Outsourcing ethics

Wintergreen Resort, just up the mountain from my place, is worried sick that the new immigration reform bill will make it impossible from them to import foreign workers to clean, cook, wash dishes and mow grass for maybe $7.50 an hour.

Economists are warning that inflation may be on the horizon because Chinese wages have been rising by 10% or more annually. Where oh where are we going to find people willing to work for nearly nothing- Is civilization about to collapse-

I wish we had the report of the Egyptian business leaders the day after Moses led the Hebrews out of the country. "Pharoah, we need to warn you of a labor shortage and a sharp increase in labor costs. We project a rise in inflation, a slow-down in the economy, and a curtailment of your ambitious building program. No more pyramids for you!"

I know next to nothing about business or economics. I know I don't get it, but I sometimes think the history of the world could be written as a search to get somebody somewhere to do a lot of hard work for very little money. Every time workers break free from slavery or get a little more money, business leaders seem to think that the end is at hand, and the search for cheap labor moves on. Just in my lifetime I have seen jobs move from the Rust Belt to the Southeast to Mexico to China.

Growing up in a furniture and textile town, I remember rumors of illegal blacklists of people thought to be union sympathizers.

There was an assumption there would be an end to life-as-we-know-it if people in furniture factories or hosiery mills joined unions. I was shocked when I visited a college friend who lived in an Illinois steel mill town. There, working people made enough money to buy things they wanted beyond food and a roof over their heads.

I recently read an article suggesting more jobs you might outsource. Need a plan for your new kitchen or a math tutor for little Johnny- Turn to India. You can get services for a lot less.

Why hire that nice woman from the Rotary Club to design your landscaping- You can outsource that as well. Elective surgery- You can do that in low-wage countries that will put you up in spas where you will be waited on hand and foot.

Don't get me wrong. I am not completely opposed to globalization. In the world of my childhood there were no people from other countries. Now I know people from nearly every continent.

My father was grown before he got to see the ocean, but my daughter went to Russia before she was old enough to drive. My great grandfather had 12 children, and not a single one of them chose to stay on the farm. My grandmother thought telephones, electricity, indoor plumbing and cars were the most wonderful inventions in the history of the world. She had no nostalgia for her childhood without them.

But what bugs me is how cheap we all are, and how ready we are to exploit someone somewhere to provide us with goods and services in exchange for a lot less money than we want to be paid ourselves. The Golden Rule never seems to apply in business: Pay unto others what you would have them pay unto you. What bugs me is that when dividends, stock prices and corporate profits go up, that seems to be regarded as a good thing, but when salaries to people at the bottom go up, it is a threat to the economic order.

What bugs me is that when I get a raise, I think that is good, but when other people get raises, I worry that I might have to pay more and inflation may eat away at my earnings.
Economists are much smarter than I am. I know that. So I want them to get busy and devise ways that make the economy work better for everyone, not just the lucky and the savvy.

I want to be able to celebrate when my fellow human beings get a better life for themselves, not worry that their gain is my loss. Surely our best minds can figure this out.

What history tells me is that predictions of doom because of rising wages for poor people are usually wrong, and predictions of utopia due to the discovery of a cheap labor force that will increase profits are usually wrong as well.
At least I think that is what history tells me, but then I'm no economist.

Patricia Hunt is a Mary Baldwin College chaplain and Staunton resident.