The latest economic expansion has in fact been one of the worst recoveries known to man. Those figures you rattle off have something called 'ghost jobs' and are subject to the birth/death model.

In the end, US job reports can be off by hundreds of thousands of jobs a month. And it's all because of the way the government attempts to report unemployment.

Did you know that after a certain amount of time of being unemployed, you are taken off unemployment stats? Some estimate true unemployment at well over eight percent.

That's not to say that this recovery had less jobs due to outsourcing. It was mainly due to Alan Greenspan trying to keep the economy out of recession and instead, blowing up the housing bubble.

Let's hope Bernanke doesn't follow the Greenspan model.

Even if a product is cheaper, if you are out of a job or your paycheck is 'downsized', you can't afford to buy it.

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.

I'm not sure how many of you have been down to Nogales, Mexico, but the factories there (many owned by US corporations outsourcing their production facilities) have horrendous working conditions. Outsourcing is exploiting the lax labor laws in other countries and the people in an effort to save some money on production costs. Doesn't matter whether children work in the factories, doesn't matter how poorly the laborers are paid or treated - all corporations are interested in is profit.

I'm just making an argument from a moral perspective because there are plenty of others who can argue economics better than I. This is just another aspect to think about.

I like my job. I speek english. I don't want my job going to another countries. And I don't want people who cant communicate to me what needs to be done on my computer, or my phone, or my sterio trying to help me fix it.

Additionally, the unskilled worker in america (ie: the average american) is finding it harder and harder to find work because their job are going over seas.

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."

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.

At this point in time when thousands of people have lost their jobs, I believe keeping what we can in the U.S is better for Joe Worker. The profit here is only for the big corporations there really is no plus for us, how are we profitting in any way other than possibly cheaper products?

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!

Great point! Outsourcing overall is good for all companies and countries involved. It allocates resources efficiently and drives down costs.

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.

It's not the "hackers" that you read about in the news that I'm primarily concerned with. If the data is encrypted and the company has designed decent security in to their network, as you mention it should be relatively safe.

I'm concerned about the people who have access to the data via call center applications, development environments, etc. It doesn't matter if the data or the session is encrypted or not, if they have access to it they can just store it on a removable media device or email it out to their personal account.

Insider fraud is MUCH more prevalent than someone hacking in to the system from outside.

You do make a good point with regards to Mexico, to a certain extent. Of course, Mexico only makes up a part of the outsourcing trend. Am I to understand that you are concerned about the environmental impact of outsourcing to far-away nations?

As for increasing environmental standards in developing nations; that may be true but there are some aspects to that argument you left out.

The damage done before these regulations are made and enforced has been and will be massive. We've seen pollution levels in countries such as China and India beyond imagination. Thousands to millions have been harmed or killed by complications arising from the truly horrific environmental standards of countries like China.

We no longer have the luxury of slow-moving environmental standards, of the kind the U.S, Canada, and the E.U. have enjoyed. The scale of industrial development is far beyond what has occurred at any one time in the past, and the types of byproducts being produced are doing immeasurable harm already.

Global Warming and environmental contamination are not things we can wait decades to slow or stop. So while China may eventually have standards that are up to par with their environmental situation it will be long after severe and perhaps irreversible damage has been done.

Through regulations, laws, and policies in our own country we are either going to have to halt outsourcing to those countries or put high tariffs or taxes on goods produced through ways that are overly detrimental to the environment.

Either we stop outsourcing or force them to adopt sufficient environmental policies. Neither China, it's people, or the rest of the world can afford to wait for a non-democratic, slow-moving bureaucratic government to act on these matters.

You are still ignoring the lack of choice for many people on small, fixed incomes. They can either starve or go otherwise wanting or purchase goods that fulfill their needs at their budget but indirectly support harmful practices. People voice their direct opinions by vote, not dollars. No matter how people spend their money they are going to be indirectly supporting harmful practices or practices they do not agree with.

The other points are going to get into whole new areas of discussion, we may have to make new debates about those. God knows I'd love to, but this debate is already huge in scope.

I completely agree, and to add to your argument, Ricardian theory of competitive advantage supports this idea. If other countries have the competitive advantage (do the work more efficiently than in the US) then the US should allow them to do it, and specialize in other things that we are good at.

Yes it takes more energy to ship goods when they are manufactured overseas, however equally, it may bring the producer closer to the consumer. Consider American Jobs being outsourced to Mexicans. Many of the consumers in Florida and Texas are now much closer to the source of goods than if they had been manufactured in Illinois. Furthermore, employment is generated in maritime occupations, if the goods do travel vast distances.

Moreover, although companies do get away with extensive pollution in developing economies like China, once these economies mature, anti pollution acts and stringent environmental regulations begin to be stringently enforced, as wealthier, more literate citizens become increasingly aware of health risks associated with pollution. So if we do raise the standards of living in developing countries, it follows that eventually they will become more environmentally regulated and thus will eventually impose restrictions. However as long as the poverty remains, people will sacrifice their environment to pursue wealth.

Yes, it means all those after about 1990 who buy outsourced goods are less liable, however, just as children must deal with the choices of their parents, the youth must deal with the mistakes of their elders. The youth are still responsible, albeit less so, for the mistakes of the past generation.

