The debate about our country’s outsourcing of jobs continues, although the evidence is so clear, one wonders why it’s necessary. The following Business Week article was so large, and the issues are so widely discussed in other sources, only a few key portions were excerpted for purposes of criticism.

     Actually, this is almost a non-debate. Even the debater who warns of the dangers of outsourcing jobs seems comfortable when it's only manufacturing jobs being lost. She becomes alarmed only when the jobs are higher-status.

From Business Week, August 18-25 (a double issue).

Commentary: Outsourcing Jobs:
Is It Bad?

An accelerating pace is raising concerns over its effects.
Two BusinessWeek economists debate whether that's good or bad

These are anxious times for U.S. workers. Sure, the recovery seems to be getting under way. Yet hardly a week goes by without another report of a batch of high-paying, white-collar jobs getting exported to far cheaper locales such as India, China, or the Philippines. In mid-July, IBM set off a firestorm when news of its plans to move more white-collar jobs overseas was leaked to The New York Times. And news service Reuters announced on July 28 that it will move 600 or so jobs from New York, as well as dozens of other slots in England, Scotland, and Singapore, to its operations in India…

As white-collar jobs move away with increasing regularity, a debate that once focused on the loss of manufacturing to foreign outsourcing is once again raging: Just how serious for America, its workforce, and its economy is the shift?…

YES...

This is no longer about a few low-wage or manufacturing jobs. Now, one out of three jobs is at risk

Economic evolution is inevitable. Companies will always pursue the lowest-cost structure, which means less skilled work will move out of the U.S. to emerging economies. And that's a good thing, because living standards around the world will rise. Workers in developing nations will get new and higher-paying jobs, and consumers in the U.S. will be able to buy products that are cheaper than if they were made at home. The shift first occurred in textiles and other manufacturing jobs, followed by low-end services such as telemarketing and data entry. Now, it's moving up the labor food chain, leaving white-collar workers increasingly nervous….

Is the angst justified? It's probably too early to know for sure whether this latest shift in jobs is qualitatively different from past offshore movements. But it certainly feels that way. Outsourcing is hitting skilled jobs that were once thought "safe" across a far wider swath of white-collar America. What's more, the new outsourcing is occurring at a breathtaking pace….

Overall, the global economy will do much better, but the U.S. workforce may face frequent career changes and downward pressures on wages through every part of the economy subject to competition from foreign labor. And that's just as baby boomers will be counting on younger workers to pay a lot of money into the Social Security fund….

By Kathleen Madigan
Business Outlook Editor Madigan still believes in free trade.

...NO

America's strongest suit is innovation, which will always create new high-paying positions

Think of the world economy as a ladder. On the bottom rungs are the countries producing mainly textiles and other low-tech goods. Toward the top are the U.S. and other leading economies, which make sophisticated electronics, software, and pharmaceuticals. Up and down the middle rungs are all the other nations, manufacturing everything from steel to autos to memory chips.

Viewed in this way, economic development is simple: Everyone tries to climb to the next rung. This works well if the topmost countries can create new industries and products. Such invention allows older industries to move overseas while fresh jobs are generated at home. But if innovation stalls at the highest rung—well, that's bad news for Americans, who must compete with lower-wage workers elsewhere….

The biggest danger to U.S. workers isn't overseas competition. It's that we worry too much about other countries climbing up the ladder and not enough about finding the next higher rung for ourselves.

By Michael J. Mandel
Chief Economist Mandel writes about innovation and economic growth from New York.

     You’ll note that Ms. Madigan subconsciously sabotages her own logic. The looming problems she sees with the loss of higher-skill jobs are exactly what we’ve already seen with the loss of lower-skill jobs.

     Although she doesn't mention them specifically, the problems include the loss of income for masses of workers, the destruction of communities, the breakdown of families, etc., as have been reported elsewhere. When these problems were limited to working-class workers and communities, Ms. Madigan saw only benefits to American society.

     Now that the problems have migrated up to her social level, she’s beginning to get concerned. She says she believes in “free trade.” Not true. She believes that it’s perfectly ok to destroy workers' incomes by constantly pitting them against one another. That’s not “free trade.” That’s barbarism—and what we now know as globalization.

     (Free trade should be based on purely economic factors: nearness to raw materials, access to the distribution system, competence of management and technical talent, etc. It should not be solely a device to drive wages down and destroy workers' ability to negotiate for decent working conditions.)

     Also, when she notes that now "one out of three jobs is at risk," she demonstates that she has no clue as to the real downside of our job losses. When you lose one job out of three, it means that the two jobs that are left pay will now pay less, because of the greatly increased competition for jobs. This is exactly what we have seen happen to working-class wages over the past 25 years (which is of no concern to Ms. Madigan or Mr. Mandel).

     Mr. Mandel, arguing the negative, still sees no problem even when lower-level high-level workers lose their incomes (the lower-upper “rungs on the ladder”). After all, at the same time, a few lucky workers in the breakthrough technologies (the top rung of the ladder) become fabulously rich. But, hey Mike, the ladder is becoming much taller, and the top rungs are fewer and much narrower.

     Of course, for both Ms. Madigan and Mr. Mandel, and for most of the readers of Business Week, everything will turn out ok, no matter what.

     After all, investors, high-level corporate executives, and conservative economists and politicians, will continue to profit from the race to the bottom for international wages.