America: Top Dog or Underdog?
Fasten your seatbelts ladies and gentlemen because I’m about to talk you on a field trip that will brush the dust particles off of your brain cells and make you see America like you’ve never seen it before. Your mind will be blown with the statements made by the two authors Barbara Ehrenreich and Fareed Zakaria. This is about to be the most fascinating adventure of your life. Outsourcing, international relations, and foreign policy all combined into one paper. Barbara Ehrenreich’s article “Your Local News--Dateline Delhi” explains the economic pressures that America is facing such as outsourcing. Fareed Zakaria takes on the global effects of outsourcing in his article “The Rise of the Rest” in which he
…show more content…
Ehrenreich is one of the many Americans that are against the idea of our nation helping others. She thinks that outsourcing is weakening America on the whole. Ehrenreich’s thesis is, after all, is that this obsession with capitalism has depleted our nationalism; and America has become so obsessed with helping others that we do not take time to help our own “failing” country. Many people may compare outsourcing to hashtags or selfies, a waste of time and pointless. Also, people may say that outsourcing hit America in a huge tidal wave that is now uncontrollable. Ehrenreich exemplifies this when she writes,”I should’ve seen it coming. In the eighties, US companies began outsourcing the manufacturing of everything from garments to steel, leaving whole cities to die” (609). Basically, Ehrenreich is saying that if outsourcing ruined us then, it will ruin us now; but clearly outsourcing has not ruined us that much because, of all of the jobs that we have outsourced in the last decade, we’re still standing strong. Zakaria contradicts this by saying,”Over the past twenty years, as globalization and outsourcing have accelerated dramatically, America’s growth rate has averaged just over 3 percent” (619). We’ve outsourced all of these jobs and yet our population has grown. The fact that we’re giving opportunities to other countries has not taken
The threat of outsourcing makes it increasingly difficult for unions to organize workers. Two million jobs in the more heavily unionized manufacturing jobs have been lost to China. Outsourcing causes unions to not only lose members, but makes it tougher for unions to organize new members. In 57% of all union drives, employers threaten to move factories if workers unionize, a threat that is very real (Elk, 2010). Corporations have done more to hurt labor than labor has done to hurt itself. The most obvious threat that comes from outsourcing is the diminishing of jobs overall by transferring jobs from the U.S. to overseas.
In that context, the increasing of outsourcing in the US is inevitable. The 2016 presidential candidates mentions about the negative effect of outsourcing to the US due to exporting of jobs to over-sea vendors. The outsourcing opponents claim that outsourcing is having a negative effect on the American economy, as one problem is solved by creating another problem. The jobs were taken away from the US, double the unemployment ratio and seriously impact to Americans, especially the disability.
Then Friedman discuss with an Indian entrepreneur the impact of outsourcing on America and the way he view globalization as a two way traffic, where not only one nation is affected by this change. Then he talks to another organization of women’s
International relations is a topic that is constantly changing and can be very fragile. In the article, “Your Local News- Dateline Delhi” Barbara Ehrenreich, a respected journalist, shares her personal insights into the outsourcing of American jobs to foreign lands. Ehrenreich’s cynical attitude, use of dry humor, and rhetorical questions makes this daunting subject easier to take in. Fareed Zakaria, a well-known author, explains the globalized world and where outsourcing fits, in an excerpt from his book, The Post-American World. Zakaria looks back in history to show the reader how the world came to this “globalizing moment”, then he hypothesizes the future of the global economy by piecing together all of the elements. Ehrenreich shows
Many businesses in United States manufacture their product overseas. This involves manufacturing products outside United States where the labor cost is cheaper. Because of cheap labor, it is often more economical for a U.S. company to manufacture overseas and pay the shipping costs than to manufacture in the United States. For a company, the savings may be substantial. However, there are negative impacts on U.S. employment, as many jobs in the United States are being outsourced and replaced by overseas positions. The manufacturers outsource production projects to save time, money or resources. The manufacturing is outsourced so as to remain competitive and maintain a steady work flow. Without outsourcing, manufacturing costs could escalate to the point at which no product would sell and all employees would have no work. Outsourcing comes
Outsourcing emerged on the financial arena during the 1980s and has since then been spreading. Outsourcing production was furthered with the process of globalization which provided a new component leading to the strengthening of resources, skill and labor specializations across the world. The process of outsourcing is using the skill and abilities of a third-party to accommodate society on the foundation of labor. As stated earlier, it was during the 1980s that the process kicked off mainly due to the efforts of corporations when they began to hire labor forces across the world. Even though outsourcing has come out from its developing stages, there are still following effects on the US economy.
