Outsourcing labor is a serious danger to America's economy and needs to be dealt with.

I'm really glad you brought up Japan, I recently wrote an essay about it. In simplest terms, when Japan was opened for trade, its market was immediately overwhelmed with cheap foreign goods and people started buying gold from Japan because it had gold-to-silver ratio of 1:5 as opposed to the 1:15 of the gold standard. Their economy crashed, the shogunate fell out of favor and was overthrown. They flew into an industrial revolution in order to rescue their failing economy, but things got worse before they got better and for a while the US was getting a flood of immigrants from Japan who came here to avoid starvation. So I wouldn't say Japan's opening for trade allowed it to flourish. I'd say it survived in spite of its opening for trade. And I'd be happy to argue that we're already seeing the negative effects of offshoring. Firstly, the long-term unemployed I mentioned earlier make up 22% of unemployed, which is the highest rate of long-term unemployment since 1983. Long-term unemployment, by the way, is classified as being out of a job for over six months. http://www.epi.org... By the way, I think that also covers your argument about backing my claim. Also, remember my argument about the US having less wealth? The worth of American money is depreciating pretty steeply when compared to foreign countries. You explained why in your last argument. As we offshore, we buy their money, its worth goes up while ours goes down. Well, now the dollar's down something like 30% and it's steadily falling. http://www.fms.treas.gov... And if our buying power is going down, I'd argue we're getting poorer. And companies are most certainly not in it for the long term. I admit, it would be more logical for them to be, but they're largely controlled by stockholders, who just want to get profits up as much as possible and then run off with their money. American corporations rarely look past the next quarter, it's kind of a well-known fact about them. I don't know how exactly I can prove this without making it look like opinion, but here's an attempt: "1,000 largest U.S. companies employed a variety of short-term tactics to boost their collective working capital by $100 billion in the last quarter of 2006..." http://www.directorship.com... The slow growth means they're not making any long term progress. They make a lot of profit one quarter and lose it the next. You don't see a short growthburst because those fluctuations take place over months, not years. My point with Enron was that people were looking to make all the profit they could at any cost. But I admit it wasn't the best example. And the recall issue. I never said they knew there was lead in the toys. What I did say was that they were willing to take the risk, knowing fully well that the people they were outsourcing to were likely to have pretty iffy quality. The fact that they didn't test these toys for lead beforehand, especially knowing the companies that they were outsourcing to suggests that they were just turning a blind eye because they could make more profit that way. And you'd be surprised. Mattel's stock only went down about 10% after the recalls, and now it's going back up. They're still going strong and making plenty of profit, so there's no reason for them to disband. The goods aren't worth nearly the amount of money consumers pay for them. There's something like a 300% markup on everything. And good luck buying food with a $100 television. Besides, the products people buy devalue very quickly while money does not. More importantly, the trade deficit results in the devaluing of American currency, so we have much less buying power among other countries. If you look at the world economy, we're losing wealth. Because of the trade deficit. And the idea of foreign countries investing in American companies isn't very good either. It drives up the costs of stock and gives us less control over our own companies. And what good are puppet companies that are controlled by foreign companies and produce in foreign countries? "Also note that the distinction between capital and consumer goods can be as narrow as who buys them." The point is, though, that these products are going to companies. So when we no longer are building factories overseas, then the market for these goods will dry up. In fact, the distinction is a made a little more scary for this reason. We produce things to sell to companies, but can't seem to sell the same products to citizens. And if we can't sell the products to citizens now, what makes you think we'll be able to once the factories don't need them? Okay, I didn't really define wealth before, so now I'll define it properly: It's the worth of the currency as defined by the exchange rate and the combined worth of anything you can sell, namely resources or goods. While workers and companies are certainly sources of wealth, in terms of concrete wealth they're not worth any more than the money, resources and goods they currently own. You can't pay off a debt with work in a world economy. And Japan seems to be doing just fine for itself. Also mentioned in the interview I cited, our technological advancements are there for them to see, but they hide theirs from us. So they have our ideas as a springboard to improve and as a result has better technology than us. So while they have to buy Japan's own goods, most would have chosen them anyway because they're better. And yes, there is a little bias when interviewing someone from an industry that's being offshored. But he knows more than someone who's not from the industry about what exactly is going on, and there's an inherent bias in any source anyway. Besides, he's citing facts and statistics. "But there are MANY and MANY jobs that stay (since we see stable unemployment), that is for the same reason: those employees have the better producivity/wages." But the jobs that stay are service jobs, which usually aren't as high-paying as manufacturing jobs and don't contribute to national wealth. Manufacturing jobs end with a product that we can sell to other countries, which makes more money for the US as a whole. Service jobs don't export anything, and therefore don't make any profit. And about Comparative Advantage, if we're buying more than we're selling, then foreign countries get more of our money than we get of theirs. So companies get to invest in our infrastructure more than we invest in theirs. Which leads to them essentially owning our companies eventually, which is dangerous for us. "The example of a foreign country having a depression or a war: indeed, export will drop without import." But without exports to make money, we can't pay for our imports without losing money. Having our own factories guarantees that we can still supply our needs without losing money. Any money paid for those cars goes to pay workers and quickly ends up back in circulation. Sure, in your scenario, companies make $1000 less, but is some profit such a huge price to pay for stability? Arab-owned American ports aren't any busier than American-owned ports. So profits wouldn't change, the only difference is that the profit goes to a different group. And that group uses it for their own motives. It also devalues our currency. On regulations, are you arguing that producers are obliged to tell me that there's lead in their toys as well? Who's making them, if not the government? If the government tells them to, those are regulations. It's not unethical to deny foreign workers work. No moreso than it is to deny Americans work, at least. We have no obligation to employ the world's poor. And outsourcing doesn't result in as much more tax money as you'd expect. Corporations pay a very low percentage of America's taxes. Most is the middle class.