Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General Common Interests Thoughts on outsourcing

just chewed someones arse on a local racing board about outsourcing, he's an american, origionally from russia, smart kid, lacks common sense and street smarts though. his whole argument basically was that outsourcing is good because americans are fat lazy and stupid. and it'll motivate us to do better.

i countered but i want to hear your arguments for and against first

Its horrible for the economy, but nearly a necessary evil.

The problem comes with unions, workers want close to 15 dollars for unskilled labor like assembling a switch. Comapnies cant afford to create certain products here in the states, often finding themselves LOSING money per product, where they WILL make money producing the same product in china (with several companies BIDDING to do it cheaper).

Out sourcing in that respect can be understood, when a company is losing money producing something in america I cant blame them for sending production overseas. Its just smart, you wouldnt keep going to a job that took money from you.. you'd probably look for one that paid you .

Now when a company can perform everything it needs to within the United States, while still making a profit then outsourcing is horrible. Take Dell for example, they COULD have kept their CS in america and probably still turned a profit. They decided to ship it overseas and are churning a BIGGER profit (good for investors i suppose).


So ya... Out sourcing is something thats gonna become a bigger problem than it already is, we all hate it, but our economy drives it.

Just my opinions, dont cut me

I'm a classic free-market conservative, and time was when I might have agreed with your friend, there.

But what I've seen is that it seems that when a company sources its engineering and tech jobs oversees, eventually 2 bad things happen to that company's bottom line:

1. Quality suffers, and so does market share.
2. The company loses its core competence to produce remarkable, innovative new products.

Eventually, it's bad for the country, as well. Sure, it looks good on the balance sheet, for now, but when you get down to it, US labor and know-how is worth the money.

I read somewhere that ultimately our economy creates more jobs when jobs are outsourced, so I'm not sure it's a good thing, a bad thing, or just a thing.

I think many who've outsourced jobs to India and other Asian locales are re-thinking these decisions. As has been said before, there are a new set of issues to deal with.

The upside of outsourcing is that you can follow the sun with your support. You don't have to keep people up at night, instead, providing support during daylight hours.

Of course, it would be nice if we could understand the folks providing that support. I believe for the US and Canada, you could do this with call centers in the UK and Australia.

It's a delicate balance. The nation doesn't owe jobs to it's citizens. So if people choose to enter jobs that can easily be outsourced or are not economically viable, then much of that responsibility belongs to the worker. We can't build buggy whips forever.

Environmental laws here have driven some buisinesses out of the country. For example, regulations about lead have driven a lot of lead mining, and I believe battery making out of the US.

I'm not anti-environment, I'm anti-whining. If you don't like the fact that jobs are leaving, then why not look at all the causes and not just jump to the claim of greed by corporate America.

People don't by "Japanese" cars today because they are cheaper, they buy them because they think they are better.

If the products built by outsourcing are not better, they won't be purchased. If they are better, then look out USA, someone can do it better than we can.

TB

Good for corporate America, by lowering costs. What often isn't considered (or at least owned-up to) are the other costs: Economic costs to those who lose jobs, to businesses from whom those now-unemployed people used to purchase goods and services but cannot any longer; frictional costs of retraining displaced people to do other jobs (if available); major costs to taxpayers who, directly or indirectly, pay for unemployment benefits/welfare for the displaced. Those costs offset, to a degree, the cost benefits to corporations. There is, therefore, a sizeable transfer payment from taxpayers/workers to corporations and their stockholders. This raises a public policy question of whether government should step in and prevent or ameliorate in some manner the effects of this transfer payment (by limiting outsourcing, or by taxing corporate revenues and tranfering, via tax breaks or payments to workers). The present Administration and Congress, with its 'small government' and 'get government off the back of corporate America' policies, seems unlikely to take such action, so outsourcing will likely continue and increase, both in the manufacturing and service sectors. (Not a slam at the Administration, just an observation of its stated policies.)

good for corporate america, but I doubt the benefits will ever make it to the average american/canadian. Wallmart is trying to shut down stores that are forming unions (and btw, wallmart is now the biggest...bigger than GM), ING quadrupled profits over last year, you don;t need to have an economics degree to know that is a lot...and my insurance continues to go up, without incident. Outsourcing is not our only worry. There is also the brain drain. More of a canadian problem. Over half of my friends who graduated in computer science went south of the border.

We had the president of mexico speak at the university I work at (home of a noble prize winning professor of economics, so no 'what the hell do you guys know, you are just dumb canuks') and this outsourcing issue was directly and seriously addressed. Mexico is in serious trouble as this continues. A phd equipped person in India will work for 1/3 the rate a similarly educated person in the us/ canada will work for. Call centers are not the only worry. My wife's cousin had to go to australia to get a perm full-time high-tech job.

I kind of have 2 sides to it... it helps other countries because it gives people in thier country jobs... but on OUR side, it kills out economy... So in the long run it will probably create problems... So overall, im not for it.

I believe it has been reported that we insource more than we outsource..Toyota, Honda, BMW..good paying jobs. My hometown in Ohio was largley saved years ago by Honda's massive factory in Marysville. Anybody want to check the numbers. So, if we end outsourcing will insourcing end?

While it would be nice if insourcing still continued (a bit hypocritical perhaps) after outsourcing and we "bought American made" but it is not realistic for many products in a global economy. Outsourcing lowers costs which help US manufactures stay competitive in a global marketplace. Stop and foriegn manufactures gain advantage. Because as much lip service is given to "buy American" it is striking how many Americans would/do buy a similar product from China to save a buck..

the reason why i do not like outsourcing is because when i called dell for information.. i have this lady that sounds like she is from india.. and she says her name is samantha..hahaha.. and then she talks really slow.. and like i was stupid.. and that happens everytime i called them.. haha.. and they have no customer service skills.
she just "sounded" nice and that was about it.

sorry its not as hightech as your answers but it hits my homefront.