With the current trend towards globalization, more and more jobs are being out-sourced. Are the cheaper goods we are importing worth the job loss to Americans?
I am not sure when this surge of off-shoring really took off but it might have been when Silicon Valley crashed near the end of the 90’s. I use to live out that way when the tech jobs had started to boom and yuppies were making plenty of money, two cars in the driveway and their kids going to private schools. Money was all over the place; American workers were living the good life to the fullest. In 1970, you could live well on $15,000 a year and young engineers just out of college were making twice the national average salary. No one was hurting. You also knew that those material things you desired would come in time through hard work. You did not borrow what you couldn’t afford. You worked and saved for the future. The “me” factor had not taken hold personally or with American companies only interested in the bottom line. Companies were ahead of the curve in innovation and supported its American worker.
FACTS about this decade—1970
Population: 204,879,000
Unemployed in 1970: 4,088,000
National Debt: $382 billion
Average salary: $7,564
Food prices: milk, 33 cents a qt.; bread, 24 cents a loaf; round steak, $1.30 a pound
Life Expectancy: Male, 67.1; Female, 74.8
By the 1990’s the average wage was $13.37 an hour with teacher’s making $39,347 in 1998. Life expectancy had increased with males at 73.1 and females at 79.1. The population was 281,421,906 at the 2000 census.
Lay-offs started around 2000 when the tech market bombed and companies in the Silicon Valley area started to outsource jobs. While paying an average worker $60,000 and up, they could hire someone in India or elsewhere for ten times less. Right now we have an estimated 11.6 million unemployed with the rate at 7.6%. Since 1986, 15 million high paying manufacturing jobs have left this country and jobs continue to disappear to India, Hong Kong, China, you name it.
In a Poll taken in 2004 by Zogby International, over 70% of Americans said that outsourcing jobs was hurting this country and that our government should penalize companies that sent jobs out of the country. A lot of studies have been done that say off shoring jobs has not hurt our economy nor will it hurt innovation.
We outsource here in Lake Worth, saying we can’t afford our own police department. Outsourcing is at every level. The State of Florida did not even hire a Florida marketing firm for “Visit Florida” but a company with a call center out of Kansas City. $35 million of our money went to an out-of-state company last year to promote Florida with the top five executives there making $1.3 million! If you pull up that web site, the only feature for Lake Worth is our beach. Now you can't tell me that the State could not find a Florida company to promote Florida.
Having always hired locally whenever possible, more attention should be paid to hiring/contracting with companies that have their businesses in Lake Worth and this is how you can help support our economy by keeping the dollars here.
Keep Americans working. Outsourcing is fine when the playing field is equal. It isn’t and the only innovation happening here is by American companies and even Local and State governments that are out-sourcing valuable jobs and opportunities, looking at the lowest common denominator rather than thinking about Americans or those workers in their own region first. If there is any innovation in this trend, it belongs to corporate America and the greed factor--we all are feeling the pain.
