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Software Tariffs and US IT Outsourcing?
HeelToe asks: "A while back I worked with someone who thought the US should simply impose tariffs on imported products to adjust their price to equalize foreign labor rates to the US minimum wage. I was laid off and my position moved to Canada last year. Since then, I've thought a lot about his ideas, as well as one of our topics of conversation a while back: Why doesn't the US tax the import of software? It seems to me like they should. It's not a "tangible" product (same reason used to deny my co-workers and me NAFTA and Trade Act benefits), but when someone outsources to another country with cheap labor for any other industry, there are usually import tariffs. Why is software different, and how would this change the climate of US IT jobs leaving for other parts of the world if we did tax software imports? I've done some looking on the web, but can find nothing in the Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States. I did find this thread from a few months back on informationweek.com's Career Development Forum, but not much else. What does Slashdot think?"
But it seems it would be largely futile to impose such tariffs, as usually international software developement is done by satellite offices of US-based companies, thus making them immune.
Otherwise, it could be similar to the issue of the "Made in America" labels that can be put on any product partially constucted within the United States. So if a widget is manufactured in Mexico, but put together in the US it can still bare the label, exempting it from some tariffs. So for coding and other computer style products, this can be worked around by doing the majority of the work outside the country with the cheaper labor, then wrapping it all up within the borders.
Have you been stalked by Seth today?
This tax will do three things:
- Software Will Cost More
- The Governemt Will Never Give Up This Tax (In 25 years great software may come from many nations, think about the future)
- Even Free Software May Be Subject to Tax or Fees
People need to understand that when Corporations are taxed they never loose money; they just charge us more. The only thing that may work is a tax incentive to companies that use American Software.I'm just starting out in this career field but I can see the writing on the wall, alot of programming is going to go the way of manufactring, overseas.
How do you determine where the software comes from? It's simple to incorperate in the US. It's simple to package product in the US even if the coders aren't here. It's simple to compile or make the code available in the US, even if the coders aren't here.
Tariffs are always a bad idea. Instead of looking at way to implement them in the software industry we should looking at how to remove them from other areas. The only people tariff hurt are consumers, who have to pay more for the product.
I am a soon to be CS grad, and I am scared of the current job market. But if software can be produced better and cheaper elsewhere, oh well. Tariff are just crutch.
Spencer Ogden
I'm all for it. As a college student, majoring in CS, one of the bleakest prospects is the fact that I won't have a job in a couple of years when I graduate. Anything (reasonable) to keep US jobs here is a good idea in my book.
I'm a Canadian! :)
Why should everyone else pay more for software so you can be uncompetitive?
Very bad idea in my opinion. What happens when you get into Open Source Software? If the government thinks imposing tariffs on software is a good idea, they might deem it ALL software, including Open Source. So will that mean for every time I download OpenBSD I'm going to have to pay a tariff? What about software mirrors? Components? Data itself? I'd rather not open up that can of worms..
..There's a-dooin's a-transpirin'
We are automatons.
Like 1000 brainless monkeys typing code until something works.
We work in Redmond, WA.
Of course, lunkhead that I am, I've built a home computer out of a large-ish pile of stuff, all from China or Korea. I'd feel a lot better if some of this stuff was made nearby and I could speak to someone in english without some heavy accent, regarding support. The old anti-dumping tariff on memory doesn't seem to have any impact, even tangentially, to the 9,999 things that go into a PC.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Yet, when other countries get their labor costs to be lower than those of the US, then Americans start complaining and want to impose taxes. Well, which is it? If the US can impose tariffs on Indian computer products, is the US willing to have tariffs imposed on US computer products by Europeans, whose labor costs are higher because of better social services?
I think this Onion article points out what really is going on: many Americans just can't deal with the fact that the rest of the world is different and actually likes is that way.
On top of all that, MS and other big software companies would oppose it since it would encourage open source and free software (which wouldn't have the tarifs imposed since it is free/relatively low cost).
