Stop Offshoring
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
A friend at Oracle is losing her job because the company is offshoring her department to India. Tell me again, how does moving jobs offshore help Americans?
Proponents of offshoring claim that, by offshoring, American companies are creating more global consumers who will buy their products, resulting in increased sales. That, coupled with cost savings from hiring foreign workers, will result in more profitable companies that will be able to hire more American workers. I see two major fallacies with that argument: (1) what makes these offshoring supporters believe that a consumer in India will choose to buy from an American company versus a local company, and (2) if companies believe they benefit from offshoring, what incentive do they have for hiring more American workers when they need to hire additional employees?
To illustrate the foolishness of buying into their argument, I make the analogy between American companies and a family. As a parent on a tight budget, would you ever choose to neglect your own children in favor of feeding another child because it is cheaper to do so? If your conscience allows you to do so (mine definitely WOULDN'T), then once you earn more money, why would you would use that to feed your children when you could feed more other children beause they cost less to support? And would you rationalize your insensitive actions by saying that the other children will in turn take care of your own children whom you neglected?
It may sound like an absurd argument to some, but is it really? The difference between the family and American companies is that a family conjures more and stronger emotions than a company would. But would you ever accuse parents of being prejudiced when they choose to help their own children at the expense of someone else's? Yet those are the same accusations that offshoring proponents fling when they accuse opponents of being xenophobic (which seems to be a popular argument they like to use). We're not xenophobic -- we just happen to believe that it's good to show LOYALTY and PATRIOTISM to fellow Americans, just as it's expected that a parent shows loyalty to his or her children. Anyone who attacks those principles must not believe in them... or lack a better argument.
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