GIN AND TACOS

To be completely honest, it pisses me off that outsourcing has become such well-publicized political issue.
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We may not do dick about it, but it certainly comes up a lot in campaigns these days.

Outsourcing isn't new. "Average Americans" and mainstream politicians caring about it is. Four decades ago the MBAs and CEOs of the world realized how much money they could save by taking an end-around the uppity unions and doing un- or semi-skilled labor in Third World countries for pennies on the dollar. And here's the trick – the top 1% convinced the next 20% that they were on the same side of the game. Outsourcing worked because the upper-middle class – accountants, management types, IT folk, engineers who made instantaneous global communication possible – were told that they were part of the "us" in the game against "them" (the malingering, easily-replaceable slugs who made the widgets and whined for pensions). "Us white-collar management types are virtually irreplaceable," they agreed, "because we were smart enough to acquire valuable skills that the market rewards." This has always been one of Mike's big points – that the guy making $80-$100k in some generic office job has been convinced that he is the one being referred to when people talk about the rich.

Of course we know that outsourcing has become a relevant political issue because the white-collars are getting tossed overboard and the financial industry is the one getting reamed. Here is a great read if you want to see some major-league bond trader and mortgage broker whining. The message between the lines is practically shouted through their dazed comments: the market eliminating jobs en masse was natural and fair when it happened to other people, those useless people. Not us! We're special! Look at our business degrees! It's funny how Wall Street gives fewer rousing speeches about the majesty of the free market now that the MBAs are the ones in the underwhelming, no-benefit jobs.
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How did they convince themselves that outsourcing was something they could embrace but personally avoid? My answer involves two -isms: elitism and a dash of racism. The illusion rested on the smug reassurance that those (yellow/Slavic/brown/etc) people can do assembly line work and make shoes, but savages can never master accounting. They can make the semiconductors, but they can't design them. They can answer tech support questions from a script, but they can't run Dell. That kind of work requires specialized skills that only "we" are smart enough to master.
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Now everyone look surprised when China, India, and others start turning out people willing and able to do white collar work at a cut rate.

When people defend outsourcing, my first question is invariably what they do for a living. Ask Mr. Middle Management, Mr. Computer Whiz, or Mrs. Fund Manager if they honestly believe that their employers can't find an Indonesian person to do their job in the next 10 years. Unless he or she works for the government or provides a service that can't be telecommunicated, the answer is no. The former is one of the great ironies of the Reagan Era – now that the market worshippers have had their way for three decades, the only jobs worth having are on the government teat. They have pensions and health insurance and they aren't likely to be shipped to India. How many professions can say that right now?
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Yes, we excel at contradictions, which is why you were raised (come on, don't deny it) on a diet of Reagan rhetoric by people who spent their entire adult lives earning government paychecks drawn from everyone else's tax dollars.

Let's be real honest with ourselves: not every house needs a lawn mower.

I'm standing on the cusp of professorhood, which will entail moving to a yet-to-be determined place and a lot of other big boy stuff like buying a home. When one buys a home, only three options exist vis-a-vis the lawn. One can disregard it, allowing the front lawn to resemble the Serengetti. "Professionals" (i.e., 20 illegal immigrants sharing a Social Security number) can be hired to do landscape maintenance.

Or a lawn mower can be purchased.

For no specific reason I have always associated the purchase of a lawn mower with being old.
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Being an official adult. Renting for the past 10 years has allowed me to circumvent this to some extent, but soon there will be a reckoning. But why do we all buy lawn mowers? Given the infrequency with which it is used, one lawn mower per three or four homes would more than suit America's lawn maintenance needs.

Juliet Schor explored this idea in The Overspent American (a must-read), discussing the problems of materialism, consumer culture, and debt. She concludes with some proposals such as shared neighbor/community ownership of little-used, expensive things like lawn mowers. It makes sense, right?

If only being a good, sensitive, sustainable, zero-emissions 21st Century anti-consumerist were so cut and dried. Let's wave a magic wand and get every group of four families to share a lawnmower. That's great – unless you stand on an assembly line making lawn mowers. Demand will drop precipitously and it'll cease to be profitable to build the product outside of China or Mexico. And we NPR-listening Good Liberals are supposed to care about that too.

The point is simply that our society and economy are so entirely dependent on debt-financed consumer spending that every effort to make good decisions – conserving, reducing waste, increasing efficiency – has negative economic consequences. As consumer spending falls (which is great! Let's all shop less!) the entire nation shudders because it's all the US of A has left to fuel its economic engine. Buy, buy, buy. Spend, spend, spend. When you run out of money, charge it and keep spending. It's your goddamn duty as a patriotic American to shop 'til your fingers bleed.
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Our Leader (and his dad) tell us that when recessions hit, the right thing to do is "go shopping more." We jury-rig idiotic election-year panders like sending out rebate checks – remember those?

– in the hopes that they'll be spent at the mall (which, like the economic crack that "stimulus" checks are, worked to boost consumer spending for about five minutes).

The baby boomers built a world in which neither they nor the rest of us can afford to live. When we try to be more efficient the extent to which our economy has devolved into a wasteful, materialistic, no-money-down gangbang becomes clear.