Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
"Reducing costs" is a long-standing tactic of many business endeavors. Efforts to protect "jobs at home" are often counter-productive, because they diminish the liquidity of the job market and make it more expensive to hire employees.
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So, if I read you correctly, outsourcing is akin Progress and advances in technology. Opposing it is like opposing development of machine tools and mechanized agriculture.
I disagree. Opposing outsourcing IMO is a labor rights issue. It is protecting real people being robbed of their livelihood by corporate greed. And above that, it is protecting the standard of living in one's own society, which is being hurt (and
not improved!) by lowering costs of manufacturing, lowering wages and higher unemployment.
Machine tools and developments in agriculture did in fact free up a lot of excess labor. However, those developments were mostly occurring at the times when overall labor demand was on the rise. Today taking well paying jobs and shipping them overseas may generate competitive advantages (and extra executive bonuses), but when those outsourced jobs are not replaced by similar well paying domestic jobs (or in fact any jobs), we get a crisis in the economy, lower tax base and higher "entitlement" expenditures. The government debt goes up, and standard of living falls, the wages are depressed, the income inequality is on the rise.
Now, internet retailers killing B&M retail is a similar story. Yes, Amazon employs a lot of low skilled labor, but with much higher efficiency that Borders or B&N used to. In fact, it may be that Borders employees were on average more skilled and knowledgeable than Amazon's box packers. There were also many more of them employed around the country, and there were secondary jobs created by Borders retail business as well. Those are real people who are now losing their income. The states are losing sales tax income as well - Amazon customers in most cases do not pay sales taxes. The local municipalities are losing real estate tax income. Everyone loses except Amazon executives and investors.
Now, Amazon arguably is Progress. It is not yet shipping a lot of jobs overseas (not sure about their customer service though). But I believe it should be made to compete on equal footing, and pay the local sales taxes.