Where does it end?

[Lyion]

Another company has canned a gaggle of US employees to move overseas for pennies on the dollar.

http://www.engadget.com/2007/04/21/leno ... -overseas/

These are not manufacturing jobs, but many engineering and Comp Sci positions.

I'm glad the global economy is allowing so many more companies to lower costs by shipping work overseas, but where is the balance for cost of living and American jobs?

[ClakarEQ]

Why would you be looking for balance? This is about shareholder value, not balance or the saving of America or the job base here.

To offset the practice you'd have to put extra costs on products being sent back in to the US and for tech jobs, you often times don't deal in tangeable product to "tax".

I don't agree with this statment though:

I'm glad the global economy is allowing so many more companies to lower costs by shipping work overseas,

This in of itself is the root of the problem IMHO. It began a downward spiral that I see no end to for possibly years to come

[Phlegm]

Lenovo is a chinese company so I don't think they care much about the US workers.

[Lyion]

Why would you be looking for balance? This is about shareholder value, not balance or the saving of America or the job base here.

To offset the practice you'd have to put extra costs on products being sent back in to the US and for tech jobs, you often times don't deal in tangeable product to "tax".

I'm looking for balance because I kind of like having a middle class.

I have no problem with adjustments to countries that have disparate employment and living costs.

Most of these companies do a lot of business with other US based companies and the government. It's easy to put in safeguards so that taxpayer dollars are not going to support Chinese and Indian engineers doing jobs for our government.

I'm sorry, I don't agree with Gordon Gecko. Greed and the bottom line are not the be all end all.

[ClakarEQ]

Lenovo is a chinese company so I don't think they care much about the US workers.

But it was IBM so a lot of US folks work for them.

Lyion, don't mistake that I am "pro" outsourcing. I'm very much against it as you could probably guess but I'm responding with what the decision makers would say if you ask them.

We have to either tax imports, refuse to work with countries that don't have at least 25% of the benefits our workforce must have (i.e. OSHA, and the like), or "Country XYZ" has to have a labor revolution and unionize (sorry to say but unions in other countries could be a potential BIG BOON for us), or some other option (I'd like to hear the opinions though).

Our country is not competative when it comes to labor and most manufactureing. I don't see how we will ever get out of this hole.

EDIT

Greed and the bottom line is the end all be all of every American company today or future. Profit is all that matters so whatever it takes, whatever the costs or sacrifice, they are all moot to profit.

[Lyion]

To be honest, manufacturing is pretty much gone. That war is over.

The problem is with cheap shipping, massive broadband, and ease of regulation, the white collar jobs are also moving. This is somewhat acceptable with first world, free nations, but it is unacceptable when competing with third world and disparate countries whose cost of living is less per month than our FICA tax.

I am somewhat libertarian with regards to things in this country that do not effect others. However, we need safeguards in place to ensure we do not lose our technical, academic, and engineering white collar positions due to corporate greed and lax regulations that do nothing for America except raise companies stock.

We need to do away with the H1B and replace it with something 10 times more expensive and less attractive. We need to ensure that we have restrictions in place that if companies that have billion dollar government contracts in place get real audits to ensure they are employing US workers, and not Indians or Russians.

This has nothing to do with Unions, it has to do with fair competition. Competing with other American engineers who have similar costs of living is fine. Competing with Indians who can easily live on 150 dollars a month is not possible and is going to bleed our American Middle class. This needs to be addressed by the government and voters, since corporations are only beholden to the almighty dollar.

[Tossica]

good luck getting anyone to listen to you.

[ClakarEQ]

I hear you and agree to a point. Ultimately though one of these has to take place

1) We reduce our pay base to compete with oversea's pay (I don't ever see this happening)

2) We tax imports of goods AND services to make it less attractive

3) Other nations get closer to the "par" we have regarding your typical working class US citizen (i.e unionize, but even then it won't be par for our middle class)

I know you know that we've been bleeding for some time and this is not going to change until enough working class (middle class) folks stand up and do something about it. Even then it will be too late as the big companies are going to lobby against that and potentially go so far as to relocate outside our country. I don't have names but I am aware of several companies that are and have done this very thing.

My point to unions wasn't in regards to here but a-far. If other nations unionize their work force they will have some method of power. The reason the guy in India lives off 150.00 is because he has no choice and this is probably a good life for him. I bet he has no benefits though, probably works like a dog for more than 40 hours a week, etc. I don't think unions are the "answer" but I do think the lack of them hurt us in the end because we have to deal with them here (and I think the premise of unions is good, just unions, like all powerfull organizations, get corrupted over time).

We could go on and on and on though.

Don't expect anything to change soon though. As Willie Nelson said, get your kids to be Dr's and lawyers and such (although a truck driver probably wouldn't be all bad either LOL).

[Eziekial]

Or we could start trimming down all the unnecessary rules and regulations that are unfair to US companies. Sarbane-Oxley should be the first on the chopping block.

[Tossica]

Yeah, minimum wage and child labor laws need to go too!

[Eziekial]

Exactly. Talk about stupid laws.