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Exporting Jobs - A good thing or a bad thing for the United States?by Robert ParkerDisappearing jobsIncreasingly, jobs which supported the American middle class are being lost or transferred to other countries. The goods and services produced by the workers of other countries are then being sold back to America, the world's largest economy. As the Presidential election of 2004 approaches, the loss of these jobs is rapidly becoming a major issue.
Keeping businesses profitableGenerally, Democrats will portray the Bush administration as a tool of big business, and big business thrives on keeping expenses down. They argue that in the modern era, the comparative advantages of different countries, that made free trade advantageous for all, have disappeared due to globalization. With resources, education, easy international flow of capital, etc, more or less available to most countries, the argument is that all parties are more or less in the same position, and therefore can only cannibalize each other through lower and lower labor costs.
Reaping the results of past policies?Strong advocates of free trade and free enterprise, however, argue that labor policies of the past have actually created the situation which is driving these jobs offshore. They argue that the cost of production has risen dramatically because of such government-sponsored developments as the Americans with Disabilities Act, OSHA, the EPA, the Endangered Species Act and many others, while foreign countries are under no such constraints. The reduced costs of doing business in these other countries allows them to produce goods and services much more cheaply than in America, and thus sell them much more cheaply in America. For many years, the perceived lower quality of these goods and services was seen as a deterrent, but that has changed.
Increasingly educated global work forceThe global work force, particularly in India and China, has become much more educated and skilled than in the past, and now produce goods and services which in many cases meet or exceed past American standards, meanwhile doing at a fraction of the cost. Proponents of free trade also argue that many of these jobs are going to Europe and Canada, where wages are not significantly lower than in America, and if low wages were the only factor, lesser skilled jobs would be going to such poor countries as Ethiopia or Rwanda. In the longer run, they argue, market dynamics will stabilize the situation.
Where the impact fallsNone of these arguments, however, is of much comfort to the number of Americans who have lost their former good-paying jobs to some other country, and who may for a variety of reasons be unable to switch careers or be retrained in time to sustain their former lifestyle. They will be a key voting block in the coming election, and pressure is mounting in some quarters for legislation or revised trade agreements, bans, protectionism or other measures.
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