The guy that Thom Hartmann is interviewing seems to assume that Americans will be the people starting tomorrow's businesses. That is a very big and very mistaken assumption in my view.
The global markets are good and outsourcing is a great way to get rich quick crowd is just finishing off America.
They are simply wrong, and we are fools to listen to them.
I feel that I should explain more clearly.
Take a pot full of water -- a flower pot let's say. It's nice an full of all that wonderful water.
Then take a larger pot that is empty or that maybe has just a thin layer of water in the bottom. Now drill a tiny hole toward the bottom of the smaller, fuller pot and place it in the large pot with very little water in it and watch what happens. The water from the small pot will seep into the larger one and fill the larger one until the two pots hold equal amounts of water.
That's what world trade is about. It raises the living standard in countries that export to us. It lowers our living standard. Our living standard sinks as that of the world around us rises.
That would be OK except that with our system, the decrease in the living standard will not be spread equally among us.
If instead of having two Mercedes, world trade meant that a rich American, an outsourcer, could only have one and that someone poorer would only be able to afford a recent model used Ford, that would be fine.
But what the decline in our living standard will affect the poorest among us the most and our middle class will be considerably smaller and poorer than it has been since 1940.
The people who speak so glibly about the wonders of outsourcing and everyone starting their own business should go and travel in the back country, say in Turkey.
We traveled in Yugoslavia back in the 1960s. We saw the standing only toilets (hole in the floor; spread your feet wide apart, even women pee standing up in skirts no less -- what fun), the problems with roads (broke an axle on one) and water. There were lots of entrepreneurs if that is what you call poor people selling vegetables and services to even poorer people.
This outsourcing model promises great wealth to those unimpeded by compassion for others or the limitations of a conscience or a sense of ethics and poverty for most of the rest of us normal people.
We take things like electricity, paved streets, comfortable if not clean toilets, running, potable water, daily baths (not just once a week), hair brushes, fine shampoos and soaps, ordinary things that we will not have if the rich outsource our jobs.
This is a serious business guys. Been there; done that. We don't want to go there.
Stop outsourcing now.
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