This is going to sound calus, but US computer programmers need to realize that just knowing how to program a computer does not gaurantee a high paying job. People who have an additional skill and can use their programming skills to enhance that skill will be in a much better position. That is why MIS's are able to get jobs as Database Administrators and CS majors generally cannot.
Galium Arsenide is the material of the future, and always will be.
I think the US or any country for that matter should apply the same level of taxes for this as it does on other products.
No product should be subsidized by the government wether it is US steel or European grain in any country that embrace free trade.
Either you let free trade show its advantages and disadvantages by letting it run free or you impose the same level of taxes/fees for all imports.
I hate to say this but if someone beats your prices by 50% then taxes is not going to be of much help in the long run if the quality of the delivery is good enough.
True ravers don't need drugs
If they'll work cheaper than you, its YOUR problem, not theirs. Complain to your local Congressman/MP about the government-sponsored inflation which raises the costs of doing business where you are.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I think this is a pretty dumb idea really...
The world does not revolve around the US (Well, not ENTIRELY)
Why doesn't the US tax the import of software?
Taxing software seems impossible. What exactly is importing software? Sending code over FTP? Sending the finished product? If its compiled in the US and developed elsewhere is that still imported?? Maybe taxing the actual labor that would make more sense.
There is a slight chance that some tariffs might be imposed but I doubt it. The computer industry is much to powerful at the moment to allow such a swing, it would mean that the major idea behind the free trade is being neglected. Dream on.
US Software development will be dead in 10 years if the government doesn't step in. People are going to india to get their software made at 1/5th the cost.
'ta
If software isn't tangible how can it be imported to begin with?
Software in an intangible form is basically just an idea. Can we tax ideas now? How can you regulate its importation to begin with if it doesn't exist in any physical way? Are we going to prohibit foreigners from coming into the country on vacation now, lest they write a piece of code, and in effect, import software?
What about all the software that hasn't been written yet? Maybe we should start taxing foreigners on the basis of software they might potentially create in the future, since the software really exists in his mind, just waiting to be written down...
There are several fundemental assumptions this post makes that have to be corrected.
First, as someone who works a lot in both the USA and Canada, I can guarantee you that living costs in Canada are, on average, HIGHER than the USA. If your job was moved to Montana (which has lower living costs than where you are now) would you be asking Montana for import tariffs? Of course not; so please, drop this argument.
Second, I see a lot of Slashdot posts discussing the movement of I.T. jobs to "cheaper" locales. A lot of the arguments made against this move are the same arguments that were lodged against Japanese auto companies in the 1970's. North American IT workers may be in denial now, but the offshore trend will continue to deteriorate the IT job markets of both the USA and Canada.
So what is the solution? Just as the auto-workers realized in the 1970's, the successful worker will be one who not only performs menial tasks (i.e. programming) well, but also adds significant value to their position. For example, if you are a good communicator AND understand technology you will have no problem finding a job. If you prefer to lock yourself in the back room and code (and complain to Slashdot) then you are going to be in for some tough times. Keep in mind that times now, on average, are good. Use this time to retrain and expand your skillset, not reading up on arcane NAFTA regulations.
They don't add import tariffs because software is "intellectual property" and much different than "physical property". It is much too difficult to track the movement of something like that and that can be distributed so easily.
That is exactly why distributing music and movies is theft is because its just like someone stealing my car....
Oh wait, those view points contradict one another, dont they. Oh well I'm the US government I'm allowed to do that.
Re: WMD are evil we need to disarm those that have them. How? By using our WMD's on them of course....
Not that Im saying all software made in the US is bad, but slapping a tax on all non-US software is just going to make people use inferior though cheaper products.
Most "premium" software is developed internally for non-IT companies to solve a need unique to their industry. Consider airline reservations systems and the airline industry.
It would be "tricky" to manage what a large multi-national does for offshore programming.
This is a boring sig
It's a stupid idea.
John Kerry is a Joke!
