While, I'm not trying to be paranoid, if theoretically, we were to have some armed conflict with Mainland China, how would we produce the necessary materials here for the military if all of our goods are being made over there? I think you can draw some parallels to the Civil War when all of the manufacturing industries were located in the North which left the South extremely vulnerable and without means to supply itself. There will always be some goods that will be outsourced but I think we should keep this in mind when deciding whether or not to ship the manufacturing of certain products overseas.
Another point I think that we should consider is if we are sending all of these 'assembly line', 'blue collar' jobs to China, and we are becoming a more service oriented and specialized society, we are trapping the foreign workers in a factory setting and not letting them develop new ideas and create new technology, etc. This might be kind of a 'naive' idea, but I feel like it would be selfish and harmful to advances in all sectors of the economy if we don't have people from different cultures and schools of thought pursuing their interests. We could be, in a sense, creating a strictly unskilled work environment in a whole country, and I just don't think that would be a positive thing.
Really, I'm not sure how relative these points are, but it's what came to mind after reading the article and everyone else's posts.
2 comments:
What can I say? Too much of everything is already bad.. Although I'd have to agree with you that outsourcing to China has a lot of advantages, but yes, we must learn when and how to stop..
offshore outsourcing China
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