Outsourcing is bad because it destroys jobs for Americans.

the people who lose their jobs must now find a new job they may not be as well qualified for as their old job. these people will also have more financial problems for some time which will slow down their spending on non-necessary things. this will hurt the economy in America as well as lower the quality of life for Americans.

With companies outsourcing they do not need to maintain as many facilities in the US and thus they are not taxed and thus the government does not make get money for the services it supplies. also companies that outsource do not need to follow the same production requirements as those of companies staying in the US.

Outsourcing is good for some businesses not necessarily the economy or the American people.

when companies outsource they nearly always save money, and are able if they want to reduce the prices of their products or keep them much lower than the competition. this hurts the small companies that can't outsource.

in the end it is about what think is a greater good. I personally value people living better lives where they can find work doing something they like or are good at vs letting a business make more money that most workers won't even notice.

Let's take it one step at a time, shall we? We have jobs. Having a job makes sure I'll get paid. Getting paid makes sure the girl at the supermarket won't call the cops to inform a theft, so I can sit back and drink my hard-worked-for coffee and watch my favorite show on my screen. So far so good.

Wikipedia tells me that outsourcing is often made in the interest of lowering firm costs, now - if the firm would have paid her workers in relation to profit, outsourcing would be a definite fair game, since an abundant place like the US could help other poor countries around the world with money and those countries could aid the US with more manpower, most likely even a better manpower.

But the system doesn't work that way. The first advice I have ever heard from the stock exchange field is "Buy low, Sell high", this is a typical capitalist saying. Get as much information as possible, prophesy the cheapest way to get best results, and sell it to suckers.

For an existing and successful firm, the advise would be - figure out a way to produce the (even if only allegedly) same product, with less expenses.

Wasn't the system built by the big boys upstairs, in order for them to keep their seats? If not financially, how else can a man declare himself, to himself and close relatives and friends, the he IS the alpha male?

I think it is bad. I mean, our economy is already going to crap, and the government wants us to put money in it, but if we don't have jobs, thus making no money, how can we help it?

Outsourcing American jobs offshore is bad, and we are just beginning to see the effects of our offshore binge. The scary part is that the majority of the offshore jobs are being sent by financial companies.

So, now, someone working in a call center in India has access to my SSN, my credit card number, and all of my information. The security over there is so lax that they can easily steal that information and start opening up accounts in my name.

Not to mention the fact that corporate greed is driving honest hard-working Americans jobs offshore. It's pathetic.

While I agree we need to help encourage economic growth and development in the third world the current model of outsourcing and investment isn't a stable or good thing.

The people that win big are the already wealthy minority of the world. They are able to decimate their competition by providing goods and services at reduced prices. Where they don't have much competition (or when their competition has already been wiped out) they can provide goods and services at the same or a higher price but for a lower cost to them.

This amounts to one of the grandest capital buffets the world has ever known. The wealthy are getting wealthier at an astounding rate, while at the same time the lower and middle classes are barely keeping pace with inflation (and there is much indication that that isn't even the case anymore).

The poor in third world countries see their resources pillaged, their environments ravaged, and their governments under the control of multinational corporations. They cannot unionize, their children work in sweatshops, they are killed if they try to protest or resist, they live on subsistence (or below subsistence) wages, and their local produces are easily run out of business by the cheap, efficient, and quality products of the western industrialists.

Of course, they are being modernized, progress.

Our own workers are being pressed on both sides. They are losing their jobs and wages to inflation and outsourcing, so they have to purchase those same cheap goods from companies that stole their work and status. A worker who lost his or her manufacturing job to overseas labor will go and shop at Wal-Mart, which is helping this process along, because they are compelled to do so. They have to purchase as cheaply as possible because of their increasing poverty.

It's always funny when those on the other side label this non-choice as a vote, as if the worker is voting in favor of these practices simply because they have to buy as cheaply as possible.

Outsourcing and free trade 'level the playing field': the end result will be that workers anywhere in the world will be paid similar wages. Our standard of living will be lowered to raise the standard of living in the poorest countries.

At some level this may be "fair" but it isn't playing by the rules we've been following thus far.

In the meantime, big business will be enriched beyond reason, just as oil companies continue to enjoy record profits.

