Offshoring to countries with rates at slave levels and repatriating profits to tax havens…. Our kid’s future is bleak . A bit of reflection before XMAS.
by Marco Tapia
December 12, 2014
Just a bit of a XMAS reflection… Offshoring to slave rates countries and repatriating profits to tax havens…. Our kid’s future is bleak
A good friend of mine called me to see if my company could provide his son with some work experience during this summer. He told me he has approached a number of companies and there seem to be a pattern in the answers… “We may not be able to do it due to restructuring and offshoring”
During our chat, we began to compare offshoring skills versus buying imported cheap products.
In the good old days, a country used to import products that couldn’t supply locally. These days, a country imports everything and exports everything it can.
In the case of Australia, we have ended up importing almost everything and therefore killing lots of our industries, except for those that are forced to have local labour (defence – you can’t outsource fighters – well that may not be true in the future; mining – you can’t dig a hole remotely – well that may not be true for too much longer; health – already moving offshore as well)…
What the heck are we doing?
We have closed most of our manufacturing industry or we have reduced it to its knees. We have dug as many holes in the ground as we could and we have next to nothing to show for it (no sovereign wealth fund was ever created to save some for rainy days – on the contrary, we have spent the money and the place is in debt).
Our unemployment is creeping up, our debt is high, and our kids don’t want to study some degrees (in high demand in other countries such as computing science).
Kids that study computer science are finding hard to get a decent job as most of them are now overseas at a cheap/slave rate. The world is going Digital and we are heavy users of technology but we are unable to make/create technology. To put it simply, our kids can’t study technology as there is no work for them because all work by large companies is offshored.
So, next time your kid say to you he /she wants to be an engineer, a scientist, a computer gig.. ask him who is going to employ him? Who is going to give him work experience? Ask him that because daddy is sending all the work offshore so that his company can save money and be competitive. Stuff you (my son/grandson)… You can go and study law if you want (more and more of them will be needed), study art, political science, history, etc… What is the point in studying to create the next Facebook, iPhone, Windows, etc when you can be an artist, a musician, a bar attendant?
By the way, Daddy is also repatriating most of the local profit to Luxemburg and the Cook Island so Daddy’s company is not paying much tax hence you won’t be able to study on free schools and have a decent hospital system any more. My son, don’t worry, I will leave you a sizable inheritance because I am making money on my shares and houses… you will wreck that inheritance in a few years tho as you won’t be capable of managing it and you won’t have a job of your own.!
Merry XMAS
Marco Tapia
