Three Excellent Op-eds
Three Excellent Op-eds
Date: Monday, April 12, 2004 4:29 PM
JOB DESTRUCTION NEWSLETTER
by Rob Sanchez
April 12, 2004 - No. 983
Three excellent op-eds have been published recently.
1 - Lost Your Job Yet?, by John Pardon
Pardon's op-ed was edited to a much shorter article by Computerworld,
but fortunately he sent me the long version to use for this newsletter.
It's very well written and I think it is far better than the
Computerworld version. Use the Computerworld version for its links, and
if you are in too much of a hurry to read the full text version.
2 - The Truth Hurts, By Vicky Davis
Vicky Davis is a technical writer by background and never tried her
hand at op-eds before, Her debut is so good that hopefully she will do
more of them. Davis comments about a new "India Caucus" forming in the
Senate. That will be a topic of another newsletter soon.
3 - Greed Trumps Training, by Dawn Teo
The Tribune webpage this op-ed is on has a bad formatting problem, and
the last paragraph isn't there. This newsletter has the full text
version so you are better off reading it here than reading it online.
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,92150,00.html?SKC=careers-92150
You may retrieve this story by entering
Lost Your Job Yet?
Opinion by John Pardon
APRIL 12, 2004
Frank Hayes' fears about the widening perception of a declining
American IT workforce are already being realised ("ITAA's Job Dream",
Computerworld, April 05, 2004
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/careers/story/0,10801,91892,00
.html). I'm a techie who decided to bail out of the shrinking
American IT job market. I concluded that IT is largely a dead-end
career for Americans and opted out so that my wife could pursue
advanced degrees in education and move up in her career -- one that
can't be so readily outsourced or filled by guest workers. I rebelled
at my former employer's "wage compression", outsourcing and use of
non-immigrant guest workers (H-1b, L-1). Unlike Mr. Hayes, I do not
believe that it's widely possible to dodge the offshoring bullet by
building up business skills and increasing face time with users. This
sounds good but techies are very busy with their present
responsibilities which only seem to increase and not long ago
Computerworld writers were urging techies to gain new technical skills
to prevent job loss. There really isn't much opportunity to become the
kind of IT person whose job can't easily be shipped overseas. After
all, many of us in the IT workforce have learned the indisputable truth
that outsourcing and use of IT guest workers is really all about
slashing labor costs -- not increasing the quality of products and
services.
I came to these conclusions long before the most recent ITAA "study"
which was the subject of Mr. Hayes' article. The public statements and
actions of people like Harris Miller of the ITAA, Carly Fiorina of HP,
Sam Palmisano of IBM, and NCR's Lars Nyberg and Mark Hurd made it
abundantly clear that there were declining opportunities for American
IT employment. Many of us in (or formerly in) the IT work force see
the writing on the wall. I'm just more fortunate than most in that I
was able to walk away from IT and the generally awful job market
altogether.
Though people like Harris Miller and Carly Fiorina deny it, there are
hundreds of thousands of Americans who have the "knowledge skills"
necessary to perform critical work in this information age economy and
these Americans are losing their high tech jobs and many cannot find
similar work. These displaced workers do not lack for skills or
education as Fiorina and Miller publicly state. The existence of these
many displaced American high tech workers indicates there is no urgent
need for guest workers and no internal shortage of technically trained
workers. Technology has not made American IT workers "outmoded". Access
to cheaper, more submissive, and "manageable" non-American labor has
just made American IT workers undesirable and frequently unemployable.
Outsourcing is not a case analogous to horseless carriages rendering
buggy whip manufacturers obsolete in an episode of much celebrated
creative destruction and technological progress.
I retrained into Information Technology after graduating with a BA in
political science and history. Before leaving NCR last year, I had
worked in IT for more than decade performing technical writing, web
site development, software testing, programming/software engineering,
UNIX system administration, and database administration. Everything
that I achieved has been the result of personal/financial sacrifice,
personal initiative, hard work, long hours, acquisition of complex
technical knowledge, and continuing education. Obviously, I am not a
person who expects others to manage my career or provide lifetime
employment. I do not however expect my government or powerful
multi-national corporations to conspire to undermine my employment
opportunities and more broadly, eliminate job opportunities for
Americans.
