Thursday, September 16, 2004

Thomas Sowell, is an economist and fellow at the Hoover Institution -- Stanford University. He is the author of several books, including his latest, "Applied Economics: Thinking Beyond Stage One."

Here are some of his thoughts on Job outsourcing:

"Official statistics published last March in the Survey of Current Business showed an increase of 2.8 million jobs outsourced by American-owned multinational corporations during a quarter of a century ending in 2001. Over that same span of time, there was an increase of 4.7 million jobs outsourced to Americans by foreign-owned multinational corporations."

"Any laws passed to stop the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries are almost certain to bring laws in other countries to stop the outsourcing of jobs to Americans."

"We had something like that during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when international trade restrictions were imposed in order to save jobs during a period of record unemployment. Countries around the world did the same thing, with the net result of a sharp reduction of international trade and a needless prolonging of the depression."

"Many policies designed to "save jobs" have effects that are the opposite of their intentions. Germany has some of the strongest job protection laws in the world — and double-digit unemployment rates are common in Germany."

Go here http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/sowell090904.asp for the rest of the article. My insert link feature is not weorking so will have to paste this into your browser.

Happy reading!!

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