Compete
Little Georgie thinks it's a good thing that American jobs are being outsourced to parts of the world like India. And why wouldn't he? He's never had to work a day in his life. What's all the big deal about 'work' anyway? Hey - if you need money just get Dick Cheney to cash in some options for you.
Outsourcing of work to less developed parts of the world is good for American investors and bad for American workers - which means it's perfect for neocons. Investors get to take advantage of the extremely low wages paid to even the most highly-skilled workers. That's good for the bottom line, and they make more money on their shares. Yay!
By lowering the overall spend on wages, Americans make less money. That's another win for business. Yay! But aren't we supposed to care about American workers? Not only are they making less when competing for jobs against foreign labour, they're losing their chance to compete when entire job categories are shipped out. Try getting an entry-level programming position or working at a call centre these days.
Didn't conservatives used to be protectionist? I can remember back when conservative politicians were ready to build thousand-foot walls at the coastline to protect American markets and jobs. Now we're selling our ports to foreign companies. There's just no ideology left. It's all 'whatever Bush/Rove wants' now - Rove isn't just "Bush's Brain;" he's become the brain for an entire generation of ovine Republicans who don't seem to remember why they joined the party in the first place.
I'm not saying, by the way, that protectionism is necessarily good or that India shouldn't get the work that they've earned. What I'm saying is that our government should be looking at ways to compete for those positions for the American worker - not gleefully offshore them. And that Indian workers deserve more wages than pennies on the dollar of American workers. The idea should be to pay everyone a fair wage, not to continually look for the cheapest sweatshop on the planet.
We used to worry about these things when Americans ran America. I'm starting to think that we secretly lost Work War II to Germany and are only now realizing it.
Outsourcing of work to less developed parts of the world is good for American investors and bad for American workers - which means it's perfect for neocons. Investors get to take advantage of the extremely low wages paid to even the most highly-skilled workers. That's good for the bottom line, and they make more money on their shares. Yay!
By lowering the overall spend on wages, Americans make less money. That's another win for business. Yay! But aren't we supposed to care about American workers? Not only are they making less when competing for jobs against foreign labour, they're losing their chance to compete when entire job categories are shipped out. Try getting an entry-level programming position or working at a call centre these days.
Didn't conservatives used to be protectionist? I can remember back when conservative politicians were ready to build thousand-foot walls at the coastline to protect American markets and jobs. Now we're selling our ports to foreign companies. There's just no ideology left. It's all 'whatever Bush/Rove wants' now - Rove isn't just "Bush's Brain;" he's become the brain for an entire generation of ovine Republicans who don't seem to remember why they joined the party in the first place.
I'm not saying, by the way, that protectionism is necessarily good or that India shouldn't get the work that they've earned. What I'm saying is that our government should be looking at ways to compete for those positions for the American worker - not gleefully offshore them. And that Indian workers deserve more wages than pennies on the dollar of American workers. The idea should be to pay everyone a fair wage, not to continually look for the cheapest sweatshop on the planet.
We used to worry about these things when Americans ran America. I'm starting to think that we secretly lost Work War II to Germany and are only now realizing it.
posted by fiduciary at 8:32 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home