As I told Bob Herbert of the New York Times ("Dark Side of Free Trade",
NYT, Feb. 22, 2004), I am a moderate conservative now alienated from
the Republican Party and the Bush Administration due to free trade,
outsourcing and H-1b/L-1 visa programs championed by free trade
ideologues. People such as me are often disparagingly referred to as
"disgruntled IT workers" by both politicians and many in the news
media. Our arguments are dismissed as "sour grapes" and we are told to
"face reality". In other words, we are told we should "shut-up and get
another job" because outsourcing will continue and it's part of doing
business today.
In the public statements of outsourcing proponents (in politics, the
media and academia), it is often rather haughtily assumed that the
concerns of IT workers are the result of naove misunderstandings and
our fears and employment dislocations are of little relevance.
Politicians, pundits, economists, business "leaders" and assorted free
trade advocates consider our job losses "unfortunate" but acceptable
and excusable in light of the argument that a broader and more
important social and economic benefit will (allegedly) accrue to
American society due to "free trade". The outsourcing proponents are
also notably silent as to what displaced IT workers should do to be
"competitive" in this (still) Information Age economy.
The politicians, pundits, economists, wall street analysts, venture
capitalists and assorted business "leaders" are either clueless or,
more likely, indifferent to the human toll and real impact of
outsourcing. The public positions of the Bush administration and most
proponents of global free trade and outsourcing (including John Kerry)
are woefully inadequate -- completely out of touch with the reality
that millions of American IT workers see around them. My experience is
just one example of what is really happening in America today.
One year ago, I resigned my IT job with NCR Corporation, a Fortune 500
international corporation headquartered in Dayton, Ohio. I resigned
because I was too disgusted and demoralized to continue working in the
profession I enjoyed because my employer had made it evident that
American workers are expendable, replaceable and disposable no matter
how loyal, productive, competent, or well educated. I concluded there
was no future for me with NCR or in IT. Like many other corporations,
NCR was (and is) indifferent to its American employees and American
society. And, like many other companies, NCR has thoroughly embraced
the policy of outsourcing. This has translated into the widespread,
permanent job eliminations in IT and all back office functions
performed by Americans.
In NCR's case, its new outsourcing partners are HCL Technology and
Saytam which provide a non-American IT workforce in India. NCR also has
a contract with Accenture which leads to a similar outsourcing of jobs
from the U.S. And of course, NCR has an NCR India subsidiary which is
also hiring a non-American workforce and is not subject to American
taxes and workplace laws.
The outcome of free trade/outsourcing is that permanent layoffs and
non-immigrant low-wage visa replacement workers became common at my
former workplace and all NCR locations in the U.S. (Dayton, Ohio,
Peachtree City, Georgia and in California). After watching this trend
for 2 years, I gave up on a career in information technology with NCR.
I was completely demoralized by my employer's actions and the American
corporate trend to fire Americans and move jobs offshore.
I looked for IT employment alternatives outside NCR but the IT jobs in
many corportations are also going offshore or being filled by guest
workers. It's a dismal job market. Without specialised knowledge and
education, I found the jobs available in today's employment market are
generally of such low pay as to make the financial compensation minimal
when factoring in the cost of quality child care and the opportunity
cost for my wife to not pursue post-masters work in education. It made
more sense for me, at least for now, to become a full time father and
drop out of the workforce altogether. As a family, we do far better for
my wife to advance in one of the "outsource-proof" career fields. One
result of this is that my rather extensive knowledge, experience and
technical skills are no longer available to employers.
Of course "outsourcing" or "offshoring" are now in the news and it is
widely known that many formerly-American jobs have gone to places like
India, China, and the Philippines. This is an emotional issue and a
political issue, no matter how politicians have attempted to evade and
obfuscate the topic. What many people inside and outside IT don't
realize, or wish to avoid discussing, is that NCR and many other
companies, in addition to "outsourcing" are also "insourcing".
Companies are importing low-wage non-immigrant H-1b or L-1 visa workers
into the U.S. to replace American workers here in our own country.
These inherently abusive visa programs are championed by people like
Harris Miller, the member companies of the ITAA and utilised by
hundreds of multi-national corporations intent upon cutting labor
costs.
Like outsourcing, many in the media (and politics) make inaccurate
statements regarding H-1b and L-1 visa guest worker programs. These
misrepresentations provoke frustration and anger similar to that evoked
by the latest ITAA "study". For example, the Washington Post editorial
"Cap on Hiring" in the Sunday, February 22, 2004 edition (Page B06)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60967-2004Feb21.html
states: "It isn't possible to argue that the holders of these visas
bring down American wages. No one doubts that they do jobs for which
there are clear, well-defined shortages of Americans." This is utter
and complete nonsense. Such statements are completely at odds with the
reality of how these programs are used to replace American IT workers
all over the United States.
