The Independent Student Newspaper of St. John's University

The Torch

The Independent Student Newspaper of St. John's University

The Torch

The Independent Student Newspaper of St. John's University

The Torch

U.S. economy spilling overseas

America laments the loss of our manufacturing industry and thatwe don’t make anything anymore. Yet the day after Thanksgivingeveryone flocked to Wal-Mart and spent $1.6 billion on goods madein China, India, Korea and Taiwan. However, it is no longer onlythe manufacturing industry that is being affected. The white-collarjobs that were once immune to outsourcing are now quickly makingtheir way over seas at an alarming rate.

Many critics have been voicing their concerns about the techindustries shifting offshore. Capitalism is great until it benefitsanother country, then Americans whine about a little competition.It isn’t just low-end data processing or cataloging but high endprogramming jobs that are moving overseas.

Suddenly America is waking up to the problem, but it’s alreadytoo late. Now the overpaid, sad-faced programmers are coming out ofthe woodwork to complain. Where were they when the blue-collar guysin manufacturing were making sad faces as the sucking sound pulledtheir overpaid jobs to Central America and Asia? Where were thecoders when government was giving out H-1B Visas to bring moreforeign workers in? Probably sipping a latte and watching theirtech stocks climb with dreams of early retirement dancing in theirheads.

IBM just announced it’s going to lay off 5,000 workers withcompanies like Dell, Texas Instruments, and other tech companiesrapidly moving their companies offshore as well. Indian programmerswill work as low as $6 an hour and probably work twice as hard.American’s can’t even begin to compete with that.

So what do the programmers do? Unionize? That would just maketheir jobs move overseas faster at this point. You can’t unionizeprogrammers anyway; trying to get them to unionize would be aboutas easy as herding cats.

That’s just the way things are though, capitalism responds toconsumer demand. If consumers bought American-made products andstopped buying products made in China and India because they cost afew dollars less, we’d have manufacturing jobs in the Unite States.The tech industry is now mimicking the manufacturing shiftoverseas, and what does this mean for St. John’s students?Obviously it affects computer science majors first and foremost butas the standard of living goes up for other countries ours goesdown, and that will have an effect on everybody looking for acareer.

Outsourcing drastically affects the United States, but whenlooking at the big picture the United States only contains 5percent of the world’s population while accounting for 27 percentof the worlds GNP. With outsourcing the wealth of the United Stateswould be more evenly distributed. The competition will keepAmericans constantly striving to stay ahead therefore benefitingeveryone in the long run.

Let’s face it, we are lazy. The dot com bust came and people whodreamed of getting rich quick simply didn’t have the computerskills to survive in today’s market. That’s why they are losingtheir jobs. It’s time to go back to school and learn some newskills if they want to stay afloat in this market.

The huge problem with outsourcing is in the long run the onlypeople who really get rich are the CEO’s. I believe that Americansneed more of a work ethic and a little competition couldn’t hurt.Even so, it never seems to make a difference because the CEO’s arejust waiting to screw them over.

These corporations are cutting thousands of jobs and moving themoverseas, which means reduced prices for the consumers back homeright?

Instead, it means big bonuses all around for the corporatemanagement team. Competition is good for America, but corporategreed is bad for the entire world.

These corporations aren’t moving into these countries to raisethe standards of living for impoverished people but simply to makean extra buck. This corporate greed is self-destructive. In thelong run, if too many jobs move overseas, who are thesecorporations going to sell their products to? The countries they’rein of course. The United States will be phased out of thepicture.

India and China are each big enough, with populations youngenough to devour the entire economies of North America and Europe.China is communist but that just hides the underlying capitalisticfree-for-all going on behind closed doors. While our factories arereaching 40 years of age, China’s factories are only a few yearsold.

Either American increases penalties and tariffs for corporationsmoving overseas or we face the global economy and everything thatcomes with it. China and India are exactly like the United States.was 40 years ago. They want to prove themselves and they have everyright to do so, even if it is with our own companies.

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