In respect to "There have been periods where wealth distribution has been either equalized or more evenly distributed. There have been periods where the middle and lower classes started to close the gap, due mostly from extensive government programs, regulations, and progressive taxation", The redistribution of power has always been radical. Wealth, in both the feudal and capitalistic sense, has been self aggregating, and so unless we adopt a model where wealth does not aggregate, it is unlikely that inequality can be eliminated. Furthermore, as shown by the great Soviet experiment, even with a centralized, distribution service, wealth still manages to aggregate within the upper echelons of society.

It has never been true prior to our great age of globalization, but if we look at how China has come to the fore relatively recently in terms of economic prowess, it has effectively been through employment as the American industrialist's candy store, supplying almost whatever was demanded, including cheap sweatshop labour. And yes, a Roosevelt, a Lenin, a Chavez, a Castro may come along, but they come through radicalism, but political power is achieved through the barrel of a gun. While reform did occur, wealth eventually re aggregated into a new ruling echelon.

I believe that most of the arguments against outsourcing aren't because people feel that Americans are any more superior to those in other countries. I for one believe that all humans are equal and with the same freedoms and i believe that most others feel the same.

3rd world nations do grow because of foreign investment and that is a good thing. but corporations also manage to steal a lot of the resources of these 3rd world nations which they then make the native people work with.

it is one thing to invest and open new plants/buildings in 3rd world countries while keeping the original ones in America, it is completely different to close down the ones in America and then moving to a poorer nation and exploiting the fact those people will work for next to nothing because they have nothing better.

lets face it corporations don't outsource to help the poorer nations or its people, they do it because its cheaper, less environmental restrictions, and less strict worker conditions.

"I accept that outsourcing does aid wealth generation by those who already have wealth, but the resource pillaging, environmental ravaging and monopoly synthesizing of the world is not driven by outsourcing. Consider this, the demand for a product is increasing, and therefore more resources will be consumed producing the product. It doesn't matter where the resources come from, they will still be used, and so outsourcing is not generating all this environmental damage and resource consumption, it's already there. One even could argue that outsourcing is protecting American natural resources and instead ravaging someone else's."

You are absolutely correct in noting that outsourcing alone is not causing massive economic destruction and global warming. However, it is making matters much worse, worse than they could be.

Remember, it takes several times less energy to manufacture and transport a doll a mile away than it does ten thousand. All of that travel means CO2 production, which is a prime component of global warming.

Also, companies are purposely going to nations that do not have as stringent environmental regulations (or ones they can bully into deregulating such things) as the United States and the E.U. What companies get away with in China with regards to pollution would find it much more difficult (if not impossible) to do so in the States. You know that, I am sure.

"Also, places like Walmart exist because, in it's early days, someone bought products from Walmart, before it closed down other manufacturer's factories, and thus outsourcing did not force the consumers to buy, but once it began, it became self reinforcing. So the original choice was still by the consumer."

Then your argument is valid until 1990, I am afraid all of the customers born after outsourcing began or those who shopped before it began and continued cannot be, logically, forced into supporting outsourcing simply by their purchase.

"Moreover, the rich have always been getting richer, throughout history, it has been the case. Nothing short of revolution will ever, or ever has, reversed this stream. Only by playing into the pockets of the super wealthy can extremely poor nations hope to gain some semblance of prosperity"

There have been periods where wealth distribution has been either equalized or more evenly distributed. There have been periods where the middle and lower classes started to close the gap, due mostly from extensive government programs, regulations, and progressive taxation.

"Only by playing into the pockets of the super wealthy can extremely poor nations hope to gain some semblance of prosperity"

That has never, ever been true. What usually happens is the wealthy have their run of things for awhile, then a Roosevelt, a Lenin, a Chavez, a Castro...etc..etc...will rise to power and either openly revolt or enact reforms.

I accept that outsourcing does aid wealth generation by those who already have wealth, but the resource pillaging, environmental ravaging and monopoly synthesizing of the world is not driven by outsourcing. Consider this, the demand for a product is increasing, and therefore more resources will be consumed producing the product. It doesn't matter where the resources come from, they will still be used, and so outsourcing is not generating all this environmental damage and resource consumption, it's already there. One even could argue that outsourcing is protecting American natural resources and instead ravaging someone else's.

Also, places like Walmart exist because, in it's early days, someone bought products from Walmart, before it closed down other manufacturer's factories, and thus outsourcing did not force the consumers to buy, but once it began, it became self reinforcing. So the original choice was still by the consumer.

Moreover, the rich have always been getting richer, throughout history, it has been the case. Nothing short of revolution will ever, or ever has, reversed this stream. Only by playing into the pockets of the super wealthy can extremely poor nations hope to gain some semblance of prosperity

This is the issue, you are in favor of overseas investment then, not outsourcing.

There is a distinct difference between a lack of job creation (which occurs when a company chooses to invest its money overseas), and outsourcing (which is when a company takes its existing resources and reconfigures them so that current jobs are moved overseas).

I think you need to use a better example if you are going to defend the current practice; a practice which seems altogether different from what you are currently using as an example.

For the record, I don't oppose investment overseas (under certain mutually beneficial conditions). However, outsourcing seems to be an inherently destructive process which brings little benefit to foreign workers and impacts negatively domestic ones.