Some in Congress obviously believe there is a problem of job loss
related to the H-1b and L-1 guest worker programs. On February 4, 2004,
the House International Relations committee held a hearing regarding
the L-1 visa program ("L Visas: Losing Jobs Through Laissez-Faire
Policies?") The testimony of Michael Emmons, Sona Shah, and Patricia
Fluno provide first-hand evidence of how L-1 visa holder programs are
used by corporations to systematically replace Americans (and green
card holders) while abusing the imported visa workers. A complete
webcast of the hearing is available at
http://wwwc.house.gov/international_relations/fullhear.htm along with
text transcripts of the prepared testimony of Ms. Shah and Ms. Fluno,
IT workers who have suffered first-hand from this abusive system. (The
comments from Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Harris Miller makes the webcast
well worth a listen.)
The H-1b visa program has long been the subject of criticism; it has
long been used as a tool to facilitate outsourcing and circumvent the
higher labor costs of American IT workers. Dr. Norman Matloff,
professor of computer science at U.C. Davis, has written extensively on
this subject and testified before Congress about how the H-1b program
has injured American IT workers. Matloff is clear that the H-1b
program is premised on misrepresentations and false studies. Dr.
Matloff has a new academic article on the subject, in the University of
Michigan Journal of Law Reform. This is probably the longest and most
detailed academic publication on this topic to date. This paper can
downloaded at http://heather.cs.ucdavis.edu/MichJLawReform.pdf.
My first-hand experience with outsourcing and guest worker replacement
programs at NCR provides direct knowledge of these issues. I watched
non-American (Indian) workers enter the NCR facilities in the U.S. on
H-1B or L-1 visas and receive "knowledge transfers" from American
Information Technology ("IT") workers. Then, the Indian replacement
workers usually returned to India to do the work previously performed
by the Americans who had trained them. On other occasions, the H-1b/L-1
replacement workers remained in the U.S. and continued to perform
necessary IT work from the same location, in the same buildings in
which the Americans had formerly worked. In both situations, the
American IT workers were replaced.
This is not an "urban legend"; I watched this happen along with many
other American IT workers. This has happened and is happening all over
the United States. Corporations prefer to be secretive about such
activities but IT workers have begun to talk. Understandably, Americans
who remain in IT jobs often work in fear of job loss since employers
now have ready access to low-wage guest workers and have displayed a
ruthless unconcern for their American workforce. Most of us who have
gone through this experience have finally realized that we are
competing with a Third World wage scale while our employers continue to
charge "American prices". It is not fair and it is not just but thanks
to the actions of the U.S. Congress and successive presidents, it is
completely legal.
It should come as no surprise that many politicians and members of the
media report Americans are increasingly frustrated and demoralized.
Middle class jobs are disappearing. We are losing the Information Age
jobs that were supposed to take the place of all the offshored
manufacturing and industrial jobs. Many of us in IT hate our
employment situation, believe we have no real future in the field and
feel betrayed by our employers, corporations and American elected
officials. Worse still, there are very few real options for employment
outside IT as all middle class jobs are disappearing.
Free trade and outsourcing proponents publicly hold out the option of
retraining into other professions but these other professions are
mostly unidentified. The reality is, as I told Bob Herbert, that there
aren't any new middle class "post-industrial" or "Information Age" jobs
for displaced Information Age workers. There are no opportunities to
"move up the food chain" or "leverage our experience" into higher
"value-added" jobs. (This is why symposiums on IT careers in the era
of outsourcing strike many of us as self-serving and fraudulent
endeavours designed as window dressing for HR and corporate
management.)
The truth is that many displaced IT workers and other displaced
"back-office" workers are not able to find work in the white collar
sector or even the "blue collar sector. There are however many low-wage
low-skilled non-middle class jobs available. There are persistent
credible accounts of software engineers taking low-wage unskilled jobs
(often holding more than one job) just to survive. (One former
colleague is now working in a lumber yard.) This is a major problem for
IT workers because, by some estimates, there are nearly a half million
unemployed or displaced IT workers in the U.S. And the job eliminations
are spreading and widening to include other "back-office" jobs such as
accounting, other engineering fields, graphic design and essentially,
anything that can be done via computer (effectively narrowing the
options for IT workers looking for alternative white collar employment
opportunities).