I worked from remote for US companies and it was great experience - working with such distributed team. :) Anyway, If you're not lazy or stupid or narrow minded - you'll find your job, I'm sure.
Instead of punishing other countries that are less wealthy, why not establish a international minimum wage. You can still impose tarrifs on those countries that don't have them, but this would as well protect people in your country and help people in less developed countries. And, of course, re-established international competition at a fairer level.
You are the biggest programmer in the world!
Tax Software like that, and you will trigger a deep recession. Software shoud compete on it's merits, not on marketing, and it shouldn't matter where it comes from...common, does this person really think that us North Americans (Canadians and USAians) couldn't compete against anywhere else without artificial barriers? Good software will eventually rise to the top especially as Open Source becomes the major paradign for software creation.
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
I personally know of several companies that already have development centers in India and are planning to move all operations there soon. The average wage for these developers is 20K per year. The problem is that they can live like kings there on 20K.
Nobody in the US can afford to pay for college and raise a family on such a salary. The result will be a complete loss of technical skills from our country (US). At least with textiles, they have to pay to ship it back. There is no cost associated with e-mailing software back to the US. If we do not take action soon, the number of bright young kids going into computer science will plumment and our country will be void of software expertise....
Michael
So employers can hire healthier people, not worrying about catastrophic health-insurance bills, which makes everything a bit cheaper to make up here.
If the US wanted to reduce its' corporate costs and make business more cost-competitive, instead of whining, they could do away with the HMOs and give everyone access to health care. After all, a healthy, educated workforce is cheaper in the long run.
The UK tried this when other countries semiconductor capabilities exceeded their own - tariffs were impose on imported components. It was meant to protect the UK computer industry - but it backfired badly. Unable to compete in the manufacture of ICs, UK companies couldn't even import components and produce full systems competitively. The policy led to the death of systems manufacturing without benefitting the component producers.
The same thing happened to the UK film industry. In order to fight against films produced in Hollywood, a law was passed requiring a certain percentage of all films to be produced in the UK. Since the general public wanted Hollywood films, the only way to comply was to show supporting features produced in the UK. Since this was more profitable than producing feature films, the UK film industry ended up producing supporting features about candlemaking in Birmingham. So it died. We are now seeing some recovery, but only after at least two decades of decline.
As has been seen in the automotive industry, protection of national producers in this manner only leeds to apathy within the domestic industry. Protected from outside innovation and competition there is no reason to improve, instead the industry will settle into a cosy cabal with domestic producers. When, eventually, the import duty is removed the existing industries are far behind their foreign competitors. This is detrimental not only to the industry long-term but also to the domestic consumer.
Eventually, for the reasons outlined above, domestic producers will not be able to export - for two reasons. Lack of competition will lead to an atrophying of the state-of-the-art within the country and hence be behind other counties producers that are open to a free market. Also profit from export will be much lower than domestically. These factors will produce an inward facing industry which does nothing to help the balance of trade.
Lastly, those countries who have tariffs levied against them, may retaliate with equivalent tariffs or legislation against the import of other goods and services from the tariff imposing country which will hurt the countries export marketing and thier domestic industry as a whole.
For better or worse (and I believe better) we all operate in a global market. This drives competition and innovation and in the longer term will bring benefit to all. Protectionism only serves to kill those it seeks to protect.
Collecting tariffs on software imports would be the most stupid thing to do. Billions of dollars each year flow into the US economy just because of the global Microsoft Tax. This only works for as long as other countries continue to play nicely, and don't get funny ideas like trying to get their cut of Microsoft's tax by themselves levying tax on software imports (and imports of other "intellectual" property like movies that have zero material value but nonethelesse generate huge flows of cash into American pockets).
In short, the US is arguably the worlds greatest profiteer from trading software, and would be damn stupid to give this up to just "protect" the lifelyhoods of a bunch of hackers. Nobody's going to shake up a system that's probably the only reason for keeping the US trade deficit from causing instant economic implosion.
