Playing Ketchup

Can John Kerry be as hypocritical as Lou Dobbs is witless? Jim Glassman at TechCentralStation investigates.

Speaking of my good friend Lou… It recently occured to me that while he'll occasionally have on the excellent Dan Griswold as his show's token clueful guest, he very often plugs in officials from industry trade associations to make the case for free trade. At first, I wondered: Why would he get some industry shill to do this, when he could probably choose from the 95 percent of respected economists at major universities who'd say much the same thing? And then I realized I'd answered my own question.

Comments

[Just Another Pod]

Remember when Lou went away for a while?
It took that long for his pod to mature.
CNN is covering this up.
Really.

[JimInNoVA]

I always knew Lou failed econ. Maybe he's afraid we'll send his job to China. I can see it now: Lu Wen: MoneyLine! Somehow, I doubt there'd be much change in content.

[Lonewacko]

"Nothing has changed since Adam Smith wrote in 1776: "It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."

Things weren't quite as complicated in those days, chief. If we outsource all of our, for instance, nuclear engineering, we'll be in trouble when we're at war with the countries to which we outsourced all the engineering, no?

Still, writes Julian Sanchez of Reason magazine...

echo... echo...

the U.S. unemployment rate last week dropped to 5.6 percent

There are additional millions who've stopped looking, no?

Forrester Research estimates that outsourced jobs will rise to 600,000 by 2005 -- out of a total of 140 million. Hardly a menace

Perhaps next time he could discuss the quality of those 600,000 jobs. Aren't most of them high-quality, high-tech jobs?

Unfortunately, Dobbs and xenophobic politicians...

I guess he admits his argument is weak if he has to stoop to name calling.

Sen. John Kerry, in his stump speech inveighs against the "Benedict Arnold CEOs [who] send American jobs overseas."

Look at how quickly Kerry got rid of the Canadian phone banks. He knows what time it is.

[Seth]

True Lou story...I was preparing to appear on a panel with a very senior executive at Fox News. The event preceding us was Lou interviewing the head of DirecTV. It was not, shall we say, a particularly scintillating interview. Mr. Fox News leans over to me and says (I've cleaned it up a bit), "Effing Lou - he's as boring as his effing show".

[s.m. koppelman]

Crikeys. I agree with Lonewacko's assessment up there. Does this make me a crank?

By the way, Mr. Sanchez. I know you're flattered that Mr. Glassman quoted you in his advertorial, but do you really have to act like it's a well-researched piece of journalism? "Jim Glassman at TechCentralStation investigates," my foot.

Try "Jim Glassman, contracted by DC lobbying and PR firm The DCI Group, writes a press release in op-ed style under tha banner of the firm's TechCentralStation PR distribution website." Admittedly not as pithy, but a fair sight more accurate.

[B.P.]

Yes, it does make you a crank. But at least Lonewacko attempts criticism of Glassman's actual piece, instead of, once again, climbing spiral-eyed into the DeLorean for another follow-the-money magical mystery smear.

And Lonewacko, trying to tie every industry to national security is best left to supporters of farm subsidies.

[joe]

Two lines about Kerry at the bottom of the column and he gets lead billing on the blog?

Not every job sent overseas represents the culmination of a free market fantasy. Notice the complete lack of any evidence that Kerry has opposed actual free trade during his lengthy Senate career.

[Critic]

Joe,
How many senators are for "actual" free trade?
I'll bet there isn't a single one.

[joe]

I'll bet there are quite a few in both parties, who settle for what they can in order to push the ball forward.

Anyway, it's a little odd to single out John Kerry. You'd almost think the author was on the payroll of people who were working for Bush's reelection.

[Gene Berkman]

I have to agree with Joe that it is odd to play up the brief and non-factual mention of John Kerry at the end of the piece.

For the record, John Kerry voted for NAFTA and WTO which some people think makes him a supporter of free trade. He has taken flack for it in the Democrat primaries.

Maybe NAFTA and WTO are not about free trade - that is the line of the Mises Institute, James Bovard and the late Murray Rothbard. But if Sen. Kerry had voted against the two treaties, he would have been attacked as a protectionist.

