[quote=carlsbadworker]eavesdropper, two more viewpoints for you to consider.

1. Yes, in some of these countries, people may not have a “choice” in life. But I think that’s exactly the reason that American have no reasons to bitch about things. We have so many choices available to us to improve our lots, that the rest of the world could only dream about.[/quote]

Agreed, carlsbad. As mentioned in my post, we have a good thing here in America. That being said, I’d like to clarify that it didn’t come this way, wrapped in pretty ribbons. Millions of people have died in the process of creating it, and then defending it, some in the wrong, some right.

I agree with your point that our status as Americans does not make us special, or confer exclusive privileges on our citizens. Too many Americans focus solely on what they don’t have, and appear to be laboring under the delusion that no bad fortune should ever be permitted to befall them. They take what we have for granted, and feel no responsibility to defend it and maintain it for subsequent generations.

This is why I’m so concerned about the degree to which offshoring jobs has increased. No matter what you may think, these jobs aren’t being replaced, and they never have been in any meaningful amount. We’ve reached the point where virtually all jobs are being offshored: unskilled and skilled. Assembly line workers, administrative personnel, engineers, designers, IT personnel, lawyers, executive staff. Most of these are not simply location changes: this is not an employee job transfer. The US employee stays here while his job is sent to another country, and someone there is hired, typically at anywhere from 3% to 30% of the cost of the US employee. If this trend continues unabated, where will American citizens obtain income? Even if you did away with ALL forms of entitlement programs, how will the US pay for military, local law enforcement, disease control, natural disaster recovery, water purification, power generation, and other basic life support operations without adequate revenue from payroll taxes?

Make no mistake: unchecked offshoring of jobs poses a significant danger to the stability of this nation.

[quote=carlsbadworker] 2. Yes, the corporations might be screwing US tax payers, but maximizing profits is what corporations do. But that standard, how much more screwed are the foreigners, where US corporations went there, paying under “50 cents an hour” , lowering “environmental standard” (which is just a nice way of saying exploiting their natural resources and killing people over long term via pollution), and dispatching the majority of the earning as profits, which are owned mainly by US citizens through their pensions and 401Ks, etc. As for Chinese trade surplus in US, they are only allowed to buy the worthless treasury notes that might actually default this summer (look at how many times the Congress has blocked Chinese from purchasing US companies/resources citing national security).[/quote]

I believe that my post included my awareness that the raison d’etre for corporations is the maximizing of profits. During my time in B-school (admittedly, some decades ago), a lot of attention was given to the characteristics of well-run successful companies vs. the not-so-well-run ones, and the methods and means by which a company generated profits were discussed frequently. Mass offshoring of jobs? Not so much. If you represented yourself as an American corporation, and took advantage of American opportunities such as tax exemptions and subsidies, you kept a fair amount of jobs in America.

I believe in capitalism, and I believe in a company’s right to pursue profits where they can be legally obtained. There’s not a company out there that I blame for offshoring jobs, even though I may not agree with their decision to do so. As you say, “life is full of shits”. However, I can, and I do, condemn every corporation that has permanently taken jobs offshore while wrapping themselves in the American flag and claiming identity as an “American company”. Those who have taken every possible exemption on their tax returns, and every possible rebate or subsidy. Those who lobbied for millions more in taxpayer subsidies to keep the last 500 factory jobs from moving overseas, and then moved them anyway a year after receiving the funds. Those who continue to take lucrative defense contracts (using those to prove their “patriotism” in advertising), even though they have plans on the books to permanently move their shipyards overseas.

There are profits, and then there’s greed. It’s not difficult to distinguish between them. And the greed of many of these “American” corporations is putting the security of the United States into jeopardy. You are free to make a profit. You are not free to rob and rape us while you are doing so.

If all of the jobs end up overseas, we have ourselves to blame. For not paying attention and not educating ourselves. For voting in the wrong people – not heeding the warnings of the few honest ones, but continuing to be charmed by the cheats and liars in Congress and the White House. Depending on the strength and will of the people, we’ll either survive or we won’t. But I’ll be damned if I’ll let any corporation, that is – during this most critical time in the existence of the United States – currently engaged in offshoring, convince me that they’re an “American” company. That’s just way more shit than I can handle in this life.