Reply #86: Your arguments completely miss the mark.

[JackDragna]

You seem to view the idea of keeping decent jobs for Americans as similar to other struggles to keep an equitable work environment. The problem with your argument is that there's no attempt at "equality" being made by companies that move jobs overseas. I invite you to look at the countries where many industrial and technical jobs are going: India, Indonesia, Mexico and so on.

Workers there can be paid pennies on the dollar compared to an American. They get few benefits. Their workweeks can be atrociously long. There is often little government oversight of working conditions. Collective bargaining is nonexistent. In short, workers work in conditions similar to those at the very cusp of the industrial age in the West, the era of children in coal mines and the Triangle Shirt Factory fire.

These companies have no interest in improving the infrastructure in these countries. They only want the cheap labor. Whether the living conditions of their workers or anyone else in the country improve is of little consequence. If the workers think a little too highly of themselves and demand more rights and pay, the companies go elsewhere. It's already begun in Mexico: many "maquiladoras" that made cheap plastics are going to the poor Pacific Rim.

There is a valid question raised: do Americans have some fundamental right to high-paying jobs? I don't think they necessarily have a right to it, but it bothers me when companies enjoy the benefits of having their base of operations in the US and getting massive profits from selling their goods here, yet do not see fit to give Americans a chance to have those jobs.

I also think it's long-term economic suicide for people to pretend that jobs going overseas are just part of the new competitive global marketplace. When you take those jobs away from a developed nation like the United States, you're gutting its middle class. Its citizens will not have the same purchasing power and discontent will rise as those told that working hard and going to college will make them successful can't find work. The economies of the third-world nations to which the companies flee aren't improved, either, because the companies are allowed to employ every single business practice in the book to funnel profits towards the owners and away from the workers. The net result in the world economy will be an ever-increasing gap between the rich and the poor and a continued slump.

The movement of jobs overseas has no similarity to your equivocations.