Bringing the Jobs Home: How the Left Created the Outsourcing Crisis--And How We Can Fix It

Rating:
Summary: Witty and Wonderful!
Review:

Never thought I'd find a book on current trends so
entertaining and funny. Yet at the same time the
author makes persuasive arguments. Highly
recommended!

Rating:
Summary: Buchholz Does It Again!!
Review: Buchholz's last books have been superb, and this book is just as good--if not better!! I have trouble understanding the whole outsourcing thing, and how so many Americans are losing their jobs. After reading this book, I completely understood it, and got many a laugh!!
The book is not too long, and very easy to read-- it was actually a VERY pleasurable read about what some(wrong)people would call a boring subject.
I highly recommend this book along with all of Buchholz's other books. Todd G. Buchholz lights up economics, in a funny, charming and witty way!

Rating:
Summary: Solid & enjoyable
Review: As with Todd Buchholz's earlier books, Bringing the Jobs Home is both entertaining and educational. Buchholz puts economics in a language the layman can understand. This book is a sorely needed (and effective) counter-weight to the alarmists who are increasingly framing the trade debate.

Rating:
Summary: Buchholz is Brilliant!!
Review: Buchholz is persuasive, funny, informative, witty and smart. This book is excellent-- Every American shold read it!

Rating:
Summary: Even Democrats Have to Read this Book!
Review: Buchholz's book is much more than a pre-election rebuttal of the nonsense both sides spout on outsourcing. It is a must-read analysis of the educational, technological, and deomographic bases of American prosperity and international competitativeness and a blunt attack on the mis-guided policies that threaten these strenghts and threfore our standard of living. Though Buchholz tries to blame every dumb policy on the "liberals," Democrats will have an especially good time picking out the policy blunders (farm policy!) that Buchholz's Republican buddies have stuck us with. And it's fun to read.

Rating:
Summary: All politicians export jobs
Review: It's a good book, especially it's exploration of "the American desease" of lawsuits and our high school system's shortcomings. But as far as government making doing business too expensive, politicians of any party will push a bill if money is placed in their hand to push it, regardless of the long term results. That's a big part of the problem.
I read his interview on First Voice Books (firstvoicebooks.com/bringingjobs.html) which peaked my interest.
What his book doesn't say, and no one does, is that mad spending on programs that are meaningless will bankrupt the US. People said the Soviet Union was too big to fail. Guess not.

Rating:
Summary: Light on content, weak in solutions
Review: The blame is misplaced, offered solutions are weak. Author's view:

- US workers are too expensive and uneducated.
- Taxes are too high.
- Regulations are too strict.
- Litigations prevent companies from doing business.

Is there any other corporate pet peeve that he left out? So, the short version of his solution is -- lower the cost of labor in US and let companies pillage like they do in Asian markets. Great, just great!

The only valid point was a problem with immigration laws. We do need to attract and retain intellect.

For a different perspective read Lou Dobbs "Exporting America".

Rating:
Summary: Thought (and, I hope, discussion) provoking arguments
Review: Todd Buchholz argues that the reason jobs are going overseas has a lot more to do with systemic aspects of the American educational, regulatory, legal, and tax systems than with evil CEOs. I think he is right that CEOs are simply responding to competitive pressures and the business environment in which they have to compete. Right now, that means moving certain classes of jobs to other markets. I don't mean to say that there aren't incompetent CEOs or businesspeople that are simply bad people. What I am saying is that for the most part the people running businesses do not have the power to do as they wish. They have to respond to the business environment in which they find themselves. Just like a frog, turtle, bird, or trilobite they adapt or die.

Job dislocations always cause anxiety. When the railroads came they created a great many jobs, but when railroads gave way to cars, trucks, and airplanes, most of those jobs ceased to exist. There was a great deal of pressure on legislators to protect those jobs, and to the extent they did, they actually hurt the American economy. I don't mind help in transitioning workers, I just think it is counterproductive to try and hold on to the past. We used to have a tremendous industry in breeding and selling horses. Where is that today? This kind of dislocation is inevitable and actually healthy.

What is not healthy is not preparing folks with a competitive education. As Mr. Buchholz points out, feeling good about yourself when you are uncompetitive in mathematics is not helpful. Nor is having a legal and tax system that raises costs of workers and raises prices to consumers simply to make lawyers rich and provide jobs to bureaucrats who could be more productively employed in the private sector.

Governments run a fine line in creating laws in favor of this or that business. They always run the risk of unintended consequences. Neutrality is almost always the best policy, but that isn't what their constituents clamor for. Nowadays there is an environment that makes workers more expensive than they need to be (not just wages and benefits) and then provides tax incentives for companies to take their production overseas. How are these behaviors smart or healthy for the economy?

The author also argues that American businesspeople are too often tone deaf to the needs and demands of foreign markets. In the past, overseas markets wanted the same products we made for our home consumption, or wanted them with some modification. Nowadays, overseas markets have demands specific to them and local means of meeting those demands. If we are to compete, we must take those markets seriously and learn what they want and produce it for them. Mr. Buchholz uses Hollywood as an example of this, but in business school we studied cases with other examples of this very issue.

I recommend this book for everyone. It is less than 180 pages and is written very clearly. The arguments are focused and will encourage thought and debate on these important issues. We do need to take action on these issues before the flow of dislocations becomes a torrent. However, it is important to keep the perspective that our economy is constantly evolving. When the job lost is yours, it is 100% and it feels awful, but we need to keep a larger perspective of what is actually happening and make appropriate moves.

Mr. Buchholz has done us a real service by providing a sharp focus for discussion; we should take advantage of this by reading this book and talking about these issues in as informed a manner as we can.