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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2246
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 07, 2006 - 12:54 pm: | 
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Outsourcing Smarts
The Death of US Engineering
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
The May payroll jobs report released June 2 by the Bureau of Labor Statistics confirms the jobs pattern for the 21st century US economy: employment growth is limited to domestic services.
In May the economy created only 67,000 private sector jobs. Job estimates for the previous two months were reduced by 37,000.
The new jobs are as follows: professional and business services, 27,000; education and health services, 41,000; waitresses and bartenders, 10,000. Manufacturing lost 14,000 jobs.
Total hours worked in the private sector declined in May.
Manufacturing hours worked are 6.6 percent less than when the recovery began four and one-half years ago.
American economists and policymakers are in denial about the effect of jobs offshoring on US employment. Corporate lobbyists have purchased fraudulent studies from economists that claim offshoring results in more US employment rather than less. The same lobbyists have spread disinformation that the US does not graduate enough engineers and that they must import foreigners on work visas.
Lobbyists are currently pushing, as part of the immigration bill, an expansion in annual H-1B work visas from 65,000 to 115,000.
The alleged "shortage" of US engineering graduates is inconsistent with reports from Duke University that 30 to 40 percent of students in its master's of engineering management program accept jobs outside the profession. About one-third of engineering graduates from MIT go into careers outside their field. Job outsourcing and work visas for foreign engineers are reducing career opportunities for American engineering graduates and, also, reducing salary scales.
When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept. Americans are simply being forced out of the engineering professions by jobs outsourcing and the importation of foreigners on work visas. Corporate lobbyists and their hired economists are destroying the American engineering professions.
American engineering is also under pressure because corporations have moved manufacturing offshore. Design, research and development are now following manufacturing offshore. A country that doesn't make things doesn't need engineers and designers. Corporations that have moved manufacturing offshore fund R&D in the countries where their plants have been relocated.
Engineering curriculums are demanding. The rewards to the effort are being squeezed out by jobs offshoring and work visas. If the current policy continues of substituting foreign engineers for American engineers, the profession will die in the US.
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan administration. He was Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal editorial page and Contributing Editor of National Review. He is coauthor of The Tyranny of Good Intentions.He can be reached at: paulcraigroberts@yahoo.com
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Abdi85
Veteran Poster
Username: Abdi85
Post Number: 51
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 07, 2006 - 06:33 pm: |
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It's not just outsourcing its also the education system. In Asia they focus heavily on math and science. I mean lets be honest in a match up between American kids v.s Chinese and Indian kids in the math and science ring, mortal kombat style, American kids will get their asses kicked. |
Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 273
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, June 07, 2006 - 07:16 pm: |
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“When employers allege a shortage of engineers, they mean that there is a shortage of American graduates who will work for the low salaries that foreigners will accept. Americans are simply being forced out of the engineering professions by jobs outsourcing and the importation of foreigners on work visas.”
This is the same argument poor folks are using against the illegal aliens coming across the border now for those low-paying toilet cleaning and tomato picking jobs.
Pretty soon the only Americans with corporate jobs will be the company president and his [maybe her] accountant and lawyer.
I saw on the news yesterday that some school districts around the country are insourcing [is that a word?] teachers from other countries because they can’t get American ones due to low salaries, bad school conditions and bad azz kids. Districts all over the country are short of teachers. They showed a training center in the Philippines preparing about 50 teachers to come to the US. I wonder how that will change the face of education? Hey, if they start recruiting teachers from Mexico and other spanish speaking countries then we won’t have to spend money on those english as a second language classes.
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Doberman23
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Doberman23
Post Number: 375
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 08, 2006 - 02:25 am: |
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abdi85 lol mortal kombat style!
ford, chrysler, and gm have been laying off people in michigan like crazy and that's just the auto industry (pretty soon they won't be calling detroit motown anymore) i don't think any other state has been hit as hard as us with the outsourcing. i do think that alot of the people at those plants where overpaid espcially the engineers, the unions kept wanting employees to get raises even though the companies weren't reaching profit goals so the result is the auto companies are like screw you and while we're at it screw the people who get pensions from us too.
abdi85 i think your mortal kombat comparrison may be dead on, more than half of the engineers that i knew from u of michigan are asains, indians, or foreign ...lol..but their asses got laid off too from the plants. i just want to know who these companies think are going to buy their products, because people from those other countries won't.
crystal don't think that white america is going to let mexicans get to border-hopping crazy ( i mean more so than what they are) when it starts effecting more than half of their pockets ... they will start hating on them worse than they hate the brothers. you see that they put the national guard on those borders... in a minute you'll see us start busting caps at their asses and eventually having the president of mexico killed and have someone they want over there. |
Nels
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Nels
Post Number: 387
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 08, 2006 - 03:01 am: |
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The Indians (of India) took over the engineering industry.
The Japanese took over the auto industry.
The Mexicans took over the service industry.
The Chinese are taking over everything else.
And you thought the outlook was "only" bad now? Just wait. |
Cynique
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Cynique
Post Number: 4504
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 08, 2006 - 10:14 am: |
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Looks bad for the home team. It appears that the United States of America is on a collision course with the same fate that befell all the great Empires of the past. Too bad. America had it all. And then outside forces gradually eroded its independence, and slavery of another kind is taking over. This country is at the mercy of superior foreign technology because its citizens have been dumbed down, their vision clouded by materialism and hedonism. The writing is on on the wall. What does it say???? "For a good time, call 555-6969 and ask for "Paris." |
Yvettep
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 1036
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 08, 2006 - 11:24 am: |
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We still have one leg up on the rest of the world, industry-wise:
Entertainment.
Or "entertainment," if you prefer.
Or, maybe more precisely entertainment production. Because if the movie, music, and television industries do not get with the new technologies/open access program, we may find ourselves producing stuff that gets snatched up and distributed by other means.
Oh, and one more area where we have the world beat:
The prison industry.
THe US could serve as the penal colony to the rest of the world, kind of an "Escape from New York" writ large... |
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