Is Outsourcing of U.S. Jobs Bad or Good?

Seattle Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports the outsourcing debate continues with a debate between Nobel Prize winner Paul Samuelson and Columbia professor Jagdish Bhagwati. These two "mega" economists disagree whether short-term job losses brought on by outsourcing are mitigated in the long run by gains to American workers from free trade and consumption growth in low-wage countries.

"Data from Forrester Research, a leading IT consulting organization, lends support to Bhagwati's findings with estimates that 400,000 U.S. jobs had moved abroad by 2003 and that the total would hit 3.3 million by 2015. That's just over 200,000 jobs lost each year to global outsourcing, a trivial problem in the context of the normal churn of the U.S. economy, where about 7 million jobs were gained and lost in each of the last four quarters."

"Yes, corporate earnings and investors are benefiting."

"Yes, American consumers are benefiting from cheaper prices because of global outsourcing."

"Yes, American workers are dislocated -- perhaps permanently in the manufacturing sector and significantly among professional and white-collar employees whose jobs won't return unless the country invests substantially in their retraining and education."