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Ironically, if it's true that the jobs are being off-shored, rather than on-shored and filled by locals, this would be beneficial for the countries who currentl

by mc32 12d ago

Ironically, if it's true that the jobs are being off-shored, rather than on-shored and filled by locals, this would be beneficial for the countries who currently find themselves in a brain-drain spiral (be it India, Ukraine, etc.). It would result in a more tech and economically balanced world rather than having two lobes (USA and China). People would say that it's a detriment to the US's future --but those are often the most critical of US hegemony.

cmiles8 12d ago
The Indian offshore firms are scrambling because of the opposite happening. If all this work was just flooding to India then the panic that’s happening there over the industry imploding wouldn’t be occurring. The sort of work traditionally handled by cheap offshore labor is now the sort of work most ripe for replacement by AI. So it’s burning the candle from both ends. The low value stuff is getting replaced by AI and not sent there and the high value stuff struggles to get delivered by cheap labor because the play was always cost of and not the quality of the talent.
bijowo1676 12d ago
US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing powerhouse. Partly that push was created by the labor unions, who pushed the cost of doing manufacturing business far above what was profitable and feasible. When the environment becomes hostile to conducting business, then jobs will leave and local industries atrophy.
- dh2022 12d ago
  How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business? BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.
  - bijowo1676 12d ago
    the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. the reason is that US wanted to do specialized high value manufacturing, and was offshoring everything low value and low margin, because of increasing cost of environment and labor regulations and unions. My fear is that if US becomes hostile to foreign tech workers, they will simply create alternatives to US Big Tech in other countries and US economy will suffer. Current US domination of global tech is partly because of foreign tech talent.
    - dh2022 12d ago
      "the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. " - not true. Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s in small part due to NAFTA and then accelerated when China entered WTO in early 2000s (thank you President Clinton for this one). The manufacturing employment trend shows this quite clearly I think: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
      - disgruntledphd2 11d ago
        > Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s Speaking as an Irish person who grew up in the 80's, this isn't true as there were loads of US companies manufacturing in Ireland back then. There were even clothes manufacturers until the mid 90s. So I'd probably agree more with the OP here, perhaps the Asian outsourcing happened in the 90s (but even then, loads of my toys as a kid were made in Taiwan), but this has been happening for a while. It's potentially related to the relaxation of capital controls that happened in the 70s.

by mc32 12d ago

cmiles8 12d ago

The Indian offshore firms are scrambling because of the opposite happening. If all this work was just flooding to India then the panic that’s happening there over the industry imploding wouldn’t be occurring. The sort of work traditionally handled by cheap offshore labor is now the sort of work most ripe for replacement by AI. So it’s burning the candle from both ends. The low value stuff is getting replaced by AI and not sent there and the high value stuff struggles to get delivered by cheap labor because the play was always cost of and not the quality of the talent.

bijowo1676 12d ago

US has shipped all manufacturing jobs to Asia, including China and got the Rust Belt in exchange (and huge corporate profits). and China is now a manufacturing powerhouse. Partly that push was created by the labor unions, who pushed the cost of doing manufacturing business far above what was profitable and feasible. When the environment becomes hostile to conducting business, then jobs will leave and local industries atrophy.

dh2022 12d ago
How was the environment that enabled businesses to lower their cost by admitting China in WTO hostile to conducting business? BTW - with or without unions manufacturing was profitable in the US before NAFTA and China entering WTO. So your narrative that manufacturing was dying because of labor unions does not hold much water.
- bijowo1676 12d ago
  the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. the reason is that US wanted to do specialized high value manufacturing, and was offshoring everything low value and low margin, because of increasing cost of environment and labor regulations and unions. My fear is that if US becomes hostile to foreign tech workers, they will simply create alternatives to US Big Tech in other countries and US economy will suffer. Current US domination of global tech is partly because of foreign tech talent.
  - dh2022 12d ago
    "the offshoring of manufacturing started in the 50s and 60s and accelerated in the 80s. " - not true. Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s in small part due to NAFTA and then accelerated when China entered WTO in early 2000s (thank you President Clinton for this one). The manufacturing employment trend shows this quite clearly I think: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/manemp
    - disgruntledphd2 11d ago
      > Manufacturing offshoring started in late 90s Speaking as an Irish person who grew up in the 80's, this isn't true as there were loads of US companies manufacturing in Ireland back then. There were even clothes manufacturers until the mid 90s. So I'd probably agree more with the OP here, perhaps the Asian outsourcing happened in the 90s (but even then, loads of my toys as a kid were made in Taiwan), but this has been happening for a while. It's potentially related to the relaxation of capital controls that happened in the 70s.