Third Party & Independents: Archives

Offshore souricing is disgusting to begin with, but this takes the cake! The Party of Bush directly sending American jobs off-shore.

Bastards! Another bit of insight into the slime these wealthy, white, Protestant conservatives are!

Robbie

By the way, I am a poor, white, Protestant liberal. ;-)

What does being Protestant have to do with this discussion? Or being white for that matter?

CJ,

Because wealthy, white, Protestant, male conservatives are running the country. If it is good for them, it is what gets done.

Offshore sourcing is good for this ruling-class.

Rob

PS: To be in the ruling class, you must have all of those attributes.

Robbie,
It is ironic that someone can be racist against himself.
“bastards”? Nice, your lowering this discussion into something that is very “Base” and ugly.

You could be a member of the “ruling class” (bourgeoise) if you had not made some bad decisions in your life that caused you to be “poor”. Just think Robbie, you don’t have to represent the proletariat your whole life! You can make your own money, start a business, climb the corporate ladder etc…whatever you do will be your own responsibility though.

Pete,

Before you insult me, you should read what I wrote. In my theory, you must be many things to be in the current ruling class, including “Conservative” which, you might agree, I am not.

:-)

Robbie D.

On second thought. I am gone. I left once, came back. I am not here to be belittled.

Good Bye.

Mee too! I just can’t take the pressure anymore. Good bye cruel world….**sob**
J/K.

Dean spoke out against off-shoring when he was in Seattle. The crowd ate it up.

I have no idea what the heck just went on in this conversation.

Just needed to clear that up. :)

While I don’t have anything but anecdotal evidence to support this statement, I predict offshore outsourcing will become one of the major hot button topics of Campaign 2004. I know - no real stretch there. But the anger that I pick up in conversations, reading message boards or news stories in general shows that there’s no middle ground on this one.

The question remains as to who will take the brunt of the anger as the public looks for someone to blame. In the interest of full discosure, I’m someone who’s been looking for a full time job for more than a year (I’m freelancing in the meantime). I’m one of the uncounted thousands who have given up - the jobs that used to be there don’t exist anymore. The outrage has to go somewhere.

9th, I agree with you, this is an issue that will only become more contentious as the election draws nearer. I too have first hand knowledge of how this is effecting Americans; I and my team was laid off and replaced by H1-B Visa holders, and our jobs eventually went overseas. I was out of work for almost a year and in the end I went from making a high five-figure salary to stacking boxes part-time at a national computer resellers local warehouse for $10.00 an hour and no benefits.

I eventually found a job with far less responsibility and at a much lower salary then the one I had before I was laid off. We still have our house, but only because my disabled wife receives SSN benefits. As it is, we went into considerable debt just living day-to-day, a situation we are still climbing out of. Our savings are gone, so too our 401K, and we are living on the edge. Not a good feeling. Some of the members of my team are still looking for jobs!

So (Pete), I see this as much more then companies moving with market forces and chasing profit wherever it may lie. As the high tech jobs that fueled the middle class after manufacturing all but disappeared in the late seventies, continue to disappear overseas, what will replace them. Service sector jobs do not now, nor will they ever, pay what white-collar jobs pay. How much longer will it be before this trend has an irreversible effect on an economy, which is fueled mostly (2/3) by consumer spending, continue to grow. As the middle class dwindles will the upper class be able to sustain the U.S. economy on its own? Lower class citizens cannot afford big-ticket items, and Walmart cannot carry the entire U.S. economy on its back.

We have to realize that the future of our nation as one of the first world is at stake, as well as our current standard of living. This practice is wrong, wrong, wrong, and no amount of rationalization can make it right! We are a nation of people, a society, not a corporation. Excessive greed has a cost!

Of course you are right on many points Mr. Martin.
Who will be there to buy those big ticket items when noone is making a good living? Right now I do not believe that corporations have any loyalty to the nation. Many have become Internationalized companies rather than American. What is the solution to this problem? If we pass legislation to combat it wont corporations just re-locate in other countries entirely?

Pete—

I think we should look to the United Nations, World Trade Organization and or the World Bank. With the help of these organizations countries that hold their workers out as little more then chattel, to be ill used by International Corporations (American and otherwise), can be pressured to raise the standard of living of their societies. What we need of course is a United Nations sponsored Declaration of Rights for the Worker, which international bodies like the World Trade Organization and the World Bank sigh on to and agree to adhere to.

