Nothing New About Outsourcing Labor
Outsourcing-the economic issue this election year-is blamed for the loss of jobs in the United States, but outsourcing isn't new to Americans. The founding and development of America is the result of English outsourcing in the 17th and 18th Centuries, writes Alvin Rabushka, an economist with the Hoover Institution.
James I was crowned king of England in 1603. At that time his fledgling nation of some 4.2-million people was beginning to compete with its more populous, wealthy, and powerful Spanish and French rivals.
A century later, England was able to challenge France and Spain for control of the New World. By 1764, England had defeated both France and Spain in North America and controlled the Atlantic Coast inland to the Appalachian Mountains. A century later, England had become the world's dominant commercial and military power. Its rise from precarious island nation to global giant followed its outsourcing of people and production to America.
By 1682, with the founding of Pennsylvania, England controlled 12 colonies along the Atlantic Coast and others in Canada and the Caribbean. The outsourcing of free and indentured migrants who made up the first generation and subsequent waves of settlers, increased from 350 in 1610 to more than a quarter million in 1700, passing two million in 1770. The military contributions of the colonists helped England eliminate the threats from France and Spain in North America.
English outsourcing of several economic activities was productive for both the colonies and Britain. The Crown forbade the growing of tobacco in England, granting a monopoly to Virginia planters that provided the means of livelihood in the most populous colony as well as substantial customs revenue for the English government. The colonists supplied furs, foodstuffs, and iron to English consumers and manufacturers.
In the late 17th Century, England granted bounties for white pine trees that produced masts and bowsprits for English vessels, freeing England from dependence on unreliable Baltic countries. Payments were also granted for pitch, tar, potash, rice, indigo, and silk, which generated jobs and income in many of the colonies. English capital helped underwrite the expansion of agriculture and other productive colonial activities. In turn, colonial America provided a market for a steadily growing, broad range of English manufactured goods, helping to alleviate unemployment in England and contributing to England's overseas earnings. Colonial purchases of English products grew in importance throughout the 18th Century.
Upon the conclusion of the French and Indian War in 1763, England viewed the American colonies more as markets for its goods than as sources of supply for its consumers. Although the two countries ultimately split over the issue of taxation, outsourcing was clearly beneficial for both peoples.
(Source: Alvin Rabushka, "Nothing New About Outsourcing," Hoover Institution Weekly Essays.) For more information about outsourcing, visit the Hoover Institution website: www-hoover.stanford.edu.
The Manchurian Candidate
As Hollywood prepares to release a remake, a special edition of the old The Manchurian Candidate will be released on DVD July 13. The new DVD includes commentary by director John Frankenheimer, featurettes on Angela Lansbury and William Friedkin, and interviews with Frankenheimer, Frank Sinatra, and George Axelrod. The 1962 political thriller remains a classic of filmmaking-though perhaps the product of a disturbed mind.
The intense, taut film explores brainwashing, treason, murder, the Oedipus complex, and ambition that burns all else to cinders. The movie brilliantly draws a picture of the possibility of a foreign agent becoming President of the United States during a time of hysteria. American troops were first subject to brainwashing by their captors during the Korean War, in which their Communist enemy pursued any means necessary to achieve their goal of establishing the new Communist utopia. The ideology of fanatical nihilism pursuing a holy war while willing to trample on every single aspect of human decency-the 20th Century's black and red-hot bequest to mankind-produced the spiritual deformity and psychological torture depicted here.
Conservatives will not like the way in which one of the villains in the movie is modeled on anti-Communist Sen. Joe McCarthy (R.-Wis.), yet again vilified by those indifferent to-or hostile to-his efforts to combat Communist infiltration of our government.
The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Special Edition DVD, $14.95, directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey, and Angela Lansbury.
