Outsourcing Our Future

Re “Bush Supports Shift of Jobs Overseas,” Feb. 10:

President Bush is out of touch with the American public in his support of the shift of jobs overseas. Most Americans are more concerned about their job futures than being able to purchase cheap goods. Workers in the U.S. who are displaced by overseas outsourcing can have a negative effect on the overall economy.

It is not “fair trade” when decades of U.S. labor laws are circumvented by employees in Third World countries working at a fraction of American salaries. There is no compelling reason for sending those jobs overseas except to increase the profit margins of the companies doing that, so that the top executives of those companies can increase their own salaries and bonuses to unconscionable levels that are too-many-times higher than the salaries of their workforces.

Mary S. Torgan

Los Angeles

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Bush apparently thinks that my recently completed education in information technology -- which has just been made irrelevant because of outsourcing -- is “just a new way of doing international trade.” The chairman of Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors, N. Gregory Mankiw, then says that we may outsource a few radiologists. That means that the U.S. citizen whose medical record is associated with that outsourced radiologist will now be residing on a computer network in India.

My bank just announced it would outsource its call centers. So now my bank account has been outsourced to a computer network in India. My mother’s credit card company outsourced its call center to India. Now her account also resides in India. Mankiw then goes on to say that “more things are tradable than were tradable in the past.” I guess the new tradable goods are our privacy and sensitive personal data. With the concern over cyber-security and terrorism at its all-time high, what is the Indian government doing to secure my family’s data, which has now been sent overseas like spam?

Andre Radnoti

Los Angeles

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A funny thing happened on the way to reelection. The Bush administration is on the verge of becoming the first since the Great Depression to have lost (2 million-plus) more jobs than it has gained. The spin of this fact by the White Out-of-Touch House is that this will enrich the economy eventually. Funny, I thought Bush was running for reelection as the president of the United States, as opposed to that of India. I’m one confused American!

Ronald D. Radigan

Walnut

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I lost my job on Nov. 7, 2000, the very day it was announced that George W. Bush was elected. Election controversy aside, I would like to suggest that another job to be outsourced might be Bush’s. Maybe Mexican President Vicente Fox or, better, former Czech President Vaclav Havel, would help us out and run the country from their respective “offshore” locations.

It would certainly be cheaper -- as long as we didn’t have to pay them in pesos or euros.

Bobbie Savitz

Portland, Ore.