This is fine in theory...
that is until you want a Linux distro made outside the US like say SUSE...
What we _do_ need is a control on our US population other than corporations and the government that _teach_ people rather than prefer them stupid. The jobs aren't just going away because of money. Some of them, no flame intended, are going aways because the IT market is glutted with a lot of paper people that never are up to snuff. The good ones get drowned or hang onto small lifeboats to survive while the bad ones get big fat paychecks for doing a crappy job.
The companies will cease moving the jobs when two things occur:
1 - Salaries, and job working conditions get hashed out to normal levels like they are in other types of jobs.
2 - People work as hard as other people in other positions to make the companies money. (No offense to the hard-working people - I'm referring to the useless that pretend to know IT skills. You all know who they are.)
"Bah!" - Dogbert
don't you canadians realize that down here in the USA we don't care what you think?
1. Trade war. The US exports for more IP than it imports. Just to give you an idea of how big the difference is, US spending on R&D is roughly equal to spending by the rest of the OECD combined. When it comes to software production the disparity is even larger. If the US starts a trade war in this area then they have almost nothing to gain, and they have a very large and lucrative export sector to lose.
2. Racism. Why is it that people have so much trouble with the idea of competing with poor people for work? Do you think they aren't hungry enough already? Does the idea of them actually developing some sort of economy disturb you? After all they have to compete with cheap mass produced products from industrialized nations, and massively subsidised food. Why shouldn't we have to compete with them for work?
3. Self-interest. Why the hell would any country want to encourage their best and brightest to waste their talent doing work that could be done for a fraction of the price by cheap labor in other countries? For that matter why would you want to waste your life doing something that is not economically productive? Find something worthwhile to do with you life, instead of trying to strong-arm your customers into paying artificially inflated prices for skills that are not needed.
4. Freedom. It isn't just good for software. When ever you see someone who is trying to shut out the competition you can be pretty sure he is trying to get a free ride by screwing everyone else.
Why is software different
Because it's bits and bytes, and can be replicated infinitely. So a programmer makes a program in 40 hours, and it's taxed forever, even if the programmer isn't continuing to work on it.
and how would this change...if we did tax software imports?
It would legitimize software as a 'thing', which has the same copyright, property, IP, patent, etc protections as things that exist physically and can't be duplicated for free.
If software is ever to be free, programmers need to be free. For programmers to be free, we must invent real jobs that pay well that a real programmer can do for only a few hours a day. Then it won't matter if your job is shipped out, since your job simply won't exist anymore.
Oh, wait, software will never be free. Sorry, guess you're screwed...
-Adam
What about downloadable software? Does downloading software from a non-US server count as importing?
Most of the companies that are outsourcing software overseas to save money are making their money off of the U.S. economy. Why should they have their cake and eat it too? Yes, consumer goods are made overseas for little money, but by the time they get here they are marked up conciderably. What we have now are companies that want the benefits of foriegn labor (cheap wages, no taxes, no unemployment, no retirement, etc...) but at the same time want to have all the marketing benefits from the USA. Sorry, no way.
And all this talk about how it's a bad thing, and what about open source software, and whatever: too bad. Half the people saying this are probably from other countries and want to import their software for cheap. These same countries protect their people, but the U.S. is not allowed to protect their people? And the other half saying this probably have jobs now and think they are immune.
That's the most beautiful things about America today and why we are in so much trouble. Our own people are the first ones in line to help our competitors. Sure, let's let in the H1 visa workers. Oh, and let's send even more jobs to India. Don't forget, make sure you don't do anything to impede the cheap software so none of our own businesses can compete. And while you are at it, if there are any problems make sure that the guest workers get to voice THEIR opinions to our politicians while they ignore the people they represent. Hell, the rest of the world just has to sit back and relax and let us destroy ourselves.
If this was WWII we wold have bombed Pearl Harbor for the Japanese and then apologized to them after.
