Their Own Economic Reality - Paul Craig Roberts

[Wind Dancer]

Even Jobs at McDonald's Aren't Safe"

By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Who can forget the neocons’ claim that under their leadership America creates its own reality? Remember the neocons’ Iraq reality--a “cakewalk” war? After three years of combat, thousands of casualties, and cost estimated at over $1 trillion, real reality must still compete with the White House spin machine.

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I receive a constant stream of emails from unemployed and underemployed engineers with many years of experience and advanced degrees. Many have been out of work for years. They describe the movement of their jobs offshore or their replacement by foreigners brought in on work visas. Many no longer even know American engineers who are employed in the profession. Some are now working in sawmills, others in Home Depot, and others are attempting to eke out a living as consultants. Many describe lost homes, broken marriages, even imprisonment for inability to make child support payments.

Many ask me how economists can be so blind to reality. Here is my answer: Many economists are bought and paid for by outsourcers. Most of the studies claiming to prove that Americans benefit from outsourcing are done by economic consulting firms hired by outsourcers. Or they are done by think tanks or university professors dependent on corporate donors. Or they reflect the ideology of “free market economists” who are committed to the belief that “freedom” is good and always produces good results. Since outsourcing is merely the freedom of property to act in its interest, and since this self-interest is always guided by an invisible hand to the greater welfare of everyone, outsourcing, ipso facto, is good for America. Anyone who doesn’t think so is a fascist who wants to take away the rights of property. Seriously, this is what passes for analysis among “free market economists.”
Economists’ commitment to their “reality” is destroying the ladders of upward mobility that made America the land of opportunity. It is just as destructive as the neocons’ commitment to their “reality” that is driving the US deeper into war in the Middle East.

Fact and analysis no longer play a role. The spun reality in which Americans live is insulated against intelligent perception.

American “manufacturers” are becoming merely marketers of foreign made goods. The CEOs and shareholders have too short a time horizon to understand that once foreigners control the manufacture-design- innovation process, they will bypass American brand names. US companies will simply cease to exist.

Norm Augustine, former CEO of Lockheed Martin, says that even McDonald's jobs are no longer safe. Why pay an error-prone order-taker the minimum wage when McDonald's can have the order transmitted via satellite to a central location and from there to the person preparing the order. McDonald’s experiment with this system to date has cut its error rate by 50% and increased its throughput by 20 percent. Technology lets the orders be taken in India or China at costs below the minimum wage and without the liabilities of US employees.

Americans are giving up their civil liberties because they fear terrorist attacks. All of the terrorists in the world cannot do America the damage it has already suffered from offshore outsourcing.

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02162006.html