Creative Destruction

Most people would call that headline an oxymoron - and in this specific case, they'd likely be correct. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, there's an editorial piece (subscription required) discussing outsourcing of service jobs to India or China.

As you'd expect, the editor is all in favor of outsourcing. He quotes Joseph Schumpeter, calling such outsourcing "creative destruction." The idea being that as such jobs are outsourced, saving companies about 58 cents for each dollar in wages moved off-shore, the money saved is then used for innovation and future job creation; "creating new jobs we often can't imagine."

Sounds familiar, doesn't it? Think tax cuts for corporations and the rich that create massive deficits which will be erased by future revenues "we often can't imagine."

The WSJ's answer? Well, you'll recognize most of them - warmed over as they are:

"The alternative is to do what it takes for Americans to remain innovative and create the next wave of wealth-creating technology and ideas. Improve K-12 education, especially in the inner city, maintain an open immigration policy so the world's brains can live in the U.S., reform the tax code and fix the legal system."

We already know about BushCo's commitment to education: No Child Left Behind is woefully underfunded and is now basically just lip service. And just how open an immigration policy we have - or can have - is wide-open to debate given the ever tightening scrutiny of immigrants. Tax code reform under Bush is reform only from the point of view of the very rich. And fixing the legal system basically means protecting business from all forms of civil action.

Even if we could depend on aWol to implement such schemes fairly, it would only do the next generation of workers good. Those whose jobs move to India or China today are stuck with shrinking unemployment benefits, loss of medical insurance and a shredded social safety net.

But of course, you can always depend on conservatives to be compassionate, no? When it comes right down to it, here's the money quote from the WSJ article, the one that really says how our compassionate conservative politicians think. When discussing some state laws requiring call centers to re-route calls to an American location if the caller requests, the editor says: "We doubt someone from South Dakota finds it any easier than someone from Delhi to understand a New Jersey accent."

In other words, suck it up.

I wonder if we could outsource the government?