Still, outsourcing is an issue for millions of Americans who cannot make enough at service jobs or retail to pay for their own home or their children's college education. A little more substantive discussion of this in place of abstractions might get the public more interested in libertarian views.

[Dan]

Things weren't quite as complicated in those days, chief. If we outsource all of our, for instance, nuclear engineering

Because as we all know, nobody made weapons in Smith's day -- and certainly no nation's armies needed them during time of war.

we'll be in trouble when we're at war with the countries to which we outsourced all the engineering, no?

Good point -- the first rule of outsourcing is always "make sure you hire the most hostile and untrustworthy workforce possible".

[Lonewacko]

"Crikeys. I agree with Lonewacko's assessment up there. Does this make me a crank?"

No, just uncharacteristically intelligent.

"Because as we all know, nobody made weapons in Smith's day -- and certainly no nation's armies needed them during time of war."

There's quite a difference between a flintlock and a weapons guidance system, no? Building a basic version of the first can be learned from an experienced builder in a week or so. Building the second requires years of schooling. The schooling is what's going to be outsourced as well; if all the jobs go overseas, the educational institutes teaching people to do those jobs are going to go there as well. No one's going to pay $100k for an education that only pays $10/hour.

"Good point -- the first rule of outsourcing is always "make sure you hire the most hostile and untrustworthy workforce possible"."

The first rule of outsourcing is "the only thing that matters is the bottom line, and fuck everything else." Not exactly a rule with societal staying power.

[s.m. koppelman]

Actually, Lonewacko, before Eli Whitney came along and revolutionized machine tooling, people who made guns had years of training in woodworking and metalworking, usually learned through apprenticeships.

The same was true of bagels until the 1960s or so, I think.

[dlc]

GB writes:

"Still, outsourcing is an issue for millions of Americans who cannot make enough at service jobs or retail to pay for their own home or their children's college education. A little more substantive discussion of this in place of abstractions might get the public more interested in libertarian views."

Okay, I'll bite the hook. Yes, I'll agree that outsourcing is a problem. Now, what is your solution?

Second (related) point - why are certain proposed solutions to the loss of manufacturing jobs always focused on supply (i.e. the firms outsourcing the jobs)? No one seems to be talking about demand. Seems like we consumers are creating the bulk of the problem with our thirst for cheap, foreign made goods.

Joe Schmo makes cathode ray tubes,
Joe buys foreign made TV's at WalMart,
Joe now works at WalMart,
Joe is paid $5.95/hour,
Joe can only afford to shop at WalMart,
Joe keeps buying crappy foreign goods,
People who once made those goods lose their job in turn...and so on.

[Lonewacko is Contrite]

"The same was true of bagels until the 1960s or so, I think."

I guess I was wrong then. There are not orders of magnitudes of difference between the necessary precision and complexity of nuclear weapons and bagels. Once we give all our jobs to foreigners, we'll be so much better off.

[Lonewacko]

"So how to you explain Dell computers pulling some of their customer service (the high-level part) out of India and bringing it back to Texas?"

Because, as you say, it was effecting their bottom line?

"It is the maxim of every prudent master of a family never to make at home what it will cost him more to make than to buy."

On second thought, that's actually true when hidden costs are figured in. Hidden costs might include other countries becoming more technologically advanced, building better infrastructure, building better learning institutions, etc.

[JimInNoVA]

"The only thing that matters is the bottom line, and fuck everything else" huh? So how to you explain Dell computers pulling some of their customer service (the high-level part) out of India and bringing it back to Texas? It sure wasn't the prices. It was performance. People threatened to never buy a Dell again, and they listened. So I guess the bottom line was important, but the price of services isn't the bottom line.

Oh, and the reason they shipped the jobs over there in the first place was that even in a college town they couldn't get anyone to work a call center, even for $14 an hour. Working the US night shift in India is prime time. Light work, normal hours, and overall a creampuff job for anyone with a (us-bought) masters degree in computer science. So the workers are happy and skilled, the company is profitable and rich, and the computers are slashed down to prices that are starting to make TI's hand calculators look like a bad deal. I fail to see the downside. Oh yeah, the 6 college kids who DID want those night shift differentials to sit in a call center. They'll live.