Health care is often cited by outsourcing/free trade proponents as an
area in which new jobs are available. Free traders do not care to
mention that many white collar workers would see dramatic decreases in
their earnings ("wage compression") even if they could afford to
undergo the time-consuming and costly retraining necessary to enter the
health care profession. Free traders fail to acknowledge that displaced
workers are often middle-aged with families, children in school,
mortgages and debt; they cannot easily undertake costly retraining
programs when they are falling out of the middle class.
In any case, I find it ironic to imagine training software engineers to
become health care workers -- to change bedpans and give injections.
What a waste of resources and educational capital! What a loss of
skills and knowledge to our economy! What a costly betrayal of workers!
(Note: even health care may soon be unavailable to American workers as
Indians are being recruited in ever larger numbers to fill this
employment sector while no new initiatives of any real significance are
undertaken to assist Americans to fill these positions. (See "Indian
nurses flock to the US"
http://in.rediff.com/money/2004/feb/13nurses.htm)
As Mr. Hayes rightly pointed out in his article, if experienced IT
workers are so badly hurt by outsourcing and guest worker "insourcing",
there is no logical reason why an American college student should study
computer science. The opportunities for American employment in IT are
poor. This is now reflected in declining American student enrollments
in CS, students switching from CS majors, new computer science grads
taking work outside the IT field or failing to find work. This may
alarm American corporate leaders but they should look in the mirror to
place blame; they fund groups such as the ITAA and embrace outsourcing.
They have created this situation. Bill Gates' recent public pleas to
American students to study CS highlight the absurdity of this situation
given Microsoft's role in outsourcing IT work. It's akin to Gates
telling young software engineers and programers to "eat code" while he
sends IT jobs to China, the site of Microsoft's "offshore development
center" or "campus" ("Microsoft, Amid Dwindling Interest, Talks Up
Computing as a Career", Steve Lohr, NYT, March 1, 2004). It's quite
clear that college students will seek better alternatives than careers
locked in "wage compression", outsourcing and competition with imported
low-wage workers.
There is very little in this economy to excite enthusiasm in present or
would-be IT workers. Like the December figure of 8.2% growth in GDP,
the recent "job surge" has had no discernible impact on the IT
employment market. This is a "jobless recovery" for Americans seeking
IT employment. Let's be honest: the employment market in the U.S. for
software engineers and Information Technology workers is miserable and
only appears to be getting worse. Outsourcing, H-1B and L-1 visa
workers (and soon, the free movement of labor provisions of the latest
free trade agreements) are destroying the American Information Age work
force.
There is no employment rebound for IT workers. Recent college grads or
new entrants into IT can't even get jobs on help desks which are now
increasingly moved offshore. The reports from groups such as
Challenger, Forester and Gartner all point to increased IT outsourcing
and use of IT guest workers. "Global competitiveness" sounds good in
corporate boardrooms and political speeches but the reality is that
increasing numbers of American IT workers are suffering and losing
confidence in our political and business leaders. We are locked in a
merciless unrestricted competition with low-wage workers of the
Developing World. This is ultimately an unwinnable competition.
American IT workers, like many in the middle class, are learning that
education, skill and hard work are no longer indicators of success.
It's all about cheap labor -- a fact not lost on Harris Miller, Carly
Fiorina, Mark Hurd and Sam Palmisano.
We frequently hear the "global competitiveness" argument from people
such as Miller, Palmisano, Gates and Fiorina. They imply that American
society benefits from "global competitiveness" but the truth is that
this is more a justification for ruthlessly eliminating the jobs of
American IT workers. People like Miller, Palmisano, Gates and Fiorina
have no concern for American workers or American society. Miller,
Fiorina and others like them are fixated on cutting costs and
increasing short-term corporate profits. They represent a constituency
of multi-national corporations (MNCs) which are nominally American only
by virtue of their corporate charters and the present changeable
composition of their leadership. American IT workers and American
society do not participate in the profits and "global competitiveness"
of these multi-national corporations with their increasingly
non-American workforces.
