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Comment by therm0 | Hacker News Reader

Why is it so bad for American companies to hire American workers?

Big Tech companies are only nominally “American”. They all have more revenue outside of America than in America. We want other countries to buy our stuff to so our pensions/401Ks can keep rising. So we shouldn’t be upset if they also hire overseas.

Yes so realize that most people don’t get pensions. But if there is a public pension shortfall, taxpayers are on the hook.

Only a couple companies listed by OP are Big Tech though. There are many American companies that do not operate outside the country, but do outsource work.

So you think there should be protectionism? Because the profits from outsourcing are either going to executives or shareholders. Unless you fix that problem, you are not going to get American jobs back. I actually agree that outsourced jobs should be going to rural America rather than to India but CEOs don't have any incentive to do so.

I think it's just more cost effective to hire anyone in any other country, thanks to living costs and lack of opportunity in some countries.

But why should I have to compete with developers of the same skill level who can afford to take a much, much lower salary than I can? Especially when I took out American debt to attend an American university so I can live in America and work an American software job.

Why should foreigners keep supporting American companies that keep our RSUs and 401Ks afloat? Why should they keep buying our debt that allows us to borrow trillions?

How much US debt does Ukraine hold? With the exception of China we don't even really heavily outsource to the 10 biggest buyers of our debt because they're mostly wealthy countries that can't be exploited. Japan owns nearly 10x as much of our debt as India does.

Because Treasuries are the safest asset in the world. Foreigners have no choice but to hold it, nor can they invest anywhere else in the world at the intersection of stability and risk adjusted returns that is the US capital markets.

By all means, find a better investment environment if one thinks they can; it doesn’t exist.

Why should daily wage workers make Nike shoes in Bangladesh for peanuts when they can be manufactured in America for 10x more?

They should make $0 and they should be manufactured in America by robots for 10x less at scale. Not to mention polluting the environment less by not sending a boat halfway around the world for some shoes.

You gave the worse example to prove that capitalism is failing the world. Export the bad jobs, keep the good ones. And sell the fruits of both work to the poor people with the bad jobs you exported, getting your payroll money back tenfold.

As someone who lives in a manufacturing and assembly developing country, these jobs are actually very good for the local economy. Making Nike shoes 45 hours a week sucks, but it beats making ends meet by cutting grass or making lower quality shoes for less money. After a few decades of this, we can now afford Western luxuries like KFC and buy Factorio instead of pirating it.

It's disadvantageous to the richer countries, though.

'Afford western luxuries' is a great euphemism for over-consuming ads and garbage.

Then stop buying all imported stuff & pay full blown prices for made in US stuff.

Some of us would if there were still US stuff to buy, or if finding it weren't near-impossible.

And you wrote that comment using an American laptop assembled in China. You get it now?

Welcome to capitalism in 2020 mon ami. Enjoy the ride.

Everyone is an avid supporter of capitalism, until the free market no longer favors them.

Skills

Would that mean that your company would hire if it found people with the skills residing in Canada and Latin America just like Automattic, Auth0, Gitlab, AI Fund, NodeSource, Ooyala, WolframAlpha, Auth0, etc. found them ?

Capitalism.

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