John Edwards writes a letter to Bush regarding the loss of American jobs [View All]

[SangamonTaylor]

Dear Mr. President:

I read with interest today's article in the Los Angeles Times entitled, "Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas." The article notes the statement of N. Gregory Mankiw, chairman of your Council of Economic Advisors, that, "Outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade." Mr. Mankiw added: "More things are tradable than were tradable in the past. And that's a good thing." I noted a similar passage in CEA's report released yesterday.

To my mind, these statements show incredible indifference to our country's job loss. I respectfully request answers from your administration to the following questions:

Is it "a good thing" that some 1 million American jobs have gone overseas since March 2001?
Is it "a good thing" that high-paying manufacturing jobs are leaving America and being replaced with low-paying services jobs?
Is it "a good thing" when companies lay off fairly paid workers in the United States and replace them with workers in other nations who are paid pennies per hour to work in terrible conditions?
Is it a "a good thing" that America's manufacturing sector, which brought us through World War II to unprecedented prosperity, has now lost jobs for 42 months in a row?
Would it be "a good thing" if the current members of the Council of Economic Advisors saw their jobs outsourced to economists elsewhere in America who better understand the need to save good jobs?

I look forward to hearing from you."