These Americans Are Training The Chinese Workers Who Will Replace Them
By bgamall4 Follow Sat, 25 Aug 2012, 9:51am 4,038 views 48 comments
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Ruki says
How noble of you. I am not talking constitution. I am talking greed. The company was profitable.
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Hah! I've never been in that sort of situation, but the path is obvious!
1) graciously accept the month as trainer
2) train them injuns to do everything wrong!
3) watch and giggle as they royally eff up the company
4) either accept your old job back or move on, secure in the knowledge that your manager will join you in unemployment shortly.
Wdyt?
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If you ever purchased a Japanese/German car, or anything imported, you too are responsible for sending jobs overseas.
It's called "free trade"
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Ruki says
I would quit immediately. At-will employment is great.
It is sad for anyone to see a job as an asset to hold on to. Getting fired may be the best thing to happen. America is about entrepreneurship. It is not about being complacent with a stable income.
bgamall4 says
I wonder why they are profitable. Perhaps they are doing things right.
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Peter P says
Profitable without outsourcing.
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bgamall4 says
But if outsourcing can bring more profits, that is exactly what they should do.
However, I agree that outsourcing is frequently done for short-sighted reasons. In many case it will even hurt the long-term profitability of a company.
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Peter P: "But if outsourcing can bring more profits, that is exactly what they should do."
Even if it kills your consumer market? Because that is what is happening in America. When that is gone, who do you sell your widgets to? No company exists, or even has a purpose in a vacuum.
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I think companies can outsource, whatever source. Where I think the stupidity lies is the repubs and the coporate dems insistance that free market is some sort of biblical truth that can never be questioned.
You don't just sit around and sing kumbaye when the walls of your economy is crashing down on you. It is not the job of the companies to focus on the greater good-that is dumb. I come from farming stock-you are not going to pay someone more than you have to-the more you have left behind, the more you keep for expenses and as a buffer for a future famine or drought or other unforseen losses.
This policy of allowing free trade by the govt, despite China manipulating its currency and forcing us to compete with people who live in dorms and work seven days a week and go visit their families a few times a year is just insane. Now Nixon of all people put up import tariffs to protect Americans-the majority of them.
In business it is whatever works-you don't run business on an idealogy, but on reality and have to change and adapt to whatever is thrown at you. The reality is free trade has been nasty to the majority of Americans by opening them to competetion against billions of people who are happy to bring in a few dollars a day. If we don't do something-something has to give. Either our currency will collapse or our standard of living will keep getting lower till we match them
Either we choose to live as a first world country or follow the republicans lead and abolish medicare, minimum wage, welfare and social security, massively shrink govt and become like any small third world country. China of all countries protects their business and people-we just rape them over and over and over then then blame the victim.
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Quigley says
The consumer market is global. If jobs are outsourced to China, then Chinese consumers will have more money to buy stuff. They seem to love Apple products.
A true merchant knows better. There ought to be no national boundaries in commerce. Free Market is the truth.
American workers can and should move into other value-adding industries. One can no longer expect to stay with an industry for a lifetime.
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lostand confused says
Time will tell if central planning can withstand the next few black swans. Protectionism harms everyone in the long run.
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Peter P says
The consumer market has always been global-always. American was founded because Christopher Columbus wanted to find a better trade route to the riches of India.
The difference is that throughought history, people/clans/countries fought for their self interest -Business is for porfit-not for a silly idea. Expecting 300 million+ Americans to go join value-adding industries is not going to work-when the majority do not even have college degrees and are getting older.
Look at the recent war with Iraq where we poured over a trillion dollars, not to mention the loss of life and limb . What did we get out of it-except a few companies that profited immensely and one of them Halliburton left our shores and incorporated in Dubai. If this had been a hundred years ago, we would have seized Iraq's oil reserves and used it for our own needs. That is how the world used to work-or at least the successfull kingdoms/countries. Now we spend money on war, so a few big corporations can profit and the majority get nothing.