The United States has lost a vast amount of jobs to foreign countries. Large corporations have cut jobs in the U.S. and moved them overseas to decrease their annual operating expenses, which you can't blame them because they are making decisions that will better their corporations. However, despite bettering their company from a monetary standpoint, the problem in this model is that corporations do not care about the United States—as a country. When the board members of a company meet to make decisions to cut jobs or increase productivity within a company, they are not thinking about what’s best for the country, rather they are driven by decisions that best reflect the interest of shareholders.

Decisions made today by corporate America are based on greed, because all they care about is the price per share earnings ratio to sky rocket. Upper executives do not have the capacity to make sound moral decisions that will lead to an outcome that will suit the best interest for the workers that have dedicated 30 to 40 years of their lives for the company.

This is the double-edge sword of capitalism and it’s killing the U.S. economy. In 2004, the Midwest U.S. alone lost 7,555 in a matter of three months in 2004—almost all to Mexico. This number is part of the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost since 2000 in the United States. Think of the economic ramifications these job losses have created, everything from paying on mortgages on homes to buying goods—severe effects trickle their way down the economic ladder. Compare this 2.7 million loss since 2000 to General Motors situation in present day 2008. The government announced this past week that if General Motors fell it could put the U.S. into a severe Recession or Depression, with the loss of 2.5 million jobs total (manufacturing, assembly, tiered suppliers, dealerships, etc). Anyway you look at it, the exchange of money from individual to business to business declines dramatically with these job losses.

I’ll keep it simple and finish up for everyone. Because of our job losses in the manufacturing and assembly sectors, this has led to auxiliary losses in other sectors and our country has become less self-sufficient in correlation to other countries, which now have those “U.S.” jobs. In other words, if you don’t make anything, then you are not appealing to trade with, and eventually countries will not trade with you. Adding to this, the U.S. is still the number one consuming country in the world—number one in imports vs. (China #1 in exports). Furthermore, if we are not making anything in our country to sell to other countries, then a trade imbalance or deficit has been created. We are already in debt as a country and the U.S. is currently borrowing money from other countries to pay for a bailout, sparked by the sub-prime mortgage crisis.

I found this documentary to be very interesting. Take a look at what Warren Buffett and David Walker are saying: http://www.iousathemovie.com/

Given how much Turpificatus's arguments need to be deconstructed I'm going to have to start a new line of argument over here. (Also, if I oppose and opposer I am apparently affirming that Outsourcing is good according to the system).

"Yes, it is ego driven. They lived a much more privileged life than can be expected for people who work in such industries, and demand that the lifestyle be maintained. If we take the living conditions of global manufacturing 'grunts' for want of a better word, the American 'grunt' is excessively well off. Really, all outsourcing is doing is re-balancing the equality, equal pay for equal work."

Why is it the workers who must pay the price for outsourcing? Why is it egotism for them to want to live like the average American? In our society we have a certain standard of living that, if a person or family is below, they become low in status, power, prestige, honor, authority, regard..etc..etc. If noone in the United States owned a computer it would be one thing, but when computers are the norm, and in many cases a necessary aspect of our social, economic, and political lives it is harmful for anyone without access to it.

Why, when the rich have an abundance equal to the wealth of nearly everyone else on earth combined, when individuals and companies have budgets and assets larger than many countries, should the factory workers pay the price, and be scorned when they complain? Why should they make sacrifices so someone else can get even more fabulously wealthy, and so the poor in other countries can see a small amount of an increase in prosperity?

It is egotistical to want a certain standard of security and prosperity in a nation of wealth, or is it egotistical to disregard the hunger, the poverty, the want, the destitution of those in vulnerable economic positions for the sake of those with plenty of wealth to spare?

"The problem in those communities that rely on manufacturing industries for survival is a shortcoming in the government, and it's inability to encourage high technology industry development. These people are not suffering due to corporate decisions to outsource, but the government's inability to observe the inevitable, and plan ahead."

This is a rather interesting statement, and it amounts to this:

It isn't the fault of corporations for practices that harm communities, it is the fault of the governments for not heading off and making plans to overcome these practices early on.

First off, these companies with their wealth and power have a great deal of influence over local communities, state governments, and the Federal Government. That is well known and I shouldn't have to mention it.