Of course we all know the deal. Anyone who sticks up for themselves is a racist and thanks to Bill Clinton will get sent to jail for more time than murdering someone.
And why is all this happening? Easy, a few people at the top of a few companies want to be billionaires and own everything and they don't care if they ruin the United States or screw over every last person as long as they get their money. And 20 years from now everyone will look back and wonder how everything fell apart.
I'm sure the WTO will love this idea just as much as they loved those steel tariffs...
Satellite office or not, products made outside the US are subject to import duties and tariffs in other industries.
The question is only how you would force the disclosure of allocated resources, etc., since software can be transmitted digitally and is thus much harder for US customs to monitor.
-rt
What we need to do is limit capital flight as well as allow weaker markets to impose tarrifs. So, the best solution is to make it illegal for companies to relocate overseas. I think that solves the problem much better. After all, they made there money here, and they should be required to keep their money here and support the country and the people that helped them get where they are.
teh heh ... he said 'BIGGEST'
Great. More unfair US tariffs locking out other countries from competing. I notice that the US vigorously opposes similar actions by other countries, and yet has the gall to claim they believe in free trade.
Here in Australia, we dropped our tariffs long ago, partly at the insistence of the US. Now they can compete in our markets, but we can't compete in theirs. Australian jobs are effectively lost to the US. I don't expect US citizens to agree that this is wrong, but I don't have to agree with or even like the bare-faced hyprocisy of the US trade stance.
So, basically, the problem is that overseas workers can in many cases produce more good code per $ than US workers? Adding a tariff will protect some jobs here, but at the greater cost of increased administrative costs of handing (and working around) the tariff, and higher software costs in general. Basically what the tariff does is make outsourcing more expensive than using local talent. Sounds nice in general, but unless the USA spends more money on software, the net effect of this is that our software dollars will buy less productivity, and hence we'll have less software. So, instead of saving an American job, it might just mean that the software project doesn't happen wholesale.
A much better approach is to find a way to justify the higher wages of American works. In order to not get outsourced, find a way to prove you're worth the money. Is that sheer code productivity, product insights, or what? There needs to be an angle. If you look at laptop manufacture, while most of the work is done around the South China Sea, product management, marketing, sales, etcetera all happens in the US. And while it sucks to be a laid off engineer, it certainly rocks to be able to buy an excellent laptop for half would an equivalent product would have cost a few years ago.
The thing about free trade is that its benefits are diffusely spread, but those it hurts are highly concentrated. So, even though steel tariffs cost more American jobs than they save, the steel industries and unions are more concentrated and vocal than the broader steel consumer industries, which is everyone from car manufacturers to can makers to appliance builders, or whatever. Higher steel costs might have saved a job in Pennsylvania, but they probably cost twice that many jobs in lots of other places. People were laid off from car dealerships because of them, even if the person laid off didn't know that was the root cause.
I've worked with several engineering projects where components were outsourced to India. The Indian engineers were are talented and motivated, and wrote good code. And, honestly, I can't say they need the money any less than "native" programmers. Our long term national interest is certainly aligned with India developming a modern, integrated economy! And I'm happy to be able to pay less for software, or buy packages that otherwise wouldn't have been written, than if all software had to be authored in the USA.
My video compression blog
Redhat Linux will cost $0 but Red Flag Linux will be taxed and cost $0...
We're saved!
Get over it, software jobs are leaving, start retraining yourself now so you still have a job in a year.
- Adam L. Beberg - The Cosm Project - http://www.mithral.com/
I've heard that Dell outsourced all it's frontline support to India.
:D
It makes me sick everytime I see that Dell Intern "Who turned out the lights in tech support?" commercial knowing that what they portray on TV doesn't resemble reality at all.
Dell cannot draw me into it's delusion of an american company anymore. I still love their service contracts though
That those who consider themselves most informed would latched on to the comments of a few uninformed, powerless individuals and state that the US is heading in the wrong direction.
There is no evidence to support the idea that the US is heading towards more protectionism. If anything, the recent regimes are taking the opposite tack.
