Outsourcing, It can actually create jobs in America

We all hear plenty on outsourcing of jobs. Generally it is a bad thing if you work for hmmm lets say a company that makes socks. So China floods the market with socks cheaper than your companies socks. The owner of the company must decide whether they will shut the company down or come up with a way to compete. Shutting the company down will cost 400 people their jobs. Instead they contract with Taiwan to sew part of the sock cheaper than they can and they can compete. 20 people lost their job instead of 400. Sad for those 20 people but sewing socks is not exactly a high tech job. In the meantime every sock you shipped to Taiwan created jobs in America. Yes, jobs were created. They have to be trucked to a port to ship them. Workers have to load and unload them. Fuel was consumed, They have to be boxed so companies that make boxes get a boost. It goes on and on. Where America is failing on the outsourcing predicament is by not taking advantage of it by not seeing those 20 people as an opportunity to train them for needed skills for new high tech companies.
Obviously America is not in a position to take advantage of these opportunities since unemployment is stubbornly high. I do believe in the long run it could work to our advantage over time if we understand it and put high tech jobs or at least higher tech jobs in place of the low tech jobs lost.
Anyway, just a thought. I understand at this time it sounds insane to embrace outsourcing but i would like to see a discussion on the topic and how you think it could be made to work for America since outsourcing is not going away. We need to think out of the box and make a plus out of a minus. I know Americans can do it.

This is an interesting topic, i must look more into it as soon as i return home to my computer.

Marking this now to remind me later

I see you point but I have to disagree just because we insist to continue using a currency that should have been replaced years ago.

This currency worked fine when there was a job for everyone. Socks needed to be hand stitched, hand washed, hand packed and couldn't be shipped in such quantities. This means that there were more people NEEDED to make the socks than there are today. And this sock metaphor applies to many, many other manufacturing processes.

Technology was supposed to make things easier for EVERYONE, not just the kings and queens.

This is just my opinion, and I would elaborate further if I had the time.

We do not need more jobs, we need a currency that has accounted for the fact that there will be more people and less jobs as time goes on, as technology gets more and more advanced.

What happens when we perfect robots, and every fast food employee is replaced by a robot who knows nothing but how to take orders and dispense proper change?

Originally posted by jimmiec
We all hear plenty on outsourcing of jobs. Generally it is a bad thing if you work for hmmm lets say a company that makes socks. So China floods the market with socks cheaper than your companies socks. The owner of the company must decide whether they will shut the company down or come up with a way to compete. Shutting the company down will cost 400 people their jobs. Instead they contract with Taiwan to sew part of the sock cheaper than they can and they can compete. 20 people lost their job instead of 400. Sad for those 20 people but sewing socks is not exactly a high tech job. In the meantime every sock you shipped to Taiwan created jobs in America. Yes, jobs were created. They have to be trucked to a port to ship them. Workers have to load and unload them. Fuel was consumed, They have to be boxed so companies that make boxes get a boost. It goes on and on. Where America is failing on the outsourcing predicament is by not taking advantage of it by not seeing those 20 people as an opportunity to train them for needed skills for new high tech companies.
Obviously America is not in a position to take advantage of these opportunities since unemployment is stubbornly high. I do believe in the long run it could work to our advantage over time if we understand it and put high tech jobs or at least higher tech jobs in place of the low tech jobs lost.
Anyway, just a thought. I understand at this time it sounds insane to embrace outsourcing but i would like to see a discussion on the topic and how you think it could be made to work for America since outsourcing is not going away. We need to think out of the box and make a plus out of a minus. I know Americans can do it.

Exactly how many chefs in the kitchen can we have? In the scenario you listed above it kept apparently 400 people their jobs while only eliminating 20 by outsourcing? That is a grossly inaccurate ratio of desk jobs to labor jobs in almost every industry.

Promote all the labor jobs to desk jobs? Or is the previous labor pay going to compete with administrative pay?

Creating something thousands of miles away and shipping it thousands of miles away should not be CHEAPER than making something in house...Its extreme inefficiency wrapped up in the illusion of cheaper prices because of cheaper labor...that at the end of the day is the definition of unethical...

The labor in china is always going to be cheaper they have billions to put to work...the work force over there has absolutely NO leverage in pay negotiations...they will work for what they are told to work for or they wont work at all, which in China = death...

At the end of the day its all greed that controls the markets and the worlds economies. The cost of living in America and the Cost of goods in America is skewed because of cheap labor and outsourcing to countries with a completely different set of rules, a completely different cost of living and the ratio discrepancy = huge profits for companies/share holders with one countries people thriving with abundance (US) and one country exploiting its abundance of workers (China) to the point its almost slave labor...

The end result is a country ~400 million strong living lives that wouldn't otherwise be possible without the exploitation of a country ~1billion strong making all that possible with extremely low quality of life/living conditions.

Outsourcing may create jobs in the books but it also creates some other undesirable outcomes socially, ethically, and morally that really business isn't concerned with...

If we outsource you may be right, it may create jobs and boost some income for Americans and increase the cost of living gap between rich and poor....but there is another side of that coin some serious moral,ethical, and social issues that will eventually get their say in the matter...

Outsourcing is not going away no matter how much we scream about it. The real question is what to do with the effected Americans. The truth is that there are a lot of jobs out there that people are not qualified for. Instead of them sitting on their butts until unemployment benefits run out, should we train them for a job that is needed. Trades are generally short on qualified candidates. Welding/fabrication/engineering/machinist/etc. Companies can submit their needs so that we can train them for that need. Most companies want people trained in the basics so they can train them for the job they want done their way.