Jobs are not finite commodities that are "moved" from one place to another - that static model can only exist in the mind of someone who hasn't really thought it through, someone who doesn't understand the expansive nature of human activity and the true magic of wealth creation.
If there were 100 of us crashed on an island we might just sit there for a few hours trying to figure out what had happened, but it wouldn't take long for us to create "jobs". Jobs are created where ever there is a need to do something, to produce a product, deliver a service, etc, it is human beings at work - we'd quickly start building shelter, trying to find food, etc, we'd build an entire economy out of nothing but thin air in no time at all. All it takes to create "jobs" is to get people off of their ass and get them to do something. You can get another "job" just by standing up right now and going to get something accomplished, by being productive. It's not magic, "jobs" don't fall from the sky, they aren't created by big companies (or the government), or "shipped overseas", it's just people doing stuff.
The number of "jobs" expands as human activity expands. The "jobless rate" is simply the number of people sitting on their ass not doing anything productive. The only reason jobs look like such a commodity is because there are people who go around counting how many people are sitting on their ass not doing anything ... but the ability to count and record numbers doesn't actually change the nature of what human activity is. Your whole family could give themselves "jobs" by picking up a shovel and going outside to plant produce, or by learning to use fiberglass to make small sailboats, or getting a book and learning to program computers, or whatever.
Groups of people sometimes come together to form ad hoc kinds of teams to do activities together that could create products or services that others might pay money for. Sometimes we call these teams "companies". The people who bring the teams together are called the "owners", they kind of run the show, but it's really their customers who create the potential for work to be done on an ongoing basis. Companies can disband the team if they want, go somewhere else and play, or whatever they want to do. They can't, however, "take your job". They can kick you off of the team, or they can form a new team overseas, or whatever ... but so what ? Are we all such lemmings that we can't get off our ass and do something productive unless there's somebody around to call the shots for us ? The increase in big companies and the corresponding belief by people that they are "given jobs" and that jobs are "moved" is all a testament to how brain dead most of us have become that we can't imagine doing anything without being told by some greater power to do it.
There is no shortage of "jobs" in America. All these "jobs being shipped overseas" are just a recognition that American labor is needed to do things other than manufacturing. Yes, we do have some lower paying service sector jobs, so what, we've always had low paying service sector jobs, and even the lowest paid can afford cars, a place to live, etc, which wasn't always the case with low paying service jobs. But more than that, most of the things we need Americans to do now are simply more important than making widgets. Widget making isn't always high art, many people who make widgets are reduced to being bolt turners, package sealers, metal stampers, etc, it's not exactly stimulating work. Isn't it better if we can let people who are really excited about those opportunities do that work so we can focus on more important stuff in this country ? I don't mean to sound like manufacturing isn't honorable work, it is, of course, we need manufacturing to create almost everything we use, but it's also very hard to pay people a working wage in America to do that kind of work because it is often such unskilled labor that it can be done anywhere and that means it's easy to out-compete American workers by using foreign workers who are just beginning to be involved in manufacturing.
When a "job moves overseas", it doesn't actually move. For a single worker in the United States you can pay 10 workers in a lot of countries, and then essentially use a single worker in the United States to "manage". That management might be moving the goods by long haul trucking, or it might be working a telephone to take customer orders, or it might be designing product that eventually gets built by those 10 workers overseas, etc ... but the point is that the job doesn't "move" overseas - jobs don't just "move". It's human activity, it's getting 10 people off their ass in India to do something, and retasking the 1 person in the United States to do something else. That's why despite all these "jobs moving overseas" America still has a historically low 5.7% unemployment rate. Yes, approximately 1 out of every 20 people are sitting on their ass not doing anything, but the other 19 out of 20 are hard at work, that wouldn't be true if all these jobs had "moved overseas".
Ideally I think it'd be great if everyone in America worked. Why not stop sitting on your butt, design a new kind of bicycle, fly overseas, and get some people in the Sudan to start building them ? See, that's what it's all about, getting people up and moving, doing something. It isn't some evil plot to destroy America, it's just trying to get the whole world involved for everyone's benefit. It's Capitalism, baby. It's unleashing the expansive capacity of the human animal to create wealth.
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Originally Posted by The Richest Man in Babylon
"Wealth grows wherever men exert energy," Arkad replied. "If a rich man builds him a new palace, is the gold he pays out gone ? No, the brickmaker has part of it and the laborer has part of it, and the artist has part of it. And everyone who labors upon the house has part of it. Yet when the palace is completed, is it not worth all it cost ? And is the ground upon which it stands not worth more because it is there ? Wealth grows in magic ways. No man can prophesy the limit of it. Have not the Phoenicians built great cities on barren coasts with the wealth that comes from their ships and commerce on the seas ?"
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