Pressuring countries one at a time to enact legislation to raise wages and mandate benefits will not work, because as Mexico is finding out, companies will go elsewhere (Asia) is an effort to find cheaper, and cheaper labor. Also, the United States government must, I said must, come to a realization the current exodus of White collar workers to Asia will eventually take it toll on the U.S. economy and our way of life. That requires leadership and vision, both of which are in very short supply in Washington these days.

Lastly, the world’s nations have to stop trying to enrich themselves by picking the bone of other nations. International Corporations are doing what they are doing because the world’s governments are allowing them to do it. If the standard of living of ALL the words nations were raised in a united effort, International Corporations would find little incentive to relocate overseas. Why for instance does India allow Microsoft to pay an Indian software engineer a mere $10,000 a year (no benefits) while that same person would make would make $70,000 – $100,000 in the U.S.? India gets the jobs, yes, but does the standard of living for the country as a whole rise?

“If the standard of living of ALL the words nations were raised in a united effort, International Corporations would find little incentive to relocate overseas.”

How would you go about doing that? Raising the standard of living in other countries is a pretty big job.

“India gets the jobs, yes, but does the standard of living for the country as a whole rise?”

Yes it does. Look at the standard of living in Asia since thier American driven Industrial revolution. That is part of the problem. I don’t giva a damn about another countries standard of living, I care about my countries standard of living.

Pete, you’re on your way to becoming a champion for the cause, only you messed up:

I don’t giva [sic] a damn about another countries [sic] standard of living, I care about my countries [sic] standard of living.

I don’t give a damn about my country’s standard of living, I care about my standard of living.

Now go out and slap down some socialists for me :)

Steve, you are putting words into my mouth and that is wrong. I never said that. I DO care about my country. I would love to smack down some socialists though. They are fundamentally un-American and do not believe in the free market system that drives this greatest of nations. **chuckle**

Pete, I wasn’t putting words in your mouth, I was calling you a liberal :)

Why?

Pete—

Your attitude is one of the reasons Americans and America, where our values are increasingly being defined by Gucci, Reebok, Nike, and Tommy Hilfiger, and well to do teenage white girls are selling themselves for same, are so despised around the world. We do not live upon this earth alone, and unless the start giving a damn about other countries standards of living, we might find ourselves among the ranks of those we now wash our hands of, and have to go crawling to them for jobs.

By raising the standard of living of other nations we protect American jobs, and our own standard of living, by creating a disincentive for American corporations to go overseas with their high paying jobs. Get it? Please pay attention; I thought I explained this in glowing detail in my last comment.

And let me get this straight: you believe that not believing in this capitalist system and all of its shortcomings is “fundamentally un-American”? Please explain that most ignorant statement.

Pete,
“I don’t giva a damn about another countries standard of living, I care about my countries standard of living.”

It’s that sort of attitude that is leading to the loss of jobs in our nation to companies in India. Because when you don’t care that people in India are happy to have a salary of less than half what an American makes for the same work, then you don’t care about Americans. So, by accepting the indignations that these multi-nationals force on other peoples, in other cultures we not only drive jobs away from Americans, but we also breed the type of anger that we should be trying to avoid.

Attitudes like your’s expressed above are elitist and you have no right to be. We have a great number of freedoms in this country, but I find the freedom to think that others should have to suffer for your own personal pleasure is about as anti-American as I can imagine. Attitudes like yours lead to Wal-Mart being a significant trading partner with China, and funding the Chinese prison system through prison labor shops making tshirts for Wal-Mart. The prisoners don’t even get paid. You know, you treat people like that and it breeds anger.

Who next will you not care about? Will it be African-American children? Statistics show that one third of African-American males will end up in prison before they are 27. For Hispanics, the figure is one in six.

Will you not care about your neighbors? Two weeks ago close to 20% of Americans were effected by a black out. That’s nearly one in five. Will you not care about thier standard of living? Where is your outrage at the government for letting these utilities deregulate, and then not demanding that there be higher standards?

You probably don’t feel that outrage because you are too busy thinking that you’ve got it made compared to some poor guy in India. Right now you do, but that guy in India is pretty smart. That guy in China is pretty pissed. The kids in jail in the US are pretty pissed too. They’re pissed that you had an opportunity that they were never offered. And you are looking smug about it.