Pro-free trade economist Alan S. Blinder sounded the alarm in the Washington Post today on an unlikely topic: the offshoring of U.S. jobs. He reports being treated like a heretic by fellow neoliberal economists.
Blinder predicts as many as 30 to 40 million service jobs that can be delivered electronically could be sent overseas in the coming decades. Even jobs requiring a college education are in danger, he warns:
These same forces don't look so benign from the viewpoint of an American computer programmer or accountant. They've done what they were told to do: They went to college and prepared for well-paid careers with bountiful employment opportunities. But now their bosses are eyeing legions of well-qualified, English-speaking programmers and accountants in India, for example, who will happily work for a fraction of what Americans earn.