The same with our entire economy-when these few big corporations profit immensely and the vast majority are left to rot-asked to get new skills-well even new skills don't keep you safe anymore-even the most advanced jobs are being offshored.
If history is any indication, this state of affairs will not last long and people who ask the destitute masses to just move on and kick them to the curb will seem like Marie Antoinette who asked her masses to go eat cake, when they couldn't find bread.
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lostand confused says
It is unrealistic that every person ought to succeed in any possible society. The majority must fail by some definitions. The questions is, how do we handle failures as a society. There must be a safety net or support mechanism so that people can start over.
Either we allow some to be losers or we will all be losers. The so-called wealth gap is NOT a problem in and of itself. We need to see if it is indicative or other systemic issues, but wealth-equality is a sin, not a virtue.
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Peter P says
That argument is just diverting from the issue. Nobody is talking about wealth equality. The whole point is us vs them. When the majority of another country are getting rich at the expense of the majority of our country-then there is something wrong in the status quo. Either adapt or fall down and descend into mass chaos.
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lostand confused says
The world is getting increasingly global. The us versus them thinking may not be applicable anymore.
Inflation here can be kept low because of cheap labor somewhere else. While some workers may be earning less, consumers are also paying less.
This means that one ought to profit from globalization.
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Peter P says
The world has always been global-always. It was different before with empires and much as we might want to believe in the enlightened nature of the new human-I think we have all our basic instincts intact and ready to unleash when things fall. Its who we are and who we have always been as an animal being.
You can fool some people some of the time, some people all of the time but not all people all of the time. Let this mess get worse and when people are mad, try giving them this Marie Antoinette/New Age mumbo jumbo-folks only care about their bellies.
The social programs that the repubs are trying to dismantle are the only thing keeping the seething masses quiet-like they say you can't take something away from somebody who has nothing left to lose.
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The solution is simple. Tie executive total compensation to the median compensation of all employees. Consider outsourced workers as employees. That way executives make only as much money as the employees do.
This will end the race to the bottom and stimulate the economy far more than any government spending could.
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Dan8267 says
LOL! How about group singing of the Internationale before work each morning?
At will employment. Work or quit. Best system in the world.
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Peter P says
The system I proposed is still at will employment, but unlike the status quo it maximizes productivity and minimizes parasitic behavior.
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Ruki says
Well then they better reign in on executive compensation, they can save a lot of money here which is good for the bottom line. One of the issues that is making the US fail is that executive/mgmt compensation has gone out of control in relation to worker compensation. A lot of board of directors are just puppets tactically placed. In theory shareholders can vote them out, but there is a lot of ways to and tricks to make sure that you don't lose control over the majority of shares so that frustrated retail owners can never organize a replacement. Of course the free market - if there are no bailouts - can sort this out and the company will eventually fail, however the problem is that the company itself is nothing else anymore but a vehicle for the executives to extract money until they drained it, if they get a bailout it's rinse and repeat and they make even more and if they fail they move on to the next scheme. There is hardly any ownership or personal involvement anymore if the executives are paid mostly by free stock options and get big golden parachutes so they don't care running the company into the ground. This is one reason why cooperatives have been doing fairly well, where each and every employee is also partly owner of the company. Rainbow grocery is an example of a successful cooperative and there are many more.
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If you are a "smart" person in America here are your options ...
become a doctor, pharmacist/PA, patent agent, or finance-trader.
It's really that simple.
If there isn't a society (or board or what have you) protecting your career, then you need to go balls out and make a killing in equities, futures, or currencies.
Do not believe, for one moment, that an employee-at-will for corporate America, has much career stability, esp when one hits the mid-40s.
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Yes. But executive compensation is a company matter. The government should have no say in it.
Then again, if you choose to work for a company in which the CEO owns less than 10% of stocks...
Let them be fired by Gordon Gekko! :-)
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The government should have no say in it and there should be no bailouts, once the gov (foolishly) goes for a bailout it should consider the company nationalized and it better puts the executives on drastic pay cuts or replace them. Also fraud needs to be persecuted within the existing laws and rule of law should be restored.
