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March 06, 2004
Outsourcing and the Polls
Great post over at Powerline. I don't see Bush's poor poll results as meaningful predictors at this early stage; they're more a function of buzz from the Democratic primaries and the post-war lull. The media has been trumpeting the Democratic platform 24/7 and the polls naturally reflect this. With the drama of the war and September 11th fading, the factors that drove Bush's approval ratings sky-high are missing. The Powerline post focuses on jobs figures and outsourcing:
The current obsession with "outsourcing" is mostly a distraction from what is primarily going on. A free market will naturally locate some jobs in the U.S. and other jobs in India, China, or wherever. But the fundamental reality is that as time goes by, a smaller proportion of the population is needed to work in manufacturing. Democrats' nostalgia for the days when millions of workers lined up with lunch buckets at factory gates won't bring those times back, any more than Republican nostalgia for the family farm will cause our children to try to buy forty acres and go into the farming business.
Since I've maintained something very similar in previous posts and in correspondence with some of the commenters on this forum, the gentleman is obviously right.:) At any rate, great analysis and well worth reading.
- Cassandra
March 6, 2004 at 12:10 PM | Permalink
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Comments
This seems to kind of ignore one of the main points about the current wave of offshoring, which is that *non*-manufacturing jobs can now be done in other countries, due to vast improvements in telecommunications.
A certain level of manufacturing will always be done in the U.S., because of the costs and time delays inherent in long-distance transportation of goods. Bits, on the other hand, are cheap to move, and they travel at the speed of light...
Posted by: David Foster at Mar 7, 2004 5:50:36 PM
Are you talking about IT jobs like programming? Or knowledge type jobs? Or both?
With programming jobs, I agree they are portable, however there is a cost in communication complexity and the early data I'm seeing in the s/w industry seems to suggest this is finding its way into the product in the form of errors.
With service jobs, there's the Dell tech support example, which will be interesting to follow.
With knowledge based IT jobs, I question how portable some of them will be in the long run? I don't know the answer - the communication issue is huge and you have culture issues to overcome. It will be very interesting to see how this develops. I have a feeling there are hidden costs (non-monetary ones) that will surface over time. But we'll see!
Posted by: Cassandra at Mar 7, 2004 8:13:05 PM
