May 22. 2018

As a system of economy, capitalism can be viewed as one of the most successful. While it does have its shortcomings it has helped shaped countries worldwide and allowed for them to become fully developed world powers competing on a global market. Look no further than Vietnam, which had to adopt capitalist practices to compete against other countries in order to be successful. A downside is that, statistically speaking, capitalist countries usually have less happy people. According to Forbes, prosperous nations experience 42 percent net happiness while emerging and aspiring market experience 59% and 54% net happiness. Often could be a companies desire to outsource labor to other countries. This is bad for US citizens because it causes a great deal of unemployment for those American citizens who may lack alternate qualifications for other jobs. A welder with nothing but a high school diploma can not work at a tech company like Microsoft because he lacks the necessary requirements.

Job outsourcing is the process by which companies hire foreign workers instead of Americans to save money. Why should I, as a business owner, pay a citizen $100,000 a year when I could pay a resident of India half that and, supposedly, accomplish the same task? According to a 2013 study monitoring the activities of US Multinational Corporations, overseas affiliates hired nearly 14 million workers. The industries most affected are the technology, human resources, call center, and manufacturing departments.

A major concern when outsourcing labor is the spike in unemployment that follows. When the companies move the jobs overseas, layoffs begin to happen more frequently. According to The Balance, the 14 million outsourced jobs are double the 7.5 unemployed Americans and if these jobs were to return they could not only cover the unemployed but the other 5.7 million working part time who would prefer working full time. Of course, there are multiple factors to consider. What if the jobs do return and the unemployed don’t have the skills to work these jobs? What about the low wages that these jobs pay? American consumers would have to pay extra to compensate for this issue.

For those high school seniors moving on into the world and beginning their careers, these are important factors to consider, especially those who are going into the technology industry. Companies like Microsoft absolutely love hiring people in India and China to do work because the skills are similar, although language barriers arise, and they can pay less money for the same job. The best advice that one could give is to always have a contingency plan. Instead of going into software engineering, go into welding or become and electrician. According to The Job Network, electricians are going to be in high demand in the coming years, especially after The Great Recession.