Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous -- for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend.

[ Is it maybe just the timing that's got everyone up in arms about outsourcing? The economy already sucks, so people are even less apt to condone a long term strategy that hurts in the short term?

Or maybe there's a disjoint between prediction and reality. My initial reaction was highly negative, but I'm softening just a little bit. I understand some of the arguments in favor of, and I'm willing to give them some credence, though I still don't trust the motives of big business. Big business tends to consolidate wealth, and "job creation" in and of itself isn't a pure good -- such as when the jobs are sweatshop class, for example. I'm begining to believe there's a solid economic justification for outsourcing, but that the real-world implementation of the practice by greedy magnates and politicians falls short of the idealized case used by economists to justify the practice. That's just a feeling I'm getting. I'm still no economist, but if there's anything life has taught me it's that everything's gray, and the tone shifts wildly based on how certain details are handled... I think outsourcing *could* be good, but *is* not. God knows we have little reason to trust Bush, his pack of wolves, or the multi-millionaires who benefit disproportionately from his economic policies. -k]

The Outsourcing Bogeyman