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Yes, there should be no bailouts.
But the very concept of too-big-to-fail implies that the company has leverage (pun intended).
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Peter P says
Aaah but it does. The corporate lobbysists have gotten together and refuse to let the owners-aka shareholders- to set executive compensation.
The recent Dodd -FRank regulations allow voting on executive pay-but it is non binding. LOL!!
So if you have a company, you and your partners don't get to set the pay for the executives-the govt has stripped that right away from you. Instead these corporate lobbysists-which include Paul Ryan's wife- have successfully prevented you from exercising that right and the executives set the pay for themselves.
Our country, corruption has been legalized and the system itself is rigged-or that is how an increasing number of people feel. Not good on a long term basis for any country.
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I hear you. If you want a job, you may as well work for a company in which the major shareholder runs the show. It has other complications though (e.g. ego?), but this is not a perfect world.
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lostand confused says
Corruption is invariably a symptom of concentrated power.
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Peter P says
With that logic, Henry Ford should never have paid his workers so much. It is amazing how stupid American business has become. And, btw, it has become that way because of the stock churning in the UK Square Mile. That is where all this started.
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Ruki says
Henry Ford would have thought it was stupid. But what did he know Ruki. You're the MAN!!
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Ruki says
You didn't look at the videos did you. You are quite likely incapable of learning if you couldn't learn from those videos, Ruki. Here is the deal. You are afraid to know the truth. It would crumble your world view and you can't let that happen.
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Ruki says
Only because that is the way it is done in the UK, where short term profits trump long term strategy. Why do you think so many companies want to go private? It is because they know the system is rotten to the core. It is not the American way, but it is how the UK City of London did it. It is rigorous and the stock gets killed if you try to do long term. Better to not have public stock.
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Rin says
sorry but surgeries have also been sent overseas... they call it "medical tourism".
You could add Accountants, CPAs but the Obama administration along with Volker are pushing for the USA to adopt IFRS international accounting standards.. so if that happens, you will see those functions sent overseas since the would be allowed per Obama to perform that function... spread the wealth.
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If we want to stop this outsourcing garbage the most effective way of doing it is to remove subsidies and tax preferences for outsourcing companies, as well as react to the subsidization of our overseas competitors. If businesses had to absorb the full market impact of sending jobs overseas, many wouldn't. Energy prices alone would keep a lot of jobs inside our borders. Shipping your product from China and paying for that shipping, with tax corrections made for China's subsization of shipping, would drive up costs and paying American minimum wage or even a little more, would seem the cheaper of two options. Some jobs, mostly jobs that don't require movement of physical matter, are gone for good, but the jobs that can be kept should make up for what was lost and help restore America's competitiveness.
Unfortunately there is no political will for this, as those that profit from offshoring, like Bane's investors, own our government.
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futuresmc says
We got into this mess partly due from our own over-regulations. Its about time to undue those same regulations to put jobs back into the US.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20123670-503544/steve-jobs-obamas-focus-on-excuses-infuriated-him/
Jobs told Obama that American regulations make it more difficult for Apple to build its products cheaply in the United States compared to the cost of building them in China. Chinese health and safety standards are more lax than the United States.
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bgamall4 says
Did he pay his employees enough to buy the product? Or did he make the product affordable enough for everyone? Reflect on this.
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If by "regulations" we mean the inability to poison customers or work employees to death for peanuts, I dunno. The countries we are "competing" with don't worry about such "regulations." To compete with them would mean rolling back over 100 years of worker's rights. Like weekends. And I don't understand why the word protectionism is treated like a cuss word. The nations we are competing with are extremely protectionistic when it comes to getting and keeping jobs for their people. The notion some companies have, that a third world consumer base earning these "competitive" third world salaries is going to somehow make up for the loss of the American middle class seems crazy to me - like bad math. Besides, third world countries are jingoistic as all get-out, and have their own local brands and preferences. Look at the steps India just took to protect their mom-and-pop retailers.
