Hey, I have a 3-year-old so I have a house full of the finest laogai-manufacturered prodocuts. You'd just figure that people in Walmart Nation would be a little reticent to buy products from a country where you get thrown in jail for going to an unapproved church.
You're making a big assumption that they (1) know where the products they're buying come from, (2) know where that country is on a map, (3) have any grasp whatsoever of the socio-political climate in that country, and (4) actually give a shit.
Speaks highly of this great nation of ours, doesn't it. edit: [I tried to resist, but couldn't.] These are the same people who just elected a president.
I don't know abut Nike, and it is true that there are some employers who try to take advantage of the workers, just like everywhere else. But I know something about China, because I do business there. People compare the salaries to what we make in the west and they sound pitiful, but that is to a large extent because China keeps their currency artificially low in order to be competitive. The fact is that on average foreign investors pay a much higher wage than Chinese government companies, and Chinese laborers prefer to work for foreign enterprises. It is very easy to recruit workers in China if you offer more than what they are used to making from the large state employers. As far as the agricultural economy, people are not forced to leave their village and go to a city looking for a job that pays them in money rather than in corn. Most of the Chinese people seek those jobs, just as Americans and Europeans did in the past when faced with the same type of choices.
It's all about economies of scale. I have no problem with outsourcing, it is simply an acknowledgement that we now live in a global economy. People in the U.S. need to realize this, stop bitching about losing a $6.00 an hour telemarketing job to an Indian, go back to school, and get a better job.
You sound just like George W Bush. There are also highly educated people who are losing jobs to outsourcing. Are you going to tell the QA guys from Macromedia that they need to go back to grad school and get a Ph.D. since their Masters wasn't good enough to keep them from getting laid off when their department moved to Bangalore? Disclaimer: I work in Tech Support (not at Macromedia, that was my former roommate) and my company recently opened a Tech Support office in India. They say that our jobs will not be affected, but I expect that in two years, my job won't be here any more. I'm not complaining about it, because as a stockholder, I agree that outsourcing is a great way to cut costs and increase profits, and I like the global economy. But I object to the blanket statement that people need to get more educated when their job gets outsourced. Which is exactly what W said in one of the debates.
It's not about "more" Bill, it's about different. I agree with some restrictions and incentives to keep jobs here, but how much can you do when companies can pay an Indian (generally with a higher education level) 5,000 a year to do Tech support or an American 30,000 a year plus benefits? There aren't going to be a whole lot of things you can do to keep that job in the US save banning the practice altogether, and I think we can all agree that's not a very good idea. The scales are not tipped evenly right now because we have a global economy without a global government/regulatory body. That's the biggest problem.
I think it's a lot more that Americans need to readjust their attitudes and stop thinking that a specific degree entitles someone to a specific type of job. A 40-year-old with a college degree isn't going to go back to school to get a different degree. I prefer working in tech support, but I'm going to be going back to consulting or (God forbid) sales when my job goes to India.
If you haven't gone to the Election result maps page at Univ of Michigan, check it out: http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/ We've all seen the county-by-county map: But then, you have a population cartogram which shows the red-blue split like this: And a variation on the county-by-county map at top, is a map that shows counties in shades of purple to more accurately reflect what percentage of voters were red or blue: The coolest one on the page is the one that combines the purple map with the cartogram. It is quite trippy.
But then, my girfriend pointed out last night that the most accurate Dem/Reep map is the one below: It shows Ikea locations around the country. There are 3 red state Ikeas (the DFW location hasn't opened yet) and one is in Phoenix and the other is in Woodbridge, VA which might as well be in DC, at least for this exercise.