The US has engaged in offshoring for years. Why are we concerned now?

With IT?

In the past, have other industries replaced the ones that went offshore?

What's to replace IT? The wal-marts and related giant corporate chains of the world?

Weapons, lotsa Weapons.

We have always know back with sneakers being made over seas that we did not see the saving but only the stock holders and CE O's and the basketball player in the ads. It really is an endless spin down. Unless you want a country of two classes. Maybe 5% having it all and the rest of us.

it is affecting middle class and tech. workers. People who can actually get their voices heard. When it reaches the top wage earners then something will be done about it. This may never happen as the richest do not labor.

and partially because it's become clear that the only jobs we will have left are low wage, dead end service jobs and healthcare, and we're even exporting part of our healthcare jobs.

We've reached a tipping point because Joe Suburb has finally realized that no matter how many times he retrains, his job will be vulnerable to offshoring. He's already educated and has probably already changed careers at least once. He no longer has any hope that he can stay ahead of the trend.

White collar types who thought their jobs were safe have now found out that they are not. Everything from reading X-rays to billing to advertising accounts to whole bookeeping departments are being sent to English speaking countries all over the world, and those white collar jobs have been the mainstay of suburbia for decades.

I just wonder what these shortsighted corporate types are gong to do whtn no one is left in their primary market with the income it takes to buy their goods and services.

when the factories were offshored. It is the realization that there is nothing left to invest in for training.

It is not just IT. And not just the US.

Factories in Mexico and Central America are relocating to China to take advantage of the Communist slave labor.

I'm reading a book called "Going Up the River" right now. About the privatization/history/industrialization of prisons in the US. One of the most pivotal moments was after Attica & at the rise of crack cocaine the change to federally mandated minimum sentences and mandatory sentencing a whole plethora of changes broke out -- creating not only a situation, but a perspective on crime/punishment that had not existed prior to these changes.

I think the same thing is going on with trade. Some on the surface minor changes, which were sold in agreeable packaging (NAFTA, GATT, WTO, IMF, etc. -- which sound like "just a summit" to some ears) have tremors that seem slight in the US at first. But, now, we are beginning to get a fuller picture of what the consequences of such changes are.

I think Ralph Nader (though I'm not voting for him, I wish I could vote for some of his ideas!) said it best on Bill Moyers' NOW this morning: these international trade/financing organizations & international corporations now have US Military to back them. This war in Iraq is not a war for America, it is a war for multi-national corporations. We are no longer a body of citizens, we are irrelevant consumers funding corporate empire. That's a consequence that was not perceived at the outset...but, which is only the tip of the iceberg regarding changes in our country & our standard of living, which lie ahead.

I don't think I'm the best to frame this thought. But, I believe we are about to learn that corporations have completely hijacked our country. We will be reliving the days prior to Sinclair's "The Jungle" on a modern day turf. Outsourcing is part of this collapse/shift.