Obama And Romney Are Wrong: Outsourcing Is Actually America At Its Best

Forbes ^ | 07/28/2012 | Harry Binswanger

[SeekAndFind]

Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are currently fighting over who is the more patriotic. Obama slams Romney for having outsourced jobs to China during his Bain Capital days. Romney punches back by labeling Obama “Outsourcer in Chief.” The latest is that both John Boehner and Harry Reid are voicing outrage over America’s made-in-China Olympic uniforms. “Burn them!” thunders Reid.

Republicans and Democrats strangely agree that outsourcing is unpatriotic, and that the moral and patriotic thing to do is to “Hire American” and “Buy American.”

Well, no. Not in a thousand years. The fear of outsourcing and international trade is economic nonsense and moral blindness. More than that: this anti-profit attitude is un-American.

Despite the ongoing Europeanization of America, America still symbolizes the land of freedom, entrepreneurship, profit-making, above all, individualism.

But collectivism is the premise of “Hire/Buy American”: we are to view ourselves and others not as individuals, but as units of a nation. Businesses are urged to pay more in labor costs, simply to hire workers who are American; consumers are urged to forgo Walmart’s low prices, pay more, simply because the pricier goods were made by “our guys.” This is not rational patriotism, it is not Americanism, it's primitive tribalism.

American individualism means making buying decisions on the basis of economic merit, giving no regard to the nationality or race of the seller. Let’s not hide behind patriotic-sounding slogans. Let’s name things straight for a change: giving preference to American sellers over foreign sellers is the same mindless injustice as giving preference to sellers who are white over those who are black.

Economic nationalism is as morally outrageous as racism. Buying on the basis of nationality or race is the same collectivist evil: judging men and their products by the group from which they come, not by merit.

[Olog-hai]

I think we can agree on that, at least. Now as for paying heed to what he said, I don’t know where you stand yet.

[1rudeboy]

One of the alternatives is to make certain that the government provides jobs for people who turn screws. What can possibly go wrong?

[sergeantdave]

Don’t be pugnacious. I heard that the last person who saw you naked turned into a pillar of salt, and that was just after Cain passed on.

[1rudeboy]

No. Government is making that dream a reality. As soon as you come to accept that fact, you won't cast-about for bogeymen.

[1rudeboy]

I have an idea (channeling Milton Friedman): why don’t we have our unemployed workers rebuild our roads using only hand tools?

[mjp]

average real wage rates = average money wage rates/average prices.

When prices are lower due to lower prices for foreign goods, average real wage rates increase and the buying power of the average wage earner increases. When average real wages increase the standard of living for the average wage earner increases.

[1rudeboy]

Improve my act? How do you propose the that the government makes sure that blue-collar workers have jobs?

[DoughtyOne]

The problem is that this government has the highest corporate tax rates on Earth and is hostile to investment... what did they think would happen?

I shortchanged you with regard to this point. I honestly agree that this is an additional insidious aspect of why jobs moved off-shore.

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks for the response Olog-hai. I agree with your take on the beginnings of adventurism in our own hemisphere.

Folks are sleep-walking into a buz-saw with regard to China.

I can sure identify with people who saw Hitler for what he was in the mid 1930s.

If you follow the logic trail around here, you note that the people we have right here on this forum would have been arguing that trade with Germany would have prevented WWII.

[jimfree]

The correct term is “right sourcing”. Few use it. But if it costs me $4 per unit to source something from Singapore and $8 to source it from Kansas with the same availability and quality, what would you do?

Now many companies have experimented with foreign sourcing and could not get the availability and quality required for their businesses. They either switched back to the US or the went out of business.

Thomas Sowell is my favorite authority on outsourcing. This is just one of his many comments on the topic.

http://townhall.com/columnists/thomassowell/2004/03/16/outsourcing/page/full/

[WilliamofCarmichael]

nice segue opportunity for me.. I just finished sourcing most of this..