Global free trade/outsourcing is ultimately, in my opinion, an "emperor
with no clothes". As Paul Craig Roberts has discussed in
"Clarifications on the Case for Free Trade"
(http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=1420&id=65) and "The
Harsh Truth About Outsourcing: It's not a mutually beneficial trade
practice -- it's outright labor arbitrage"
(http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/04_12/b3875614.htm), the
premise for free trade to be beneficial to all parties is that some
"comparative advantage" must exist for all parties. This is not
possible with the full worldwide mobility of labor and capital. The
United States, American workers generally and American IT workers in
particular, have no "comparative advantage" in the world today. Nations
such as China and India command an "absolute advantage" over the U.S.
This situation is more than just the result of the "ITAA's fumbled
efforts to hype the benefits of offshoring" and if it leads to an IT
staffing nightmare for American corporate HR departments, my response
is "you reap what you sow."
Sincerely,
John Pardon
Dayton, Ohio
John Pardon is a former technical writer, software engineer and
database administrator who has worked for a number of software
development and IT corporations. Since his departure from NCR in early
2003, he has written on the topics of outsourcing and the H-1B and L-1
visa programs, inspired by his own experiences and those of other U.S.
IT workers, notably Scott Kirwin, founder of the Information Technology
Professionals Association of America (http://www.itpaa.org), and
Michael Emmons. Emmons'
http://www.outsourcecongress.org/outsource/congress/index.html
story was told in Computerworld's sister publication, CIO magazine [
"The Radicalization of Mike Emmons"].
http://www.cio.com/archive/090103/people.html
Pardon can be contacted at jpardon@worldnet.att.net.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/articles/04/04/09_truth.html
The Truth Hurts
April 9, 2004
By Vicky Davis
When Senator Ted Kennedy said that Iraq is George Bush's Viet Nam, he
struck a nerve. The Republicans have been squealing like stuck pigs
ever since. The truth hurts.
Obviously the reasons for the two wars were different. What is not
different is that we are once again trying to force our way of life on
people who don't want it. And what is it that we think we have that is
so great anyway?
When our Leaders talk about the gift of democracy and freedom that we
are bringing to the Iraqis, they call forth the vision of our Founding
Fathers: a democratic republic with a constitutional framework which
limits the powers of the federal government, while providing guarantees
of freedom for the citizens. What greater gift could there be than a
government "of the people, by the people and for the people"?
There may have been a time when we had that, but no longer. A look
around at the changes taking place in our country makes one wonder if
the men and women who are entrusted with the responsibility for
upholding the Rule of Law and the Constitution even think about the
principles upon which this country was founded. By their actions, one
would have to say they don't.
When we look at our Congress, we see wealthy men and women who sell
their votes to the highest bidders. Corporate vote buying in Congress
has become so institutionalized that it is not even clear that they
recognize how corrupt they really are. In fact, it is so commonplace
that one congressman actually mentioned in public that he was offered a
bribe for his vote on the Medicare bill. Ultimately he accepted the
bribe and is now under investigation by the FBI.
One hundred and fifty members of the U.S. House of Representatives
belong to IndiaPAC. IndiaPAC represents the interests of India. Twenty
senators recently started their own chapter of IndiaPAC. The Indians
have lots of money to buy the votes of Congress since they are draining
a significant portion of our economy. Impoverished Americans can vote
of course - at least they think they can. It all depends on how many of
the hackable computerized voting systems get installed before the next
election.
Even the Supreme Court - the ultimate limiting factor on abuses of
power in government - has been tarnished. Three of the Supremes gave a
presentation some months ago in which they talked about globalization.
They said that in one of their cases they used international law as the
basis for a decision. Their powers derive from the Constitution. By
going outside the bounds of the Constitution to make a decision, they
violated it.
Watching George Bush, one sees the carefully cultivated image of a
Texas good ol' boy. A friendly, folksy kind of guy, that lies through
his teeth with every word spoken and is robbing you blind as he is
shaking your hand. He cares so much about protecting the American
people that he is implementing a police state to watch their every
move. At the same time, he is cutting the budget of the border patrol
and port security.
He is installing a corporate government and trading away our national
sovereignty. His Labor Department is making it easier for corporations
to treat their employees like slave labor - even giving them a How-To
guide. He is setting up a federal employment agency for foreigners - to
make it easier for corporations to avoid hiring American citizens
altogether.
The lies of the Bush Administration even extend to the treatment of our
men and women in the military. While George Bush waves the flag and
lands on aircraft carriers he cuts the hazardous duty pay of the
soldiers, closes veteran's hospitals, cuts the budget for medical care
and orders that the bodies be flown home under the cover of darkness.