Our willingness to put up with adversities like this have made our country incredibly economically strong over the years. Far stronger than the Europeans with their more worker-friendly laws.
less wars, better beer, fresher water =)
I agree wholeheartedly about making corporations pay some sort of tax for outsourcing US jobs to another country. By removing jobs from the US, they're hurting the economy. The only people that benefit from this are the rich owners who are more concerned with lining their own pockets rather than keeping our economy stable. The combination of the "dot bomb" and outsourcing of IT jobs has caused the pay scales to stagnate because (1) there's not as many IT jobs, and (2) why pay a programmer top dollar when someone in some other country will do it for a fraction of the cost.
The same for production of goods, like computers, TVs, cars, clothes, etc... but there should be a clause that says that the burden must be absorbed by the corporation, and not passed onto the consumers.
Conversely, companies who produce goods in the USA using US labor and US parts should be given tax breaks.
Our problem is that since the 80s we've moved out of being a "production-based economy" - and we've become a "service-based economy"... and it's cheaper for US corporations to exploit workers overseas to produce our goods rather than pay US workers an honest wage. Now that most of our goods are made overseas, we're moving our service-oriented jobs there, too.
Notice that the "american dream of being middle class" is now pretty much a fantasy. (one parent works, the other stays home and raises kids, 3 bedroom home 2 car garage - nice suburban neighborhood). Now it takes 2 incomes to make ends meet in this scenario - and barely...
[Connection closed by foreign host]
lose is the opposite of win or obtain
Your lucid comment was marred by your inability to write proper English. I weep for my language.
At one point in the past I would have agreed with the poster. But somebody asked me: what do I have against these people from other countries who want to make a living selling software in my own country?
This is a question that anti-globalization people need to ask themselves. If somebody in mexico can turn screws for $1.24 an hour, it makes sense that you would use that labor source before using a $38 an hour source in Michigan. That $38 figure only because so obnoxiously high because of some tortured sense of nationalism, and the wonderfully effective extortion campaigns brought to us by national unions.
This situation is entirely brought on because people either don't understand basic economics, or feel better about themselves if they feign ignorance.
As with physical labor as with software: Nothing good can come from the government issuing a tax on the import of what is essentially foreign brain power. As another poster mentioned, once written into law, such a tax would be damn near impossible to undo.
If a Mexican (or Indian or Russian) programmer is willing and able to write equivalent code as I can for half the price, which would a rational buyer choose? Yes, it sucks for me, but these other people have made good decisions to get to where they are that they can threaten my job security. I think tariffs such as this is at best nationalistic and at the worst, racist. Such tariffs only succeed in widening the artifical economic gaps in the world, and supporting them is tantamount to supporting poor quality of life in other countries.
Employees did not show an ounce of loyalty to their employers during the boom so why should the employers show loyalty to the employees during the recession? Many overpaid and incompetent IT works jumped shop as soon as they got a higher offer from some other company. Those people are the ones who ruined everything for the rest of us.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
I work at Dell and if its an L1, chances are, you are talking to one of Apu's son's.
Those who give up freedom for security deserve time IN SOVIET RUSSIA!!
....are already subject to enough punitive measures by Americans who don't want competition, even in spite of NAFTA. Ask a BC logger or a Saskatchewan wheat farmer.
Why is an American programmer any more entitled to a job than one in Calgary? It's not like you can claim that the Canadian is working for ten dollars a week like one in India.
This is typical of the American attitude towards international trade: other countries exist to serve as markets, not sources of competition. Buying things from Americans good, selling things to Americans bad!
Software can be encrypted and sent over the Internet so the IRS cannot detect it coming into our borders.
Then even if they detect it, how do they decide a value on which the tax will be applied? A piece of software can cost anywhere from $0 to a over a billion dollars. The IRS will always end up undervaluing or overvaluing it.
