The problem of outsourcing: what should be done?

[The Templar]

(1) Pull out of every trade agreement.

(2) Only open markets with respect to countries that have comparable environmental and labor protections.

(3) Allow unions to proliferate and exist across national boundaries (like the longshoreman's international) just as corporations do. Workers will have more clout when they join with workers for other countries to collectively bargain together.

(4) Repeal Taft-Hartley. Allow for secondary boycotts and closed shops so that unions can bargain for their companies to deal only with other union companies.

(5) Create a new WTO that enforces open markets, labor protections, and environmental protections - where members have to meet high minimal standards of protection as well as open markets. No more "regulatory taking" arguments.

(6) Aid to developing countries so that they can jump right into minimally polluting technology quickly.

I figure this will bring India and Mexico up to US and Canadian standards of living instead of bringing ours down.

[Drake Tungsten]

The problem of outsourcing: what should be done?

We should ban China and India.

[Adam Smith]

Originally posted by The Templar
(1) Pull out of every trade agreement.

So we can have a Smoot-Hawley situation which contributed to the Great Depression?

(2) Only open markets with respect to countries that have comparable environmental and labor protections.

Environmental and labor standards vary with income, and we're imposing ouors on them. Shouldn't you be screaming "economic imperialism" at about this point?

(3) Allow unions to proliferate and exist across national boundaries (like the longshoreman's international) just as corporations do. Workers will have more clout when they join with workers for other countries to collectively bargain together.

Unions are labor monopolies. Monopolies reduce overall national income.

(4) Repeal Taft-Hartley. Allow for secondary boycotts and closed shops so that unions can bargain for their companies to deal only with other union companies.

By this reasoning tying should be legal, so there is no such thing as the Microsoft antitrust case.

(5) Create a new WTO that enforces open markets, labor protections, and environmental protections - where members have to meet high minimal standards of protection as well as open markets. No more "regulatory taking" arguments.

See #2.

(6) Aid to developing countries so that they can jump right into minimally polluting technology quickly.

Well, one out of six ain't bad.

I figure this will bring India and Mexico up to US and Canadian standards of living instead of bringing ours down.

Not likely.

[Inverse Icarus]

genocide, of course.

what doesn't a mass killing solve?

[Imran Siddiqui]

Indeed, Uber!

Also, if we conquer the entire Third World, then these companies won't be outsourcing anymore !

[Nubclear]

Population decline.

[Ben Kenobi]

(1) Pull out of every trade agreement.

Right.

Like the US can do without Canadian free trade.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

1. outsourcing isnt a problem
2. therefore, you cant fix it if its not a problem.

[Inverse Icarus]

Originally posted by Comrade Tassadar
Population decline.

kill all females who refuses / cannot reproduce every 9 months. watch population rise within the year.

[Nubclear]

That would hardly be a mass-killing.

[Inverse Icarus]

there's like 3 billion females in the world. thats pretty mass.

[DaShi]

The mass of them are pretty.

[TheStinger]

well of course the US and indeed other major economies who have a problem with outsourcing would have to close down all those foreign owned plants and sack all the workers to be consistent.

[Ned]

Outsourcing is simply more of the same thing that has been happening not only to the US but to Japan and other industialized countries for decades.

There is literally nothing one can do to stop it unless one completely shuts down trade by demanding that everything be produced in the US. Any such action is would be, let us say, more than idiotic.

The "anybody-but-Bush" clear thinkers propose forcing our labor and environmental standards on developing countries.

How?

Cut off trade?

Really??? Cut off trade with the second and third world? My God, we should be helping these folks -- foreign investment and business is exactly what these countries need to grow.

The bottom line, this "outsourcing" issue is pure demogoguery, mostly designed to get Republicans out of power. Anyone with half a brain can smell a rat here.

[TheStinger]

My God I agree witeh Ned and GULP Bush. outsourcing is free trade and free trade is good.