Penn Name | The (out)source of job issues

Imagine graduating from college, with heavy loans weighing on your shoulders, just to find that there are no job prospects available in this country.

Many of us chose our majors with earning potential in mind — at least enough to pay the bills. College freshman Brian Hsia, for instance, admits that his future salary is one of his deciding factors for choosing a major. Yet formerly safe jobs, such as in engineering, are now being outsourced. And according to a New York Times article from earlier this month, even the finance sector is starting to offshore jobs to India, where employees are willing to work for a dime on the dollar. Times opinion columnist Ron Hira estimates that 22 percent of jobs are vulnerable to outsourcing, as well as 35 out of the 39 jobs in the science and technology sectors.

Is outsourcing our enemy? The majority of the Senate, which blocked a bill a few weeks ago that would have discouraged firms from sending American jobs overseas, didn’t think so. The Senators’ reasoning appears to be that the “trickle-down theory” will push us out of this recession. Yet I feel that not passing a bill like President Barack Obama’s anti-outsourcing bill will have dire consequences for our economy.

Currently, companies that ship jobs overseas receive tax cuts. Obama’s bill would’ve taxed companies that decided to outsource jobs, while giving tax incentives to repatriate work that’s already overseas. If the tax amounted to more than the profit made from swapping American employees with employees overseas, then firms would be inclined to hire some of the 9.6 percent of Americans who are unemployed.

The initial estimated $300 million tax revenue the government would make from these companies would barely make a dent in their multi-billion dollar budgets, and would theoretically go toward making more jobs. Over a decade, these companies would then make a net profit of $700 million in tax cuts, according to an article in The Washington Post. This money would be a reward for re-employing the American workforce and would more than make up for the tax.

We don’t know for sure that the bill, if passed, would’ve actually halted outsourcing or created more U.S. jobs. Also, the fact that companies would make a net profit that large could end up backfiring, since that money might never “trickle” back to working-class families. But we need to protect local jobs somehow. The American workforce needs to be our main concern, and saving companies an extra few million dollars now won’t help college graduates and the unemployed at present or in the future.

There are benefits to outsourcing, including making innovation cheaper and keeping American corporations in the high-profit zone. It also encourages international communication. According to College sophomore Sharree Walls, “There’s a bigger picture. Americans need to be more competitive … [and] companies have the right to outsource.”

Nevertheless, a government’s first priority needs to be this nation. Right now, college students are not only competing against other Americans for jobs, but also graduates from virtually every country. And outsourcing makes the United States uncomfortably dependent on other countries. As Nursing sophomore Tacie Reger said, “There’s a lot of people here who could use jobs.”

We don’t know which jobs are safe from outsourcing. Today, you’re safe if you’re working in the service and medical fields. Tomorrow, we may find ways to outsource those positions too. With this uncertainty, all we can do for now is major in what we like (or not), hope that this will eventually lead to a job and pray that one day the government realizes that building jobs in other countries does nothing to build jobs here. Until that happens, we’ll have to wait until countries like India and Mexico decide to outsource. Maybe then deserving Americans can once again have jobs.

Laura Cofsky is a College sophomore from New York. Her e-mail address is cofsky@theDP.com. Penn Name appears on Fridays.

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