Offshoring

Yes - this process happened in manufacturing in the 60s and 70s and 80s and devastated once thriving cities like Baltimore and Philadelphia. Now, once they've exported all the white collar jobs, we'll be at the heighth of efficient capitalist development, and everyone here will either be a boss or 'investor' living off of their stock or ownership of companies with overseas workers, or they'll be waiters or gardeners for the investors.

If you don't like jobs going overseas, then only buy things made in America.

What if the corporations got a law passed to block offshore purchasing? No more cheap "made in China" - or Mexico, or Japan, Germany, Italy, Taiwan, Afghanistan.

You know what would happen? Your personal standard of living would plummet. Your clothes, your computer, your cell phone, your car, your bicycle.. everything would shoot up in price.

Even the stuff made in America - do you think they could do business as they do, if their equipment wasn't made in Japan?

And without the incentive of competition, everything would also drop in quality. Remember the former USSR?

You enjoy the fruits of capitalism and competition every day - you'd almost die without them - and yet you complain that jobs are going overseas. YOU'RE SENDING THEM OVERSEAS WITH YOUR OWN SPENDING HABITS.

Geezus christ, has California's socialized education system failed so miserably that they can't even teach a *basic* understanding of economics anymore?

-Van

p.s. Besides, this means more money in the hands of "people of color", and less in the hands of us rich white male opressors. What are you, racist? Or do you suddenly love America now? You didn't last week.

The problem is that companies will jump from country to country when labor standards are changed. They shop around for the worst labor lawas and then move there. This doesnt give jobs to poorer people just decreases working standards. Talk to labor activists in the third world and you will find that they wont jobs but dont like the way companies pressure governments to destory unions etc..

The solution isnt to buy American, but to pressure individual companies about working conditions and to work directly with the effected communities.

> Talk to labor activists in the third world and you will
> find that they wont jobs but dont like the way
> companies pressure governments to destory unions
> etc..

Most "labor activists" from the 3rd world or the 1st, are self-important rebels without a real cause. I'd rather talk to 3rd world laborers themselves.

Oh wait, I dont have to - the laborers are speaking for themselves. By taking these jobs, they obviously prefer having these jobs to not having them. Otherwise, companies wouldn't benefit from relocation.

That's why there are 3rd world labor activists fighting to keep Coca Cola plants from closing in Columbia - because 3rd world laborers ARE benefiting from "offshoring".

You're just another comfortable 1st world American who fears competition from poorer countries, and you've cloaked your greed and fear in the fashionable guise of "social justice".

Another coffee shop crusader. How very bourgeois.

-Van