Dear President Obama

Dear President Obama,

First of all: congratulations on the Nobel Peace Prize. The naysayers have no command of facts or history: Desmond Tutu was awarded the prize for his opposition to Apartheid. It was a ten years before the practice was eliminated in South Africa. There were those that protested Martin Luther King getting the prize, even though he gave all of the money away to charities. Whether you won or lost, the naysayers and Neanderthals with access to talk radio audiences will not celebrate anything positive about you. Only “the ones we’ve been waiting for” will.

I’d like to discuss outsourcing and its affects.

I point to this article in the Wall Street Journal: “It Will Be Years Before the Jobs Return – and Many Never Will". In it, a statistician loses his $100,000 per year job outsourced to India. He’s probably pulled in spending, since his immediate future is a severance and an unemployment check that doesn’t begin to match what he used to make.

Kind of like me: Motorola got out of Austin, Texas and restructured as Freescale Semiconductor. The job I did was as a Product Engineer. That function I’m told is now in Tianjin, China. My replacement makes about 1/10 of what I used to make. I did not make as much as our statistician, but he and I have one thing in common: we’re not doing any spending as we used to.

Used to: Starbucks (no more); Comic Books (yeah, I’m a big kid); Amazon.com (if it ain’t cheap, free, or absolutely necessary, I’m probably not reading it); new cars (well, I just had to get some from a tote-your-note lot after a bad storm totaled my two ’96 vehicles – 2001 and 2002, hey I made it to the 21st Century at least); tickets to sporting events (watch ‘em on TV); flat screen TV (I’d rather eat); oh, and the biggie: tax revenues.

The United States is not getting in much these days. A large percentage of us are not making as much as they used to. So the taxable income is less than what the US previously took in for the 90s: when we had money; when we bought stuff.

I say in my book “Unemployed: A Memoir”: Chapter 19 – Open Letter (to your predecessor)

“I am not an accountant nor am I an economist. I do make these observations:

- “The University of Texas, Austin reports a decrease in the number of engineering undergraduate students. This trend is probably observable from other flagship and minor colleges and universities around the nation. Young people are not going to invest the time, (nor their parents the money) and considerable labor in the attainment of a science and engineering degree if there are no viable jobs to matriculate to after graduation.
- “As a former child of the ghetto, I can attest that if you provide the excitement of science and engineering training and the youth have the talent and time to grasp it, they will make positive, life-affirming choices that only betters American society.
- “Our universities will become revolving doors: foreign exchange students, welcome at all times, will matriculate and attain degrees, then go back to their host countries. If there are no jobs here, there is no need to stay. Diversity in the workplace will eventually devolve to pre 1965 levels.
- “If you continue outsourcing American professional and technical jobs, the next innovations will come from overseas. That cannot be good for our national security, since we will not be in proximity to protect any trade secrets.
- “If you continue outsourcing science, engineering, manufacturing and technician level jobs, the middle class will eventually shrink. There will be no "bootstrap self-lift" from poverty, into middle class and upper middle class: that can only be bridged by continuing education.
- “The American economy is based on the collection of an income tax, mostly from the middle class. Many government and military programs are financed by this method. If jobs are outsourced to India and China because the professionals there can do the same jobs for approximately $5,000.00 per year, we cannot gather a tax from them, as they are not citizens of this nation. (You wouldn't get much even if you could.)

This was written in 2005 on the Internet and published in 2006. In 2009: the University of Texas at Austin is announcing cuts of some of its teaching staff: UT retools budget; job cuts loom. If this is affecting the Flagship University of the State of Texas, it is affecting others elsewhere.

Outsourcing as a practice has the tenet that it will in the long run save money. There will be no earnings if we are not spending or paying taxes in this nation. It is a moribund formula down a spiral of destruction, fueled by mantra and dogma. The reality is before our eyes everyday.

My proposal is simple: for companies that “save” money by the practice of outsourcing, TAX them at that same amount.

It will bring needed money into government coffers. It will make companies rethink the practice, as they should. Minorities have been the most affected by the practice in the United States, and ironically their jobs have gone to nations where so-called minorities are in the majority. The widening gap between rich and poor, to paraphrase W.E.B. Dubois stops at the color line: The gap between the rich and the poor widens. But again, those persons overseas don’t pay taxes here, they don’t buy product here.

If the companies refuse to change this myopic procedure of outsourcing, they will ultimately close their own doors due to this practice of selfish greed.


With sincere respect,

Reginald L. Goodwin
www.reggiegoodwin.com