With the huge layoffs in major employment sectors such as IT, Accounting and Legal (to name just a few), our Federal government has to step in and correct the trade imbalance with lower wage, emerging nations (e.g. India). As it stands now we are stripping out all of our middle class jobs and packing them off to India.
The best way, I believe, to tackle this problem is to add a value added tax to all services performed by American companies in foreign nations. Thus all hourly service fees, manufactured goods, and other work product would be subject to a corrective VAT. This could be pegged to the currency rates of each country’s currency versus the dollar or could be a flat fee applied across the board.
The only way to prevent outsourcing of American work overseas is to level the playing field. Emerging nations have no incentive to impair their citizens’ ability to find work (unlike our nation) and thus we have to take corrective action in order to save our way of life and standard of living. Otherwise, we will continue to wipe out the American Middle Class and leave only a precarious few at the top, some with decent paying government jobs and the rest scrapping around to make do, paycheck to paycheck.
Instead of levying taxes on domestically produced products, it’s time to tax the offshore and outsourced production and allow American taxpayers to keep working and retain their standard of living. As it stands now, the lure of lower wages, the absence of OSHA, anti-discrimination, environmental and labor law is too strong. Each day brings more news of another company outsourcing its labor force to India, China or another low wage, sweatshop nation. If we do not do something, then all of our efforts at reducing pollution, establishing regulations and laws to protect workers and the environment will be rendered pointless.
This would certainly bring a lot of chatter to international circles, including the WTO. But in the end, maybe it is time to abandon such organizations if they are one sided arrangements that constitute a gutting our middle class and destroying our way of life.
If, as the outsourcing apologists contend, that outsourcing increases employment here in the United States, please point me to all of the jobs that outsourcing has created. I will happily post any such information here. Of course no one will reply, as many, many more jobs have been lost due to outsourcing than will ever be created stateside. Workers retrain at great expense only to find their new career to be outsourced as well.