Ex-Disney IT workers sue after being asked to train their own H-1B replacements

I have in the 2016 election is to vote for someone who wants to end the insanity of outsourcing high tech American jobs. It's very odd to me that the only candidate talking about this is Trump.

I don't mean to rain on your parade, but outsourcing isn't as bad as it's portrayed. It's extremely important, when evaluating economic claims like this, to consult the research on this subject. Here's the first paper. It essentially argues that the effects of outsourcing, both negative and positive, are incredibly minor, with the overall effect of outsourcing being a very minor positive effect. Now, this doesn't mean there aren't losers; most likely, there are losers. The key, though, is not to cut back or restrict outsourcing, so much as ensuring that those who experience job displacement are given the resources to find another job. In my opinion, the state should take a more active rule in subsidizing adult education/job training programs to begin with.

This paper differentiates between different types of outsourcing, and even then it finds only a very minor negative effect for horizontal outsourcing (i.e. the job being outsourced engages in the same tasks as it would in the U.S.). It states that "other factors, such as declining prices for consumer goods, import competition, and falling prices for investment goods (which substitute for labor) play a more important role" in regards to declines in manufacturing employment.

At the South Carolina Freedom Summit, Donald Trump said that he would impose a hefty 35 percent tariff on American multinational corporations like Ford Motor Company, in order to stop outsourcing to China and elsewhere.

Which goes against the fact that a vast majority of economists support free trade. The general consensus is that tariffs should be eliminated if possible, which is a big simplification of the actual discourse about tariffs, but is good enough for this discussion. As always, there are going to be losers (mostly in the short-run), due to free trade, but this ignores the long-term benefits. Free trade allows developing nations to reduce disparities between themselves and more developed nations, as seen in this paper. One of the most well-known free trade agreements, NAFTA, was an overall boon to all three countries involved, as this USITC report points out.

I can certainly understand your fears about this issue, but your solutions to it are misguided. A better solution would be to invest more in job re-training programs for adults, and working on getting the recently unemployed back into the workforce. I sincerely hope that you don't end up losing your job to anyone, as you sound like a very sincere individual, but if it does happen, it might bring comfort to understand that this is simply a result of economies working to become as efficient as possible. Now, of course, feel free to sue if your company engages in similar tactics to Disney.

/r/news Thread Parent Link - arstechnica.com