Outsourced

CNBC has been conducting a poll on whether we agree with Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko was right when he said "greed is good." On Independence Day, with over 1200 responses, it was dead even... Half thought greed hurt Wall Street and hurts the nation.

It was Henry Ford who revolutionized manufacturing by creating the first automobile assembly lines... But he also believed in paying his workers enough that they could afford to purchase the cars they made. That kind of thinking runs counter to corporate group-think in which greed sought ever lower labor costs by first relocating entire industries within the US and eventually overseas, domestic sub-contracting or mass hiring of undocumented aliens.

In service industries, consumers react with resentment if there are barriers to communication such as multilayered automated phone trees or live people who nominally "speak English" but don't fully understand the caller's situational context or conversational idioms.

But is business ready to rethink outsourcing manufacturing? Not everyone here is suited to wear suits and killing off blue collar jobs ultimately depletes the capacity of American workers as consumers.

Audio Embed: CBS Radio's Osgood File 7/2/10.