In which I link to an article in The Nation

Really, and this is pretty all of a sudden, everyone and my mother is up in arms over the outsourcing/offshoring of American jobs. It's safe to say you'll hear Kerry mentioning the issue a couple of times over the next few months, and for good reason I guess: people are pissed about unemployment, and people hate both big business and foreigners, so attacking offshoring would certainly seem to be an effective way to rally support.

But while people should hate big business, many foreigners are cool, and some are cute, and I think you have to get a little uneasy about the thinly veiled racism/ultra-nationalism that goes hand in hand with the anti-outsourcing sentiment. People in India deserve jobs just as much as people in America.

But the larger point here is that there's so many more economic issues that deserve massive displays of indignation nowadays. Take the money being handed back in tax cuts over the next 10 (or more, now) years and spend it on government service jobs and you'd offset all the call center jobs moving to India by a factor, well, a lot. Unfortunately, doing things like providing for well-funded public education and ample border and port security is Marxist.

Anyway, it's late and I never manage to make any serious points, so you should just read "Toward a Progressive View on Outsourcing" in The Nation for some, well, progressive views on the matter.