Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 22, 2011
outsourcing – San Francisco – Oakland – Bay Bridge – American workers – Chinese workers
Witness the ultimate in outsourcing, and a punch in the stomachs of Americans who desperately need work: the contract given to the Chinese for building the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.
Rather than building the bridge here, it has been built section by section in China, brought by freighter 6,500 miles to our shores, then assembled by American workers.
Of the $7.2 billion spent on the new bridge, $400 million was saved by outsourcing much of the work to China. For more information, see this article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/business/global/26bridge.html?pagewanted=all
Maybe the lesson here is: let’s take care of our own. The $400 extra might have provided us with jobs, tax revenues, and more income to buy products from other companies. In other words, we “saved” $400 million that might have improved our economy, so did we actually save it?