JimJimmyJames;
Yes, most of the service jobs in America CAN be outsourced! In one way or another, many of them already have...take call centers, accounting services, data processing, etc. for example. No doubt many others will "outsource" (or leave) when the services they fulfill are no longer needed or sustainable in line with the rest of the nation's productivity, or rather lack thereof. The fact is that jobs will migrate toward labor that is more competitive...and, over the long run, no amount of legal artifice or union denial is going to change that fact. Now, whether that more competitive labor (and please DON'T read "more competitive" as "less well paid"...there's a VAST difference in the two terms!) is here in America, or somewhere else, is up to labor itself. And, in recent decades, non-union labor in this country has been fairly competitive (look at the unemployment rate even a few short months ago). Organized labor, on the other hand, has (overall - I'll grant there are exceptions...and that at UPS very much is one generally!) an abysmal failure.
As for your question as to "who will be able to buy their services/products?", well the answer, of course, is those who ARE competitive and who ARE willing to put the effort out to earn them. It's not coincidence that the largest automotive market in the world last year was NOT the U.S., but rather China. Those who are willing to competitively earn goods and services will always be around to buy them off of those that offer them. Will organized U.S. labor be among those who can afford them? Questionable today. That's not "the puppets" fault...unless you consider "the puppets" those who are gullible enough to believe that, by virtue of taking a union pledge, they're worthy of getting a free ride out of life.
As for the "choice" that was made, it seems to me that the "choice" consisted of the "organized" American worker thinking that, for some reason or another, he was owed a high standard of living simply because of being in existence. Unfortunately, those in other parts of the world chose not to automatically agree with him; they decided that they were willing to COMPETE to EARN their wherewithal...while the organized America worker insisted on biting the very hand that fed him.
Want examples? Look no further than the American Axle strike of a few months back. EVERY knowledgeable responsible voice was screaming about just how vulnerable the American automotive industry (and the jobs it provided!) was....yet here are these "workers" who go out on strike at a company who's owner had previously made HUGE sacrifices in order to maintain their jobs, making damn sure they (virtually) spit in his face in the process. Result? Well, doesn't take a history major to figure that one out. Nor does one need a sixth sense to look backward at the consequences of the concurrent strike against GM's best selling model.
Another example? Take a look at the Teamsters ongoing Oak Harbor Freight job action. Yet another might be the Teamsters/Red Star debacle of a couple of years or so ago. Want another? Look at Consolidated Freightways (and at it's non-union spin-off Conway...while sparing the fabricated rhetoric). And, as UPSers, how many here need to be reminded of the "wealth" that the Teamsters involvement with CSPF has "created" (and "yes", I'm being sarcastic)
Similar stories - many, many, MANY of them - could be told over and over again to show that, far from "creating" the middle class in this country, or helping to "create" the wealthiest nation on earth, unions generally over the long term have worked to destroy the nation's wealth and it's middle class (and one might keep in mind that an artificially-created ersatz "middle class" isn't a true "middle class" at all; rather, just a group of welfare recipients being temporarily subsidized beyond what it's natural productive capacity would warrant). Doubt that declaration? If so, then why don't you explain to massive destruction suffered primarily by the most "organized" of the nation's industries; by the textile industry, the steel industry, the chemical industry, and the domestic auto industry - along with virtually every other "unionized" industry in this country. Even the vaunted Teamsters have been far from immune; look at the blurb memorializing Jimmy the Elder on the IBT's website today...and the number of those covered under the NFMA when he FIRST organized it. Then compare that number with what there are today. See a problem there? The jobs they once represented didn't go someplace else because job offerers want to screw the nation, or anything of the sort - they left because those that once held them didn't value them enough to want to compete for them; they figured that, somehow, the world would give them a free ride instead. Well, guess what....it proved-out that things don't quite work that way. Big surprise.
