Outsourcing or Exporting America - Essay Example

The continued heated debate on outsourcing’s pros and cons have affected one of the pillars of American journalism, a CNN host and anchor, Lou Dobbs, on his strong contention that America has been embarking on selling jobs to other countries at the detriment of the American people. In an article written by Dobbs entitled “Exporting America: false choices” published in the CNNMoney on the 10th of March 2004, he openly countered the criticisms allegedly directed at him by his colleagues in the media industry.

Several known and prominent journalists and media men were revealed to attack Dobbs’ views on exporting American jobs: “Gerard Baker of the Financial Times, An editorial in the Economist magazine, Daniel Henninger of the Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post columnist James Glassman” (Dobbs pars. 1-4). The detractors argued that Dobbs views that “outsourcing American jobs is neither sound, smart, humane nor in the national interest” were preposterous, absurd, extremely protectionist and highly sensationalist.

In support of Dobbs arguments, the most viable and credible contentions were the information that acknowledged the continued reflection of trade deficits in the country for more than three decades, actually, starting in 1980 (Crooks). This fact, in conjunction with information provided by Torrance who reviewed the ill-effects of outsourcing, to wit: “income levels are frozen and cannot compete with inflation. Workers lose leverage to negotiate fair wage increases or promotion. Foreign employment policies, such as minimum wage, and working conditions differ.

Businesses who are outsourcing can set a minimum wage in developing countries that would never be accepted as a minimum wage in America” (Torrance par. 6). At the same token, Davidson, a guest columnist for FinalCall.com News, wrote in an article entitled “The outsourcing of America’s jobs”, one year before Dobbs’ article was published, that the controversial nature of outsourcing jobs has been eminent and his citing another written discourse revealed that: “In an article that appeared in the August 1, 2003 edition of the Kansas City Star, Shashank Bengali suggested that the goal of a growing number of American companies is to outsource customer-service work to India, as a result of India’s low wages, thriving high-tech sector and annual output of two million English-speaking college graduates.

A study by Forrester Research, a technology consulting group, estimates that 3.3 million white-collar service jobs will be outsourced to places like China, Russia and the Philippines—but more than half will go to India” (Davidson par. 7). The U.S. Census Bureau has divulged statistics that reveal continued greater imports of the U.S. of Indian goods, as compared to exports of American goods, which could be traced consistently with the outsourcing data abovementioned (U.S. Census Bureau). More alarming are the statistics cited by Otterman in her discourse that indicates the following facts: “Boston-based consultancy Forrester estimates that 400,000 service jobs have been lost to offshoring since 2000, with jobs leaving at a rate of 12,000 to 15,000 per month…By 2015, Forrester predicts, roughly 3.

3 million service jobs will have moved offshore, including 1.7 million "back office" jobs such as payroll processing and accounting, and 473,000 jobs in