The World of Grandpa Don

Out-Sourcing Our Jobs
 

With unemployment as high as it is, many are disturbed that many of our jobs have been "out-sourced" to foreign countries. It has become a major problem.

Improvements in transportation and low wages in third world countries have made it economical for companies to manufacture goods there and ship them here. The upside theory is that as the cost of production goes down, corporate profits can go up and/or consumer prices can go down. The investor and the consumer will gain.

The downside is that this results in loss of employment in this country. Besides the human factor, it reduces the overall buying power here, forcing prices down as well as profits.

Thus, the economy is in constant flux, delicately balanced. When you think about it, this is always the case. We are not a “farm” economy with all goods and services produced and consumed locally. There was a time when, if a product was not available, we did without. In this country we are reluctant to do without and are constantly striving to raise our standard of living. We not only refuse to lower our wages and benefits, we continually demand more. A raise has become an annual "right" of employees.

The reaction to the problem is to ask government to impose trade restrictions of various kinds in an effort to increase the cost of imported products to the point where it becomes more economical to produce them at home. Not too long ago, this action would penalize foreign companies and bolster the companies producing goods in the US. But the producers of goods have become multi-national corporations and tariffs may hurt US investors. To make matters more complicated, investing is no longer limited to the wealthy. The middle class now either own stocks and bonds directly or through retirement plans of various sorts.

We tend to think that this situation is new to the world. It is not. It is a situation that has existed since people started trading with each other. It has been exasperated by modern transportation and communication as well as increased population. There is always a short term imbalance of supply and demand.

Is there a fair solution to the problem? If you mean “fair” in that it doesn't adversely effect us, I don’t think so. Let’s be honest. We look to our own comfort first. We sit in church and listen to the missionaries talk about the poverty at their missions and maybe a tear comes to the eye. In any case, we drop a couple bucks in the basket and our mind is set at ease. We have provided food for a few days for those poor unfortunates. Maybe the long term solution would be to give them jobs. Oops, that is what the multi national companies are doing. True, they are not motivated by any noble or long term solutions to world poverty but they are taking advantage of the lower standard of living in these countries. Worse yet, in some cases they are taking advantage of social structures which allow them to exploit the poor. (But that is a different issue.)

The short term solutions are never fair to everyone. But they lead to the long term solutions if they are allowed to take their course. The problem is TIME. It will be a very long time before wages and the standard of living in third world countries rise to our level. Hopefully ours will not go down towards theirs, at least not too much. We do not live in isolation. We are, like it or not, a world community. For now (the next couple millennium, maybe) we will always be in imbalance for the short term. But, think about it, … who is hurting more, "us" or "them"?

God created this world and everything and everyone in it. There are enough resources to support all of us. Some have a lot and some have almost nothing. Not many of us can sell all we have and give it to the poor and we are not asked to do that. Most of us do have jobs or sources of income. What we can do is lend a hand to relatives or neighbors who do not. The alternative would be have those people come here. That will happen to some extent but is not a viable solution to the problem. (Yet, another issue.)

In any case, we have to stop thinking in terms of “them” and “us”. We are all God’s children, brothers in the site of God. It is not easy to separate our (selfish) interests from our obligation to be stewards of God's gifts. But we at least must become aware of the nature of the problem and ask, "What does my Christian faith tell me to do?"