Outsourcing

What’s made in China -- death? Is the principle of free trade really more important than the health of our citizens? So far, at least, we know the answer.

Let’s make four points:

First, it’s darn scary to learn that Chinese-manufactured toothpaste on our store shelves could be poisonous. There have been only close calls here, as far as we know -- with the long-term health effects, of course, yet to be determined. But in Panama, more than 100 people are known… more

If a leading American presidential candidate -- and her husband, an ex-president -- seem to have unnaturally close connections to foreign companies interested in draining away American jobs, should that be of interest to Americans?

Some, including campaign rival Barack Obama, say yes, this should be a big story. But the mainstream media seem to say no. Why this media lack of interest?

For the past six years -- since Bill Clinton left the White House, since Hillary Clinton entered the U.S.… more

"The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to avoid being deceived by economists."-- Joan Robinson, Cambridge University

On page one of The Wealth of Nations, Adam Smith illustrates the central principle of his economics with an example taken from, in his words, a "very trifling manufacture": the making of pins. Smith goes to some effort to describe the process. "One man draws out the wire," he writes, "another… more

One Monday this spring, a forty-three-year-old salesclerk at the Home Depot in Plano, Texas, scribbled some updates onto an old resume and took it to his local copy shop. To his education and work history -- a bachelor's degree in industrial engineering and technology, service in the U.S. Marine Corps -- he added a recent moonlighting job as a handyman and a new "career objective." Ten minutes later, in southern India, a middle-aged Hindu man in a cavernous… more

In this major policy address, Senator Joe Lieberman unveiled a new strategy for tackling the growing threat from the offshore outsourcing of American jobs. He described what he believes to be the true dimensions of this problem and outlined specific policy proposals for addressing it.

Sen. Lieberman argued that the current political debate on offshore outsourcing misses the underlying structural changes at work, and that only strong bipartisan leadership can save American jobs and restore America's economic strength.

Alan Greenspan's honesty is tough for politicians to swallow in an election year, but he is saying things that the nation and political candidates need to hear. Not only has he uttered a truth that most people know but don't want publicly to accept -- Social Security and Medicare are functionally insolvent without a cut in benefits -- but he has warned that the dangers of "creeping protectionism" springing from the high profile debate over offshoring US jobs may seriously… more

News that major U.S. technology companies, among them IBM, plan to export thousands of high-skill jobs overseas indicates that worrisome trends in the U.S. economy will probably strengthen. Optimists contend that such "workforce flexibility" guarantees that something new -- the Internet, biotechnology -- will turn up to create similar high-paying jobs and carry the economy forward. But rather than triggering real economic development, moving white-collar jobs offshore underscores how reliant the U.S. economy has become on inflating high-end wealth and… more