Disclosure: I am a fan of neither Obama nor Romney - I am a fan of reason, logic and decorum. Unfortunately, the Obama administration is missing on all three fronts when it attacks Romney for outsourcing jobs while at Bain Capital.
I do not work for the sake of working; I work in order to consume. The more I can consume at a given level of effort, the better off I am. And if I can consume some given level of output by working less (fewer hours or less effort), I'm better off. And I'm even best off if I can consume more stuff while working less (again, fewer hours or less effort). My objective is consumption, not creating more jobs for me.
In my home we outsource automaker jobs, tailor jobs, water jobs, agriculture jobs, furniture jobs, television jobs, energy jobs, cobbler jobs, computer and software jobs, etc., etc., etc. I could go on forever. NEVER DO I LAMENT THAT THIS IS DETRIMENTAL TO MY FAMILY"S WELL BEING AND THAT WE'VE DESTROYED JOBS FOR MY FAMILY. In fact, it's the opposite. If people quit producing for me and my family we would be extraordinarilly poorer. I am forever grateful for outsourcing.
For Romney as president and CEO of an asset management firm, to maximize profits by moving to other countries the production of goods and services by companies under his control makes us BETTER OFF, NOT WORSE OFF. PERIOD. This includes us as consumers, as a nation, and as a global society. Profit maximization, as long as it's achieved in a competitive market environment (and this does not mean economists' conception of perfect competition) and not based on crony capitalism, is consistent with maximizing social welfare. We want companies to produce as much value as possible to consumers while using as few resources as possible, as well as utilizing most efficiently the resources it does use. This is profit maximization.
Labor is a cost of production. Each worker employed doing one task is a worker who cannot at the same time be employed doing other tasks, tasks that we also want done. (Are you fully sated in your life? Can you honestly say, "I'm am done consuming; there is nothing more that I ever want in my life."?) If a job currently being done in the U.S. can be done elsewhere using either machines or labor with lower opportunity costs, the worker in the U.S. is now freed up to do other things that we value. If we decide not to do this because we believe jobs are benefits and our objective is to maximize labor, we are made poorer, not richer. We are wasting our most precious resource - human capital.
So ask President Obama, why do you insist on wasting our most precious resource?
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