Survival of the Fittest?

  Manufacturing  

The Wall Street Journal has come out with a new thought-provoking article taking another look at the decades-old argument put forth by economists and recently made controversial by President Bush's Chief Economic Advisor Greg Mankiew: that globalization--and outsourcing by extension--benefits the U.S. economy.

The Journal postulates that contrary to popular belief, as old-economy jobs are moving abroad they are being replaced by better, higher-value jobs. Interestingly this article is featured in CareerJournal--Wall Street Journal's executive career website.

In support of its thesis, the article gives the example of growth in the field of logistics as compared to outsourcing of manufacturing jobs. As the world is coming closer due to communication and transportation advances, supply-and-demand cycles in all industries are becoming global. So if manufacturing jobs are outsourced around the world, the delivery of goods and management of supply-chain has become a much more complex engineering task. Hence the field of logistics has become very important. This has created opportunities within the United States. Top universities are introducing or expanding their logistics programs, and many logistics companies are seeing double and triple revenue figures in the last few years.

There is some merit to this argument.

Dog-Eat-Dog …

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