POST 14 : OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING : Two Cartoons

SPACES AND EXCHANGES : OUTSOURCING/OFFSHORING

These cartoons are related to the notion Spaces and Exchanges as they treat the topics of Outsourcing (a situation in which a company employs another organization to do some of its work, rather than using its own employees to do it) and Offshoring ( the practice of a company having workdone in another country, often because costs are lower there). 

The first cartoon was made by Matson for Cagle Cartoons in 2012, during Presidential elections in the USA between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney. The picture takes place in the Caribean sea, with a boat named "Believin'In America", which was Romney's electoral campaign slogan. In the foreground we can also see an exotic island called "Cayman Islands" covered of sand where Mitt Romney is standing. In the background there are two more islands, "Bermuda" that is also covered of sand and "Switzerland" where there are mountains in the landscape. Both of these places are tax havens (where there is a moderate level of taxation or liberal tax incentives for undertaking specific activities such as exporting or investing).  Mitt Romney is standing barefeet in one of the islands with a shovel in his left hand. He has dug a hole on the sand to hide a huge chest full of money beside him, as if he was in a treasure hunt.  He is talking as if he was giving an advice to big company owners  about outsourcing and offshoring so they can avoid paying wages to workers and not paying taxes to their own country. Romney is about to bury in all these tax havens all this money he has been gaining. There are two children sitting in the boat that seem to be Romney's grand children as they call him "Grandpa Mitt". Both of them are cheering up Romney as they agree with his advices of offshoring jobs and profits.

The second cartoon was made by the blog Geek and Pole in 2008, the title of the cartoon is "Simply explained part 10: Offshoring". There are two characters having a conversation, the one on the left is wearing a red tie and a blue shirt, the one on the right is just wearing a plain green shirt. We may suppose that the character that is wearing a tie is a boss of a company or a C.E.O (Chief Executive Officer), the other one may just be an ordinary person learning about offshoring.  The C.E.O is talking about workers of offshore companies by he calling them "folks", he is complaining about them as they apparently demand for too much advantages. The other character is curious after hearing that and asks want did those workers ask for, the boss answers that they wanted to get paid. The one on the right is surprised as he asks "Unbelievable", both characters seem to be surprised by the fact of people wanting to get paid after working hard. This cartoon denounces the illegal side of offshoring as many people are employed by companies to work in offshore companies or factories and they barely get paid. This phenomenon is called exploitation and it's illegal as they are making huge profits by not paying enough money to workers.

These two documents are related to the notion "Spaces and Exchanges" as they talk about Offshoring and Outsourcing, human exploitation and tax havens. These are some of the different aspects of exchanges in the world thanks to globalization. All the world is connected through a huge network of governments and companies that offshore and outsource money, people and goods everyday. Such phenomenon is an exchange in a global space . Both of these cartoons criticize the drawbacks of these exchanges, even if they are good for the economy of countries and globalization, there still are problems and iniquities.