So callous and uncaring is he that he can make jokes about the fact
that the war was based on lies. There were no WMD. They knew it - and
so far, they have gotten away with it.
Every action of George Bush's administration has been to enrich the
wealthy few, empower and subsidize corporations and crush the American
people - financially, emotionally and spiritually. The middle class
people who support him just haven't been run over by the Bush bulldozer
- yet. How Bush and his cronies must laugh at their success at fooling
half the people with their lies and fraud, and at the terror and panic
felt by the other half of the people who see through them. He and his
cronies are laughing all the way to the bank as they pull off the
biggest heist in the history of the world - the wealth of our country,
the Iraqi oil and our national sovereignty. Revenge is sweet, isn't it
George?
We are attempting to impose on the Iraqis what we have - the fagade
of a democratic republic. Underneath the fagade are the decay and
stench of a corporate government that cares nothing about people. They
care only about money and power. Iraq is indeed George Bush's Viet Nam.
They see what our government is, and they are going to fight it to the
bitter end. The truth does indeed hurt.
Contact Vicky at Vickyd2@cableone.net
http://epaper.aztrib.com/Repository/getFiles.asp?Style=OliveXLib:ArticleToMail&Type=text/html&Path=EVT/2004/04/12&ID=Ar03203
Greed trumps training
Dawn Teo of Mesa is public outreach director of the Rescue American
Jobs Foundation.
In the article, "Engineers Map Role in Globalization", Jami Shah of
the National Science Foundation (NSF) was quoted as saying, "At least
high level engineering jobs will remain in this country if students are
trained in the right skills and the science foundation invests in
research that supports innovation."
India churns out 350,000 engineers each year and has a total
population of one billion. One would have to believe that Americans are
somehow superior in order to believe that America's comparatively small
number of engineers would be able to train themselves to be more
capable of doing high-level engineering work than foreign engineers.
In this day and age, how can we still hold such notions that we can be
more capable, more innovative, or more qualified? No, we are no better
than they are, and they are no better than we are.
But developing countries like India boast an enormous supply of highly
skilled labor at a fraction of the cost of American labor. In fact, the
India Human Resources Development Minister, Murli Manohar Joshi, sets
policy based on the philosophy that labor supply must exceed demand. In
other words, their government sets policy to keep unemployment and
underemployment high in order to keep labor costs down this policy runs
counter to free market theory and is not beneficial to any developing
country.
Through such policies, in both India and China, there is a constant
oversupply of qualified, English-speaking scientists and engineers,
ready and able to do the work of any American engineer for a fraction
of the cost. By sheer numbers, cost, and standard of living, American
engineers and scientists cannot compete effectively.
If education and training were the answer, as an NSF representative
states in the article, then why are qualified American engineers
training their replacements? Why does the NSF, supposedly one of the
worlds foremost experts on upcoming technology, not yet know what
these scientists and engineers should study?
American engineers are already trained and qualified. In fact,
American engineers are training their less expensive foreign
counterparts to replacement them, and corporations are holding
severance pay hostage until replacement training is complete.
If we are to follow the same free market theory that the NSF has long
claimed to purport, then we must also allow for markets to self-correct
supply and demand within the labor market. When the supply of labor is
low and demand is high, salaries will automatically rise to correct the
market, and when supply of labor is high, salaries will automatically
deflate to correct the market.
Unfortunately since the late 1980s, the NSF has taken a position of
forced wage depression through offshore outsourcing and the importation
of foreign scientists and engineers, rather than allowing labor markets
to self-correct. Many economists believe this to be no less than
corporate labor subsidies.
When Ricardo theorized free trade and globalization, he specifically
discussed geographic labor pools that utilized comparative advantage.
He never meant for people to be traded as labor commodities across
geographical lines or for comparative advantage to be used as an excuse
for tapping a global pool of cheap, exploitable labor from developing
nations.
Dawn Teo
Mesa, Arizona
Dawn Teo is the Public Outreach Director of the Rescue American Jobs
Foundation (www.RescueAmericanJobs.org). She also serves on the Board
of Directors of NAEA (National Association for the Employment of
Americans) and A.W.A.R.E. (American Workforce Alliance for Responsible
Economics). She can be reached at dawn@rescueamericanjobs.org or
480-832-0335.
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