This blog contains posts and comments written by students in Dr. Tufte's economics classes at Southern Utah University.
2/28/2007
U.S. Compaies Exporting Jobs to Foreign Companies
I recently read an article in USA Today, about companies that have started in the United States and have subsuquently moved their operations to foreign countries to take advantage of the cheap labor. I can understand from a managers perspective the advantages of the having low costs labor producing the parts and doing the services for a fraction of the costs that U.S. employees cost, but at the same time I have a problem with the fact that many jobs that could be done by U.S. citizens are being given to foreign workers. I do not have a solution to what I consider a problem. It is a fact that in most cases, U.S. employees expect more money for their time and services than foreign workers do. I do not think that that can be changed. So therefore, I don’t know what to suggest. Does anyone else have a problem with U.S. companies exporting jobs to other countries? If so, what can be done to prevent U.S. companies from exporting the jobs?
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3 comments:
-1 on Jacob for grammatical errors.
This is a hard situation to get hold of sometimes. The important thing to remember is that it isn't about jobs that Americans could do that are being shipped overseas, rather it is about jobs that foreigners can't do that Americans can. If those didn't exist, the export of jobs would reduce wages quite a bit - people would recognize that they are losing their main chance. But, that is precisely what is not happening.
I don't think that I consider this the problem that you do. If the global economy is going to thrive, it will need to be based on finding the most efficient way to accomplish tasks. If that means exporting jobs, I don't have a problem with that. It will force Americans to increase their skill levels and/or find better, more efficient ways to do the work. This could be accomplished through capital investments, increased productivity, or probably a lot of other ways. Americans do expect to be compensated in ways that support their standard of living. That can be a positive thing if Americans are also willing, in turn, to increase their own skill levels or productivity.
I agree with these two earlier posts. We shouldn’t try to force a company to do something inefficiently. We as Americans have skills and talents that other countries don’t, and that’s why there are still jobs here in America.
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