Outsourcing: Short Term Appeal, Long-term Decay

What are the long-term ramifications of outsourcing? As the wage and price inflation trend continues beyond U.S. borders, corporations that once used outsourcing to increase competitiveness will find themselves no better off abroad than at home. Meanwhile, America has lost 3 million manufacturing jobs in the past 10 years to foreign markets and our nation has become one of rampant poverty, indebtedness, and low-paying service work.

We have exported our jobs and industrial infrastructure and have thus begun the process of building up the economies of competing nations at a cost to our own. This study indicates that the U.S. will now build up those foreign economies at an increasing rate.

Consider how American business in China has advanced that nation. If we want to do business in China, Chinese technology transfer requirements force the U.S. to hand over valuable American-developed technology.

Outsourcing does not have to be inevitable. What is inevitable is that as the costs of overseas production continue to increase, America will no longer have an excuse to outsource.

Meanwhile we will find that the short-term cost-savings has created a thriving competitor that not only is as capable and innovative as we are, but also now controls the key factors of production, profits, and tax revenue that we so generously transferred to them. We are left with a past taste for high living with no new means to create it.

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