Outsourcing and tears.

It might have been a convenient bogeyman for the Democrats to seize upon during the elections, but the reading I've done suggests that outsourcing is not a signficant net source of job loss in America. In fact, in his recent Foreign Affairs piece, Daniel Drezner writes:

As for the jobs that can be sent offshore, even if the most dire-sounding forecasts come true, the impact on the economy will be negligible. The Forrester prediction of 3.3 million lost jobs, for example, is spread across 15 years. That would mean 220,000 jobs displaced per year by offshore outsourcing -- a number that sounds impressive until one considers that total employment in the United States is roughly 130 million, and that about 22 million new jobs are expected to be added between now and 2010.

Elsewhere he points out that in the last 20 years, 'insourcing' has at least kept apace with outsourcing.

Sadly, the consequences of whipping up public anxiety about sending jobs overseas are all too foreseeable - it panders to xenophobes and racists. A recent Times of India story reports that call centers there are increasingly harassed by callers using abusive and racist language.