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barbaraG says
This was the idea that most contributed to the the global economic slow down we are in. Companies were sold the idea that they could outsource jobs willy nilly, and once the the third world nations receiving those jobs developed a significant middle class, they would buy products and American workers and consumers could be tossed aside like an empty beer can. Unfortunately, they never took into account that just because the GDP of these nations would grow didn't mean a middle class of any scope would form or that they'd be willing to buy, buy, buy at the same volume as Westerners.
Now, the west can't buy any more, and the developing world's oligarchs are hoarding their wealth.
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thomaswong.1986 says
Something I am sure China is proud of. Do you really think before you post, Wong?
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futuresmc says
The United States is the golden goose of world consumer prosperity. This failure to understand that is devastating to world economy. The Americans buy the excess production of the world.
Please tell me how the Chinese will ever do that when the citizens have been warned that if they fall behind on their credit card payments they could be sent to jail!
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bgamall4 says
And their organs harvested.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4921116.stm
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Raw says
There's no such thing as a "German" or "Japanese" car. Paul Krugman even stated that this is past outsourcing. Companies have no real allegiance to a country. They care about making profits for their shareholders and selling a good/service to customers.
Is everything from a Japanese company made in Japan? Nope. Nissan, Toyota, Hyundai, Honda etc have made cars in the USA for decades now. VW bugs were made (old style) in Mexico long after they were imported into the USA.
Is everything that Ford, GM and Chrystler makes made in the USA? The Nummi plant in CA made the Chevy Prism which was the same as the Toyota Corolla...just as the Pontiac Vibe is the same as the Toyota Matrix. Geo metro was a suski swift, geo tracker was a susuki vivitari etc
Often times names are slapped on products because where they really came from would not sell as well. Chevy's are sold in Australia as Holden because they were larger there just as in the UK it would be under Vauxhall and in mainland Europe as a Opel.
barbaraG says
Because if we start protectionism then others start and that frankly is how world war two eventually occured. Back then we were a net creditor nation, now we are a net debtor nation. If you owe people/organizations/things money the last thing you want to do is tick them off!
If you think that other countries protect their local brands they generally don't. Most people in China rather work for foreign companies for some of the reason of which you said. Who is more likely to give overtime, vacation and sick time? There's a good reason why there's so many knock off brands in China. The names are known. Heck I saw Pabts Blue Ribbon (cue the Blue Velvet reference) sold in China. Why? It's cheap, it's american and it really won't get them drunk that fast.
There's countless small stores all across Asia. It's sad really as try to bargain with people and sales aren't always there.
Much of the US media, US sports, US culture pretty much flows overseas. After soccer it is basketball being the #2 sport on the planet. The movies, music and of course computer technology flows the same. Heck Buick is considered a luxury car in china (well Caddy only entered in 2008 so that's a fair reason why)
bgamall4 says
Well considering how bankruptcy laws changed in the USA in 2005 that isn't that much further off. You have to plead in front of a judge and prove you are worthy of filing versus the past which was just cutting a lawyer a check for $300 and some paper work.
Much of the demand in the USA was based on two factors that came together
1) The relaxation of war time restrictions on growth
2) Baby boomers. When tens of millions of people become the same ages at the same time it has a amplified ramification
The problem now is frankly nearly everyone has everything they kinda need. Who honestly doesn't have a tv in the usa, access to running water, electricity, a computer, some form of transportation (public or a car) etc. There are no killer apps these days.
Sure there's remote areas of the country that might not but that simply gives an incentive to move. It's not like there's some massive city in the middle of the country of tens of millions of people with no access to anything.
Outside of food and energy Americans have stopped shopping. Sure there's some on the internet but if you look up some retailers we have a number that are clearly dying. I predict within 18 months Radio Shack, Best Buy and Hewlett Packard will file for bankruptcy. If you look at best buy what specifically is there to buy that someone does not already have? What is the repeat business if software, music and movies are data?