Summary

su Thinking, Writing and Reading Rhetorically explains that the readings at the end of chapter 4 “…address the issue of outsourcing or offshoring, the business practice of moving jobs from developed countries like the United States to poor, developing like Mexico, China, and India. Outsourcing offers companies a large qualified workforce willing to work for lower wages and often more lenient environmental and safety regulations for factories” (p. 169). A controversial issue has been whether outsourcing has become a good or bad thing in the United States to the economy and the people who have jobs. On the one hand the cause of high unemployment has been because of outsourcing. From this perspective, outsourcing has become an issue due to the cause of unemployment and how the economy degraded. According to this view, as shown in the cartoon by Mike Lane, outsourcing has caused the loss of many workers jobs. Lane shows a worker that sees a sign on a closed factory stating, “Labor Day: This year’s picnic will be held in Mexico, where your job went.” (p. 175). On the other hand, however, others argue that outsourcing is good for the economy and is better for the people. As stated by Thomas Friedman, “But I am saying that there is more to outsourcing than just economics. There’s also geopolitics. It is inevitable in a networked world that our economy is going to shed low-wage, low-prestige jobs. To the extent that they go to places like India or Pakistan—where they are viewed as high-wage, high-prestige jobs—we make not only a more prosperous world, but a safer world for our own 20-year-olds” (p. 171). My own view is that outsourcing is bad and the U.S. should not be letting this happen to not only the economy, but to the people as well. Though I concede that there will always be jobs out there for the people in other countries, I still maintain that outsourcing should not be happening in the U.S. because many people are losing their jobs to people who weren’t