Outsourcing and Patriotism

By Bill Moyers, NOW with Bill Moyers. Posted August 21, 2004.

Following is Bill Moyers inteview with CNN's Lou Dobbs on the PBS program NOW. Moyers starts the interview by discussing Dobbs' new book, "Exporting America : Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas."

Bill Moyers: This book is more than an economic argument, it's a political manifesto. Let me read you the opening paragraph. Quote, "The power of big business over our national life has never been greater. Never have there been fewer business leaders willing to commit to the national interest over the selfish interest for the good of the company over that of the company's they head." Are you saying that these companies are unpatriotic for outsourcing jobs?

Lou Dobbs: I'm saying not that they're unpatriotic but they're absolutely indifferent to the national interest, that they have given other interests primacy over the national interest. They've done so because, in my opinion, of a cultural shift over the last three to four decades in this country. The absence of a countervailing political influence to the power of corporate America. Lobbyists, think tanks, across the board the power of corporate America is unparalleled in Washington, DC.

Moyers: It's not just corporations that are outsourcing jobs though. I mean in your own book you report 40 state governments, hospitals, even the non-profit Smithsonian Institution...

Dobbs: Right.

Moyers: [is] sending jobs abroad looking for cheaper labor and for skilled workers.

Dobbs: And in each instance the enablers are corporate America. They are businesses whose business it is to kill American jobs and to ship those jobs overseas. This is insidious, it is spreading, it is absolutely dangerous in every respect.

Moyers: I'm no economist. Made only a B in economics by sitting next to my wife who was very helpful to me. She made an A. But even I know that services are now so much a part of any advanced economy that it seems inevitable that some service jobs will go to where they can be performed more cheaply.

Dobbs: I think that's right. And I think that international trade is a reality of our modern existence. And it should be. I believe however that the idea that our middle class should be forced to compete on a price basis with those workers in an emerging market who are making in many cases cents, while our workers are making $15 to $20 an hour is totally unfair.

We're talking about not an economic judgment but a political judgment, a social judgment. What kind of country do we want? Do we want to destroy the middle class? Because if we do let's continue outsourcing jobs.

Moyers: But the law of classic comparative advantage...

Dobbs: Sure.

Moyers: ...has an affect. If a car if can be made more cheaply in Mexico that's where it should be made.

Dobbs: Right.

Moyers: If our telephone bill can be processed more cheaply in India that's where it should be sent.

Dobbs: Actually Ricardo did not suggest in any way....

Moyers: The great economist.

Dobbs: The economist who is the father of the comparative and absolute advantage. He did not in any way suggest that you should have the middle class of any country competing with 30 million unemployed Chinese. He never dreamed about the portability of the factors of production, capital and labor, our knowledge base, our technological advantages, which are being exported and sent to these countries for no other reason than the fact that their labor is cheaper than ours. And the idea that we would put our labor force in competition with the labor force in the case of India that's basically double our size, most of whom speak English, and work for about a tenth of our wages, is a political judgment. It is not an economic judgment.

Moyers: A political judgment?

Dobbs: Absolutely.

Moyers: But libertarian economists like Lew Rockwell, who's been on this show, says it's government that's driving these jobs overseas by their high taxation, by regulation, by the big cost of lawyers.

Dobbs: And I think there's a good case to be made that regulation, tort law, healthcare adds about, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, about 22 percent to the cost of goods. So what. It's part of the cost of a better life. That's what this society is. We're a democratic free enterprise society. Unparalleled in our success.

Are we to absolutely turn back the clock on every achievement that we've made to improve the lives of our citizens in order for a U.S. multinational to get cheaper labor in Romania or the Philippines or India or China? I don't think so.

Moyers: But isn't it an economic fact that people whose skills are obsolete or who don't seek the requisite education and training will be left behind in the world's changing markets? A world that Adam Smith and David Ricardo never could imagine.

Bill Moyers is the host of the weekly public affairs series NOW with Bill Moyers, which airs Friday nights on PBS.

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