA, Fair Labor Standards and Minimum wage laws. How can we as a nation endorse a U.S. company that circumvents these laws by sending jobs offshore?
If we are to have a true global economy then it only stands to reason that we should have a baseline standard that applies to the human rights issues of those producing products to sell to the U.S. Consumer. If not then we are dishonest and bigots.
There is not a job in the USA that can compete against the same job oversees if that job does not have the same burden costs that our laws impose. Think about it! If two people are paid $30 an hour one in the USA and one in India or China yet the benefit costs and workman’s comp costs and unemployment insurance costs, etc. don’t exist in the overseas position then its cheaper to send it off shore.
How will you feel when no more cars are produced in the USA? Is Cadillac and Ford building plants in China to make cars to sell to the Chinese or are they building the plants as a Proof-of-Concept to see if they can maintain quality at pennies on the dollar in labor?
Will you be seduced by the lower cost of American Cars built offshore?
We are shipping our innovation, technologies and know how to countries that do not have to live by the employment and environmental protection rules we subscribe to in the USA. On that basis we can never be competitive.
If your job does not require interaction with the public on a face-to-face basis then you should be worried…. VERY VERY WORRIED about your employment future.
We are on a very slippery slope and the more the media abounds with “EXPERTS” and government telling us that this is a “good thing” the slipperier it gets.
Just know that BIG BUSINESS makes the big political contributions, makes the major media buys and can flex its propaganda muscle at will.