"The state-owned Chinese mining group Chinalco . . . in the remote Central Highlands . . . will be ruinous to the environment, displace ethnic minority populations and threaten national security with an influx of Chinese workers and economic leverage," warned General Giap and other opponents of the Chinese operations. Here That was a couple of years ago now VN vis-a-vis China is more like.. Anti-Chinese protests in Vietnam as South China Sea tensions rise

Yes, I believe that there will be war. I remember W.W.II but I do not remember the 1930s. However I know we had U.S. businesses experiencing "free trade" in the 1930s; for example, prominent Democrat W. Averell Harriman and many U.S. corporations. I bet there was a lot of praise for that German economy.

No appoligies for my pessimism.. I remember every Chi-Com attrocity against the Chinese people.. at least the ones that were reported here at the time. The Party is no good.

[DoughtyOne]

The results you cite are true, but what is the reasoning?  Increased corporate profits.  As another posted stated, enhanced with tax incentives too.

China is growing because it’s population is producing value.  U. S. employees were still producing value when the decision was made to sell them out and move a massive body of our tax base off-shore.

The US is declining because we are producing less value - the reason?  Our popular culture and leadership have become shallow and tribal.  If you move a massive amount of your manufacturing base off-shore, it's definitely going to spark value in the nation where those jobs go.  And that value will be missing from your own soil.

I'm not immune to the claim there are some serious problems with our own culture and leadership, but I don't think that's the full cause of what took place.  I will say that I thought it was a massive betrayal of values to send fellow citizen's jobs, paychecks, and ability to pay their mortgages outside our borders.

This caused tens of millions of U. S. citizens to drop to a razor thin margin of avoidance when it came to defaulting on their credit obligations.  Add in the additional problems with credit drying up around 2008, and the whole house of cards was going down.  There was no longer any redundancy.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

RE: "If you follow the logic trail around here, you note that the people we have right here on this forum would have been arguing that trade with Germany would have prevented WWII."

You do not have to go that far back.. I remember the liberals and the internationalist Rockefeller Republicans demanding that we help build the Soviet economy.

If we refuse to help the Soviets we'll be playing into the hands of the hard-liners in the Kremlin, there will be war, and it will be our fault.

In those days there were enough left from the Greatest Generation who knew better and they said, No.

[DoughtyOne]

I do believe the party still rules with an Iron fist. I think people are kidding themselves if they think it doesn't.

Here in the U. S. we're seeing the first moves to use the military against citizens, with a full division now assigned to duty inside the U. S.

If our government is willing to do that because it's so afraid of us, what must China's government be willing to do?

And yet, folks are convinced that China's military machine is completely innocent, or about to dissolve at some magical point in time just ahead. Sorry, I never had a magical stick-pony when growing up, so I'm not inclined to believe in pipe dreams now.

You mentioned Chinese government atrocities against their own people. Here's one I remember. I also remember three years later when we implemented a new policy to offshore as many jobs to China as we could. That was the leadership's punishment for running people over with tanks and mowing them down with military weapons.

WilliamOfCarmichael, thank you for the post. It's nice to know some folks are still able to learn from history.

We sure were great friends to the Chinese who died in 1989. We sold them out sooner than a wife we caught in the home bedroom with ten fellas.

[DoughtyOne]

Why doesn’t that shock me? I do remember the trouble Reagan ran into trying to take out the U.S.S.R. It’s amazing the the sell-outs within isn’t it.

[WilliamofCarmichael]

EXTRA! EXTRA! China set to replace U.S. as the world's super power by next Wednesday afternoon.. oops er, there will be a little delay.

Uh.. we free traders thought they all had achieved middle class status with bulging pockets of money crazy to buy our products -- that is if the government will let us have access to the domestic economy. Oh well..

China uses wealth in a new kind of colonialism

Chi-Com plans are to build 225 cities each to hold one million people.. and boy! are they needed.. but can the commies do it? Personally I hope not. The Party is no good.

With a population of about 1.3 billion and maybe 400 million doing relatively well -- including Party and princeling billionaires and millionaires -- there remains hundreds of millions in poverty.

An estimated 125 million living on less than a dollar of day (yuans?), there are at least 220 million in a floating population of migrant workers.. 600 million rural poor constantly being screwed by the urban folks and the local Party officials. This may take another month or two.

[reardensteel]

The cheese moved, but Americans were no longer capable of finding it.