We’ve repeatedly said that offshoring and outsourcing are often not the big cost-savers that the industry promoting them, Wall Street, and the stenographers among the business press would have you believe.I live near Seattle and thus I hear a lot about Boeing's problems with cost overruns and delays which the author elaborates in this article. She attributes the cause to "hubris".
I think that their are two main factors that account for dysfunctional outsourcing: the usual anti-union strategy and to develop support for the military-industrial complex's highly profitable wars. I think that the latter is probably the most important factor to account for the weakened state of anti-war opposition in the US. By spreading the jobs around the county, they build up political constituencies for more war spending. See this. Anti-war campaigns are successfully framed in the media as being anti-jobs. Political support for weapons spending continues even when the military establishment doesn't want particular weapons--see this.
