Outsource this

I read a disturbing op-ed piece in the NY Times last month that argued, in essence, that we should outsource science careers to cheaper countries to take advantage of their low wages to better America. My question is to who in America would actually benefit? Yes collaboration with scientists in other lands, who are paid much less than scientists here, can work well, especially if we use them to do basic research while our scientists do more advanced research, but long term I fail to see how this can not be disastrous for us. Where will our future more senior scientists get the necessary training if they don't start out doing some of the basic research that the writer of the piece argues for? Do we really want to get into a downward spiral of scientists' wages with other countries at a time when knowledge is power? We can't build on a society where our short term economic gains outweigh our long term needs. Outsourcing may work quite nicely for corporations, especially in our global economy, but it leaves the average American in a lurch. A few of us will do quite nicely, while the rest of us will be wondering what the heck happened as we ask "What good does outsourcing do for me if my $80,000 a year job is exported to India where they can find someone to do the same work for under $7,000 a year and any other job I am qualified for is also exported?"

I understand that jobs going to other countries is something that is here to stay because it keeps down costs for corporations. Must be "nice" to live in a society where you are able to live on under $10,000 a year, assuming you like living in crowded neighborhoods, crammed into subway trains, have a lot of pollution etc that are all cost savings for corporations. If all these "good" jobs keep going overseas because it is cheaper, America will have to either decrease our standard of living to bring our competitiveness down to their level or impose some sort of tariff on those overseas manufacturers who have much lower costs because they don't have to worry about pollution or workers' rights (this could be used to help corporations with American workers, which have to pay added "taxes" to comply with our health and safety laws compete more efficiently). Otherwise, we have to wonder what will the average American do to earn a living in the future, aside from provide services to foreigners who will be able to dictate terms because they will have all the money by then.

For decades we have been outsourcing jobs to other countries. First it was the blue collar manufacturing jobs. We told the middle class blue collar workers to go back to college or take a lower paying job for the better good of the US. More recently, we've been telling our educated workforce that their jobs are now outsourceable and they should go to graduate school to get even more education so they could specialize for the better good of the US. Now we're telling our scientists that their jobs can be done elsewhere for the better good of the US? No wonder our trade deficit is so high; if everything is done in other countries, what will we be actually exporting in trade?

Instead of importing scientists, or outsourcing scientific work to low wage countries, we should be expanding on increasing our scientific abilities here. Instead of looking at short term financial gains, we need to take the long term approach. I'm not naive and know that money makes the research happen, but it's 11:58 PM and we need to start thinking about tomorrow. One of these days the rest of the world is going to realize that we're only a bunch of leeches, living on our past glories, running up huge bills while we continue to party and waste resources and not contributing a darn thing to the world.

Years ago, Trenton makes, the world takes, could've been a motto not just for NJ, but for the entire US. Granted, we were helped in the later 20th century by the little fact that most of our competitors were bombed out by WW2, but that slogan said a lot about our nation, even as we moved into a post-industrial economy; we may have been selling services in lieu of goods, but at least we were still selling "something." Now, with outsourcing, it seems as if it's the world that makes and the US that takes. This can't last forever. We need to invest in our future; sending all our productivity overseas and letting somebody else do the work while we just sit on the beach and blog isn't going to work forever.