what are your views on Outsourcing of Jobs?

[Rolo]

What are the politicians supposed to do to combat that?

My short answer would be "Change EVERYTHING", however lets realize a few things:

- jobs which moves from a expensive country to another country will not come back as long as the first country is more expensive. If you want to have new jobs, then you have to CREATE them.

- no matter how cheap labour is in one part of the world, then there are still extra costs, which has little to do with the cheap labour - ex. transportation costs, telecommunication costs etc. those extra costs are following world pricing, and not the local price. This means not all products are good to import - ex. if you need to have made 1.000.000 units in china, then you still need to add transportation, and insurance getting them to the US - sure most of them will still be cheaper, but the bigger the final product is - the more likely it would cost just as much to produce closer to the consumer in a fully automatic factory.

- in time technology will remove more low paying jobs, then what 3rd world countries will take. Ex. If you build a fully automatic factory, which runs 24/7 with a minium of staff, then you can produce cheaper, than any factory employing hundreds of chinese. If you build a fully automatic factory in china, then you would still have to add transportation etc. cost to the final product, so it would make more sense to have that factory placed close to the market.

- raw materials are plenty on most continents, no matter if you live in China or the US you have access to them. And just like factories it pays to have fully automated the process of getting them.

- tax is a local issue, however its a world wide problem... this means that if goverments stop their uncontrolled desire to get taxes, then money will start to move to their regions, and not away as it is now. This would mean more investments local = more local low paying jobs.

- education is one of the best ways to get the tools to learn new things - so why do most of us only attend education in the first part of our life, when we know that world is changing all the time? If your skill is no longer needed, then you need to learn a new skill.

etc.

There are tons of other issues to think about, and a long answer will be that - long.... so I will stick to my short answer - "Change EVERYTHING"



Last edited by Rolo at Mar 6 2004, 06:27 AM