Dr. Ron Hira' s book, 2nd edition, Outsourcing America: The True Cost of Shipping Jobs Overseas and What Can Be Done about It has just been released, in paperback.

Business Week has a 10 minute, must watch interview (minor ad) with Dr. Hira:

Hira exposes the myths and spin on globalization labor issues. One myth still claims, despite the damning statistics, that low skilled, labor intensive work exclusively would move overseas and how high skilled, high wage work is being moved overseas.

This is not Ricardo and the theory of free trade but technology transfer, productivity, expertise and training that is going overseas. It's more of a productivity shift.

Globalization is trade plus shifts in productivity.

Since highly trained, highly skilled jobs are being moved offshore, this implies that no amount of training and education will give a particular career secure and safe from the threat of global labor arbitrage.

Productivity shifts can make workers, including Professional workers, worse off.

Hira mentions a critical paper by Nobel laureate Economist Paul Samuelson (2004), which proves outsourcing and global wage arbitrage is not always a win-win as currently portrayed. He also mentions two other economists listed in the studies section here.

Believe it or not, our Congress and even many Americans are still in denial that this is a problem. We cannot even get the majority of our Congress to even acknowledge the problem in 2008.

Ron Hira states in this interview:

United States Corporations are competing against U.S. Workers

This is certainly the truth, globalization has brought forth the same class struggles overcome by the enabling of unions and FDR policies and at this point it is multinational corporations, knowing no national loyalty, pitted against US workers once again.

Hira also points out that all three Presidential candidates do not have any policy positions to stop these major productivity and technology transfer shifts and in fact have all promised these same multinational corporations to further enable the global labor arbitrage agenda.

Buy the book, Dr. Hira is one of the few who has been performing research in this area for some time and his statistics, facts, methodologies are sound. If only we had more objective research like this flooding the halls of Congress.