Foreign Entitlement

At first glance, the article appeared to be an advertisement but, as I saw no disclosure to that affect, I began reading what portends to be an alarming realization that future trends in globalization bids farewell to highly technical jobs in the United States.

As it turned out, the ‘article’ in The Wall Street Journal was written by two esteemed professionals, Kannan Srikanth (Indian School of Business, assistant professor of strategy) and Phanish Puranam (London Business School, professor of strategic and international management) which I interpreted as a soft-shell approach to hard-sell an idea with the headline ‘Advice for Outsourcers: Think Bigger’ and a sub-headline that read, ‘Too many companies mistakenly limit offshore work to routine tasks’.

To sum it up, five questioned were asked of the corporate reader if their offshore business operations are hindered by poor performance, communication problems with onshore enterprises, and differences in education and training, but the nutshell was cracked and the meat of the ‘thesis’ was exposed with question #5, ‘Would it benefit you to be able to move more intellectually complex work offshore?’

Now, doesn’t that just beat all? Not at all. The ‘essay’ provided a link to a podcast where Jennifer Merritt, WSJ Career Journal Editor, interviewed Dr. Srikanth in a discussion emphasizing the advantages of widening the scope of offshore jobs to include highly educated professionals in organic and process chemistries, computer chip design, engineering design, risk evaluation, pharmaceuticals and other well-paid professionals with a disclaimer that such a strategy “would not necessarily result in cost-savings” – an unlikely claim.

Big business corporations in the U.S. and Western Europe were specifically identified as beneficiaries of the expansion of outsourcing jobs to workers not only in India, but also China. The domino effect will also lead to lay-offs of executive positions in the U.S. Take heed that these are highly paid jobs and, once their gone, they’re virtually lost forever with no strategic means to replace them with other well-paying jobs, the loss of which will cost the U.S. billions of dollars in personal taxable income.

The interview came to a climax with Ms. Merritt feeding a question to Dr. Srikanth that was poised to bring to attention concerted efforts to entice natural born citizens of India to bring their Western-educated talents back to the homeland.

Let me twist this dialogue in another direction and piece together what globalization means to America’s future.

The near collapse of financial conglomerate AIG was largely caused by credit-default swaps that were questionably sold as insurance, a small degree of which was executed by Alico, an affiliate insurance unit based in Delaware. The main perpetrator was AIG Financial Products in London, the disintegration of which led to the biggest bailout in American history.

There is no doubt that globalization has intertwined American corporate interests over and above our sovereignty. A third of all sales and nearly 40% of the profits of major American companies come from abroad. Spot-check: During the ‘80s and ‘90s approximately 50% of foreign shares were in foreign investments compared to 90% today. Therefore, American corporations, directly or indirectly, are dependent on profits from foreign interests.

The impact of these facts will have major implications on the election of our lawmakers. Money talks and the free speech given to corporations by the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United vs the FEC will allow corporations the means to bankroll election campaigns with their vast amounts of money.

If alive today, our Founding Fathers would once again incite American patriots to bear arms and challenge the Supreme Court decision. The crafters of the Constitution fought and died to guarantee the rights and freedoms of all men and in no way intended to give corporations the rights to spend freely their caches of funds to dominate election campaigns to brainwash the electorate to put in office lawmakers who will to some degree give corporate interests the wherewithal to denigrate the inherent rights bestowed upon American citizens.

As opined in the WSJ, “The president’s claim about ‘foreign entities’ bankrolling U.S. political campaigns is also false, since the Court did not overrule laws limiting such contributions.” Consider the fact that the WSJ is owned by News Corporation which also owns Dow Jones, whose industrial averages are purveyors of international monetary demagoguery.

My conclusion, and possibly yours, is that American corporations will take into consideration their foreign interests and greatly influence voters to elect lawmakers who will, in turn, cast their legislative votes in favor of their international interests.

The impact of the Supreme Court ruling will have on state and local issues has yet to be thrashed out. Micro-politicking is sure to be of particular interest.