Great. Dumb <img src="/forums/images/graemlins/butwiggle.gif" alt="" />s
>>>*I concede I agree, just dumb. It is a bit like giving the suspected burgler down the street the keys to your house, asking him to keep an eye on things while you are away.
Outsourcing is the result of costs, if it is cheaper to make an item somewhere else rather than here in the USA, someone will do that.
Even governments. Not smart, but I have seen quite a lot of not very smart in government the last few years.
But that pendulum swings, the much lower dollar value is already moving production back to the new 3rd world Nation.
*Us......*EB
It has always been cheaper to make stuff in other countries. It's been that way for most of the 20th century.
Why is it so popular now? And more importantly, why is it it "acceptable" now, rather than a few decades ago?
I think part of it is a lack of national pride, but also it's largely driven by self interest. What started out as self interest of the rich and powerful and corporations has turned to the self interest of the average consumer. Nobody wants to pay what things are really worth. And that's because they no longer can.
This isn't the whole story, because its hard to say what came first...the chicken or the egg, but at some point our dollar became more devalued than most of us realize. If we actually paid for things what they should cost, especially if produced here in the states and here without slave/illegal labor, then things like the "dollar menu" wouldn't exist. Passports would probably cost $500-800, etc. Average everyday items would be many times what they cost now.
Gas is a great example of how our dollar has devalued. We're paying (unfortunately) what we should be paying, because its priced on the world market and as the dollar goes down in value, the price per barrel tends to up, as long as demand is still there. Gas is the one thing that we can't artificially devalue.
The reason we think we should be paying the same per gallon of gas as we did back in 1990 is because we're getting paid the same wages. Many things did not really up in price during the last 18 years, but gas did. And we can see that every single day. Hence the confusion and anger over prices.
So, basically, the only way to keep prices of most household goods low enough to be acceptable and to be able to continue to hide the depreciation of wealth to the average American, things are produced overseas and sold in places like Wal-Mart, allbeit at a lower quality, but at the same or lower nominal price as they cost 10-20 years ago.
It also hides the fact that average wages have actually gone down, when you factor in inflation over the last 30+ years. But the reason they've gone down is because literally millions and millions of jobs that could be held by average Americans, have vaporized during that same period. It's basically a visious cycle that is continuing and will continue until most Americans are living at best, the same life style as their average counterparts in countries that produce most of our goods.
As long as we want to participate in this global economy, Americans will have to realize that their average income/wealth is going to continue to depreciate from now on. And probably pretty rapidly, considering housing wealth is being evaporated overnight and we're now entering another recession under pretty scary circumstances.
The average American does not make enough money to sustain even a meager lifestyle. Almost every single American has some sort of debt, be it car payments or credit cards or outragous home mortgage debt.
The combination of being able to borrow and outsourcing overseas to creat cheaper products has helped keep our "standard of living" up and the perception that we are wealthier than we are.
Which is exactly how the government operates. They borrow about half or more of every dollar they spend...then they outsource much of their services and purchases to the cheapest bidder, including overseas bidders, to make ends meet.
If the government only spent 'earned' income and only sourced American products and labor, tax rates would triple or higher AND services would be dramaticly cut.
But again, both in government and our personal lives, we live with the delusion that we are wealthy.
The quicker we realize that we are not anywhere near wealthy, the quicker we can start to demand change (not Oboma change) in how our government spends money and change in ourselves in how we blow it.
Just to survive, our government literally needs to cut its expenses in half and most of us, need to do the same and start saving money. We also should demand that we not participate in this global economy via government subsidation.
I know most people don't like regulations or rules to force corporations to comply with the best interest of our country. The brainwashing to the contrary over the last 30 years by the neocons has worked wonders to destroy almost every single safeguard put into place since the Great Depression.
But at the very least, our government should not be subsidizing ANY corporation, via tax breaks or whatever, that chooses to outsource overseas. And our government should not be outsourcing it's purchases overseas either.
One of the things that I learned from Ron Paul was that regulation may actually not be the answer. Instead having a true free market where corporations and banks lived and died compltely on their own, might actually serve the best interest of this country in the end. At least it would be done fairly.
Even though we have far less regulation now that we've had for most of the 20th century, there's nothing "free" about this free market. The recent "government backed" bailouts of major investment banks recently is a great example of just what a farce the whole idea of "free capitalism" really is currently.
Nothing is 100% black and white. I can see making a case by case exception on occasion, but unfortunately, it's become the standard policy now, which completely unacceptable.
That's enough out of me for now.
