On ABC news last night they hit on something that I've been seeing for a while now given all this offshore job loss...
They were talking about the recovery of the economy and used the example of a shoe store. It went something like this...
For months people have been walking by the shoe store thinking about buying a new pair of shoes, but it wasn't until about 3 months ago that we actually went and bought the shoes.
As more people buy new shoes that will require the shoe makers to make, well, more shoes. Which means that more people will be needed to work in the factories to make the shoes. Which means that more people will be needed to drive the trucks to delivery the shoes. Then more people will be needed to sell the shoes in the stores, etc.
The problem is that the shoes aren't made in the US.
They quoted a statistic that manufacturing is about 13% of our economy. We're fast becoming a service based economy. The problem with that right now is as a writer from "Baseline" magazine said is if manufacturers continue to go overseas with the work that they do have "...who is going to buy their [products] -- the low wage factory workers overseas, or the unemployed factory workers here at home?"
What I see is all these companies in such a rush to save money and do things as cheaply as possible. Which may be good for the company in the short term, but in the long run is very bad for the economy that makes that company possible, and if the economy is bad here then well the company can't continue to survive in this country. So then the choice becomes lose your job or move to India, and then once more and more people continue to leave then what does that do to this country?
At the rate we're going we may very well end up as a company that doesn't make anything. Imagine going to buy a new car, and not one car, not one is made here. The only thing that we do is sell the car.
I'm a white collar worker, but I understand that selling something that someone else made isn't as profitable as selling something that you made. So the blue collar people around the country are what drive the economy, and God love 'em for continuing to do so even with management trying to bleed 'em dry. I mean I work in IT doing supply chain. What's the point of a system that schedules production and distribution if we don't have any plants?
The scary thing is that this offshoring crap effecting both bluecollar and whitecollar workers.
It's even more freightening to see that now it's not just the businesses that are screwing us, but the government as well.
I think that everyone, who likes living and working in the U.S., should be writing their reps and telling them this is a bad idea.
Naunga