How the outsourcing of jobs increases jobs for Americans

Lou Dobbs, as he flies his helicopter to work each day, believes that since Microsoft’s latest optical mouse is made in Mexico and TVs are made in Korea and alarm clocks are made in China, America is being fleeced by the world. And you can blame whoever lives in the White House, regardless of his/her name. Convenient to have a platform from which to generate ratings, but my personal experience and general knowledge of how things operate tells me that this is bogus - and it assumes that the average American is barely capable of more than assembly line labor.

One example. I once worked in the world of electronics importation of products from Korea, Taiwan and China. We imported goods literally by the truckload and turned around and sold them to retailers throughout the US. The funny thing is the economics of it. A product manufactured in China for $5 sells to the importer for maybe $6. The importer turns around and sells it to the retailer for $12 and on the shelf sits a neat little gadget for only $24.99! Grab a calculator and show me how the outsourcing of this product hurt jobs and earning potential for working Americans.

Maybe we’re collectively barking up the wrong tree. What if the outsourcing of jobs is not actually the problem? What if the problem is the under valuing of the American workforce potential? Maybe instead of protecting jobs that are obsolete in today’s economy, we should make efforts to retrain America’s workforce so that the idea of working an assembly line is replaced by the idea of getting into service, sales, distribution and information content. Do you think UPS minds that the 3 million PS3s shipped to 35,000 retailers in the US were all made elsewhere? Do you suppose that all the stores selling the latest Mariah Carey album care where the disc was pressed? Who makes more from the disc? The maker or the seller? Where does iTunes fit into the discussion?

Can movie theaters, retail stores, cable and internet installation services, roofers, newspapers, bloggers, billboard advertisers outsource? Would you rather make the widget or make a living selling, using and servicing it?
Come on, people. America is supposed to the most advanced commercial society in the world. Let’s stop whining because we are not allow to push the green button on the injection mold machine. One foreigner pushes the button so that 10 Americans can have jobs getting it to the consumer. There is an equation I’ve never seen on CNN.

Just a thought I have nearly every day when I turn on the news using a remote made in China, assembled in Hong Kong and boxed with a TV from Korea. Suppose the manufacturers on the assembly line have a nicer TV than you do?