Welcome to 201k.com - A Commonwealth Perspective.

A reader cc'd us on her letter to the Times; they didn't publish it, but it's so good we thought it should be seen. The column it's in reference to has been archived, and is no longer available for free. It was printed Monday, December 29, 2003, and was titled, "The White-Collar Blues".

Dear Mr. Herbert,

You couldn't be more right. This is a topic near and dear to my heart and one that I've been talking about for several years to anyone who will listen.

I work for a contract manufacturing company, which is one that other companies outsource their manufacturing to. In other words, we build product for the likes of IBM, HP, Honeywell, Rockwell, etc. Like most contract manufacturers, during the last several years we have closed down plants in the US and Europe and moved the production to low-labor regions like Mexico, Malaysia and China. Our customers are completely price-driven and in some cases have actually required in their contracts that we provide a "manufacturing solution" in one of these low-cost regions or lose their business. A Mexican factory worker brings home about $30 a week; in the Far East it's far less.

Recently, we've started to hear a lot about this loss of manufacturing jobs. But the job loss extends well beyond the factory floor. At my husband's mutual fund employer, hundreds of IT jobs have been outsourced to India. A former colleague who is a CFO at a telecom start-up told me that they were looking into outsourcing a number of their engineering jobs to India, since the average salary for an experienced engineer was under $10K versus over $100K in his company. Call centers, reservations centers, insurance claim processing centers - these continue to be moved to low cost regions such as India, the Phillipines, Mexico, etc.

On a recent business trip to the Far East, every traveller I chatted with was there on some sort of outsource deal - a plastics R&D plant in Korea, a Boeing manufacturing operation, an engineering center in Korea. This is what I've seen for the last several years and meanwhile there seems to have been little or no recognition in the US that the world is changing around us. Politicians either ignore the issue or point fingers at each other trying to assign blame and capitalize on the issue. Nobody seems able to address the root of the problem.

When I talk about this with my work colleagues, they all agree that the jobs are leaving America and most likely will not return. Most of these people hold out hope that America will think of the next thing that we can do to maintain our economic dominance, but I wonder. We always pointed to our technological prowess, but it seems that Indian, Chinese or Korean engineers are just as capable. It seems to me that our standard of living will inevitably fall. When the largest US employer morphs from General Motors to Wal-Mart isn't that inevitable?

All we hear about is productivity gains and increasing profits. Please! Productivity is only a mathematical formula and all it proves is that the same amount of work is getting done by fewer and fewer people. As one of the fortunate ones who still have a decent job, I've seen rounds and rounds of layoffs all around me and am one of the remaining employees who are desperately trying to hold onto jobs by working longer and longer hours. Productivity gains, my foot. And while profits may indeed be on the upswing, it will not translate into a stronger economy for most Americans. I haven't had a salary increase since 2000, and in fact, my company gave a 10% pay cut during the time. (Meanwhile, may I add, our senior management team collected their substantial guaranteed bonuses and refused to accept the pay cut which they enacted.)

This isn't an easy subject with an easy solution. Americans want low-priced products. Producing them, developing them and servicing them in low-cost regions allows companies to keep their prices down. Selling them through low-wage employers like Wal-Mart helps get these products to market cheaper. Are we all willing to pay more for the goods we buy? Are American companies willing to apply decent labor and environmental standards in all of the countries in which they do business? Are retailers willing to provide a living wage to their employees?

Not only is this globalization affecting our pocketbooks, but it is contributing greatly to the growing gap between the haves and have-nots. We are turning into a nation of plantation owners and the people who service us. This isn't who we want to be as a nation and isn't a social model that can be sustained without revolution. Recent studies have shown a huge and widening income gap in the US, greater than at any time since early in the 20th century and also shows a hardening of the income and social levels, with little upward movement. This is enormously disturbing.

The American Dream is a promise and a hope that any one of us, with brains and hard work, can rise up and achieve great things. We all know that this isn't always true, that some people have advantages that open doors while others have disadvantages that put obstacles in the way. But still I always had faith that we were working toward the realization of this dream for all citizens, that we were striving to create this sort of society. I'm not so sure I can believe that anymore.

The power of corporations has never been greater. The core beliefs of a great deal of our power elite seem to reflect a deeply held belief that their success is a sign of their inate worthiness. There is a sense of entitlement and a lack of compassion and tolerance that does not bode well for the ordinary person. I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and the state of our democracy.

So far, the working class people who have taken the worst hit seem to support the Republicans, who they have come to believe are champions of the ordinary guy. What a feat of genius. I wish someone would emerge who would speak the truth - talk about the power of corporations, talk about the ersosion of the American standard of living, talk about the gutting of environmental, labor and other laws designed to protect the common good, talk about the enormous disparity between the top earners in this country and the rest of us.  We need someone to awaken us from our stupor. Too bad the right-wing media owns most of the outlets to reach the ordinary person and too bad the Democrats can't seem to get it together and just speak the truth - damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.

There is so much at stake here. There is everything at stake here. Good for you for trying to shine some light on this subject. Let's hope someone has the courage to address these very difficult issues.