A large majority of the American people are against outsourcing because it leads to fewer jobs, unemployment, and the negative impact it has on our economy. Moving a company to a place with cheaper labor and such causes thousands to lose their jobs and it also leads to less jobs that Americans can have. Outsourcing is only good for big businesses, not the people who work there or the smaller businesses around. It also has a negative impact on our economy. Although you are producing things at a cheaper price and selling it on the cheap doesn't mean people are able to buy it. If you get rid of jobs and cause unemployment, less people can purchase things and circulate our money. Our economy is built on the fact that people are able to purchase products. When that goes away
‘Is your job next?’ headline blared, followed by the disturbing preview of the article inside: “A new round of globalization is sending upscale jobs offshore. They include chip design engineering, basic research— even financial analysis. Can America lose these jobs and still prosper (R. Hira, 2008, p-1)?” The reaction of this news was swift and divided. Definitely large corporations that will be outsourcing will make huge profits in the long run but “what about the American citizens?”
As the world has gotten “smaller” in terms of trade, outsourcing has become a hot topic in much political and economic debate in the United States.
The U.S. economy has seen many hardships within the last decade. The economy has suffered from a recession that is still threatening to cripple some Americans and unemployment has been at an all time high. People have lost homes and jobs and many businesses have gone bankrupt simply trying to survive. However, in the midst of this economic crisis some companies have managed to survive. Many companies, approximately 36% of them, have found a way to avoid economic collapse by cutting costs (Job Outsourcing Statistics, 2014). One of the most popular cost reducing strategies of our time is called outsourcing.
He often mentions about the effect of outsourcing jobs form The United States to foreign countries. He analyzes the effects from both sides perspective. While reallocating jobs from America to foreign countries improves that country’s economy and GDP, it consequently also increases the demand for American goods in that nation. In his view this is a positive development which will refine itself continuously and continue to grow to a point when the world economies become lateral that
While Globalization helped create NAFTA and the negative effects associated with it, globalization has played an even larger role in the transfer of manual labor out of America. Within in recent years, the amount of hard labor jobs has steadily declined in America. Manufacturing jobs have been offshored in
In “Will Your Job Be Exported?”, Alan S. Blinder argues the quality and security of jobs in the future, service sectors in America will be determined by how offshorable they are. Blinder starts out the story with a quote by Edmund Burke, “You can never plan the future by the past”. Although he stated we are doing exactly that when it comes to getting the American workforce ready for jobs of the future. Blinder states “demand for labor appears to have shifted toward the college-educated and away from high school graduates and dropouts” (p. 8). According to Lou Dobbs, “Well under one percent of US service jobs have been outsourced.” Eventually offshoring for service sectors will exceed offshoring for manufacturing-sectors for 3 reasons. First simply because there is a greater amount of service jobs than manufacturing jobs in the US and other countries that are well off. Second, service sector offshoring continues to accelerate due to technological advances thus increasing the range of services offshore. And lastly, (e.g. Chinese and Indian) workers with the capability to perform service jobs continue to increase rapidly.
Critics see outsourcing as impacting both domestic and foreign countries in a negative way. Domestic economics falters since business is transferred to outside sources, therefore local employment suffers, prices may rise, and people may lose their jobs. The United States loses about 230,000 jobs a year due to outsourcing and new jobs are not crated that frequently or rapidly, therefore local unemployment rises. At the same time, the US also loses skills due to outsourcing. Developing countries also experience global stratification where, even though the imported business upgrades social conditions, social demarcation and hierarchy occurs where the labor class is exploited by newly formed elite. This is called "Global stratification". Consequences may be disastrous not only for the country
Outsourcing manufacturing jobs overseas has the additional benefit of promoting capitalism and free enterprise in many countries that have been run by communism and totalitarianism governments. Many political scientists and economists believe that by increasing economic interdependence with the United States, these foreign nations are more likely to develop into robust democracies and more likely to establish a middle class of their own this fact can be used by corporations such as Nike to justify outsourcing to these countries. [4]