Secondly, your stance amounts to blaming the victim. It's apparently not the fault of companies for harmful practices but the fault of governments for not waving a magic wand and making things better sooner.

As a Libertarian I find your stance all the more intriguing, you are practically saying that it is the government's job to fix this problem. I would like to see some suggestions as to how.

"yes these immediate issues are destructive, however over the course of history, again and again during the era of industrialization, children are exploited, environments defecated upon and nations are exploited, however it strikes me that only after such a nation industrializes, do they preach suffrage and equality and fair trading practices. Do you really expect solar panels in Africa, three times as expensive as developing coal, and notoriously unreliable, to power a steel industry? Or that they won't employ child labour and cut their workforce in half?"

I think you are simplifying and distorting a very turbulent and complex development. Are you forgetting how people had to fight and die for these programs? Are you forgetting how people were shot, hung, and murdered to keep children out of factories, how battles were waged across the country in courtrooms and legislative houses in order to pass environmental regulations.

These things did not come naturally, they came from pitched political battles between the progressive forces and business interests. It wasn't after the nation became universally prosperous that these reforms occurred, it was when abject and terrible poverty were still very much a norm. It was during the great depression that many of our reforms occurred in the labor and welfare departments, and it was the turbulent 60s and 70s that our major environmental reforms were created.

You have all of history on its head, first prosperity then progress; I am afraid it was progress then prosperity.

There already large movements in the developing world in favor of better labor practices and environmental protection. Unfortunately, anti-democratic governments, democratic governments bought out by business interests, and U.S. backed dictatorships have kept these movements down.

You are giving us a false choice between economic stagnation or livable working and environmental conditions. We have the money and the technology to provide economic, labor, and environmental prosperity; we simply lack the political will.

In fact, Africa is seeing solar panels installed in many remote tribal communities due to the high cost of oil, their poverty, and western aid programs. We are seeing laptops that cost 100 dollars and are powered by hand-cranks, we are seeing community water purifiers that are powered by a person on a bicycle. We are perfectly capable of providing these nations with an entrance into the modern era without the problems and strife that we had to deal with during our development.

"In relation to domestic production and ownership, yes, it will reduce domestically owned industry, however once enough wealth is achieved, the odds will begin to even. Also, Food is a tenuous example to use as it is a strategic resource as well as economical. Fluctuations in world food prices are also why countries like Japan give 700% subsidies to their farmers, to ensure that the domestic agrarian industry is never lost and in times of strife, will continue to produce. It is also why the EU refuses to reduce tariffs on imported foods, as it will decimate their agriculture."

Here is the problem, and I mentioned this earlier on:

Corporations and western governments who support their interests regularly force smaller governments to adopt practices that benefit them and not their own people.

Nations that want their people to be prosperous, nations that want to ensure a minimum standard of living that ensures human dignity use protectionist measures to stabilize what amounts to a volatile international market filled with sharks, parasites, and institutions which regard humanity as a mere tool to place large wads of cash into their pockets.

baaaaaaaad... Come on there is nothing good about it for the ecomomy i,no matter how you look at it takes jobs and american cash flow away. Corp money is not cash flow it stays in the banks.

Next!

The outsourcing of American jobs to foreign countries cannot possibly be good for our economy. Taking jobs away from well-educated Americans and giving them to well-educated people of India, just because the people of India are willing to work for less, is not the right way to handle this situation. The only people that such outsourcing benefits are the already-wealthy corporate businessmen of America, and it takes away opportunities for honest, hard-working Americans to get a good job. Certainly, if the workforce is not available in the US, then the people of India should be given the opportunities. But American-based companies serving America should first turn to the American people for their workforce. The unemployment rate is more important than the salaries of corporate tycoons.

I think it is quite clear that outsourcing hurts the local economy in the end.

To quote a recent World Public Opinion on Globalization...

"Support for globalization is remarkably strong throughout the world. The highest levels of support are found in countries with export-oriented economies: China (87%), South Korea (86%) and Israel (82%)."

There is significant concern about the effect of trade on employment, especially in more developed countries.

80% of French respondents believe trade has a negative impact on job security in their country

73% percent think it is also bad for the creation of jobs there.

In the United States, 67% consider trade harmful for U.S. workers' job security & 60% call it detrimental for job creation."