That this actually controversial is astonishing. Nevertheless, you there are countless web sites that argue that offshoring was good for everybody.
Despite it’s negative image in first world countries such as the U.S., offshoring has proven to be beneficial to both the business owner and the country where the services are culled.
I think that this issue is much more of a political issue than a job issue. Jobs exist in the United States. In many fields there are shortages of workers. The offshore resources are filling that shortage in some cases. In other cases companies are saving money by using cheaper resources. By saving money, they are making more which is profitable for their shareholders. Who are their shareholders? Probably each and every one of us. Remember your retirement account?
Then, on Feb. 9, the White House released its annual Economic Report of the President. Buried deep on Page 229 of the report was a paragraph noting the growth of offshore outsourcing by U.S. businesses and suggesting this was basically no different from other kinds of international trade:
“The basic economic forces behind the transactions are the same… . When a good or service is produced more cheaply abroad, it makes more sense to import it than to make or provide it domestically.”
I teach college, specifically business law. When my class began to fill up with former manufacturing workers desperate for some kind of work or work related opportunity, I couldn’t help but notice those were the kinds of jobs that made this community, the jobs that made America. It was those jobs that were leaving.
I’ll let the article make the rest of the argument.
James Pilant
Nobel Economist Michael Spence Says Globalism Is Costly For Americans Dr. Paul Craig Roberts | Global Research | May 31, 2011 These are discouraging times, but once in a blue moon a bit of hope appears. I am pleased to report on the bit of hope delivered in March of 2011 by Michael Spence, a Nobel prize-winning economist, assisted by Sandile Hlatshwayo, a researcher at New York University. The two economists have taken a careful empirical look at … Read More
via Suzie-Q’s Truth and Justice Blog
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Pilant's Business Ethics Blog 
In a lot of cases, the jobs that are going overseas are NOT in job fields that have a shortage of workers. You mentioned manufacturing. Thats the big one.
This is speculation, but I think that outsourcing jobs has actually created a lot of the worker shortages in particular job markets.
My generation, while growing up, was constantly bombarded with this idea that if you did not go to college, then you wont be successful. I think this mentality was partly due to our parents generation seeing those high school level jobs (manufacturing, customer service, technical support, etc) being sent overseas and they wanted to steer their children away from having to look for those types of jobs. An unfortunate biproduct of that panic is that, with everyone going to college, the value of the college degree has fallen. Another consequence is that people, generally, arent interested in going into a skilled labor field (carpenter, welder, electrician, etc.) because they’ve been told over and over again that you need college to be successful. This is CREATING that shortage that proponents of offshoring cite to justify their actions.
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PS: Heres a video that explains the problem better than I can. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h_pp8CHEQ0
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Dear JP
US has created a bubble of its own, not just a furious-attack as Krugman says [from WP on the bubble..the response of the right was a furious attack; basically, it was politically incorrect to raise any question about the glorious Bush boom.] but a piranha syndrome on any one who talks against cap… before the ism is even completed, by US – .com, .gov, .edu, .org, in one voice by the dots that stand disconnected otherwise. US.ppl stands completely alienated. An idea when turned over, through a maze of analysts before considered by the CEO led team of experts at a Camp Goliath or some such resorts the incremental cost of the idea is so prohibitive in comparison to the corresponding benefits, that it is thrown in the dust bin. US has expended itself out. No country in the world can afford US Model.
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