Some countries are actually retarded enough to impose import duties on software; anything downloaded off the Internet gets in duty-free because they can't catch it, while anything physically brought in on CDs or diskettes gets taxed based on a value that the customs officer pulls out of their ass. I recently sent my brother 2 CDs with Linux and other free software because broadband is not widely available in his country, and they slapped on US$50 duty, ignoring the $2 value I put on the customs form (for the cost of the media) and the glaring FREE SOFTWARE label on the CDs.
Then there is the consideration that software can be duplicated infinitely. Someone can import a single copy of a software package that is worth $200 by itself, then get it installed on 10,000 machines.
And how would you assess the foreign value component of software that was developed by teams in the US collobarating with overseas developers?
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.
tangible Audio pronunciation of tangible ( P ) Pronunciation Key (tnj-bl)
adj.
1.
1. Discernible by the touch; palpable: a tangible roughness of the skin.
2. Possible to touch.
3. Possible to be treated as fact; real or concrete: tangible evidence.
2. Possible to understand or realize: the tangible benefits of the plan.
3. Law. That can be valued monetarily: tangible property.
some people don't seem to know the context of tangible in this instance.
I think the poster wants to tarrif the money paid to outside vendors.
If it is done as a percentage, then free software would be free. however if you paid someone to write software, free or otherwise, that would get tarrifed
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
n/t
Problem situation:
What if a piece of software is created by a team composed of both off-shore foreigners and on-shore yankees. Should it get taxed?
And this from a country which is all for free trade... as long as it suits the interests of US enterprises, of course.
Guess what? It's capitalism. If you're not willing or able to be competitive, that's your fault, no?
Since the US is surely a net exporter of software, does that mean you think it would be a good idea for the EU, Japan, etc to put import tariffs on Oracle, IBM and yes, even Windows?
No. Well...maybe. Actually, yes. It really just depends.
Tariffs are best used to protect an 'infant' industry. When it is able to compete in the world market, then lift the protective tariff. There are other mechanisms to assist the adolescent industry that effectively support a competitive world price.
Tariffs are tools, and they should not be used in a mature marketplace.
One of the jobs of a government is to develop their economy with the hopes of a healthy export economy. That is best done when that economy produces a good that is comparatively cheaper than the good being traded. A healthy export economy makes for a good chance of a positive trade balance.
I do not support these software tarrifs.
Yeah, that's it. We're jealous. Right. Holy Shite, what are putting in the water up there? Soma?
some pilgrims have the monkey mind and some the pig snout. some are of more earthly stock and do not have ability to call the wind or tread the luminous cloud. but they travel together anyway, bound by the Law they have yet to understand. peaceful provinces, well-regulated and hospitible, are a night's work, two at the most; bellicose lands full of foul hatred and easy deception, likewise --- to dally is to fall behind. but what is it that they head towards? and why do they laugh and not understand calls for a tax on codified thought?
404 error..
The invasion of Europe will be launched from the USA's nearest aircraft carrier, USS Britain, which was the first Europen country to be liberated, its' Premier having donated it as a gift to the New American Empire. UK subjects now have the unlimited access to the US media and goods that they have craved so much and for so long during the long, dark days of independance.
"Blair -a restraining influence on the President"? Chamberlain thought he had Hitler under control....
If the same people were in the US, they would need an H1-B. How is this going to be equallized?
How can we compete with a person willing to live in a coldwater flat, and subsist on ramen noodles and rainwater?
They say the first thing to go is your penis. Well, it's either that or your brain. I forget which...
Let's not treat software differently than steel or any other product.
I expect to see more 'foreign' countries try to steal jobs from the U.S. .
This concept of fair trade makes no sense. The steel industry gets hit hard with 'dumping' all the time.
Tariffs should be added to their software. I don't think India has a free market economy.
Ironically, buying a house in Canada is made considerably MORE difficult than the US, due to the number of tax incentives and cool benes from being a landowner down there. Go figure.
So all of us have to get PHDs in Nano Technology now because big companies gave our jobs away? And then when the rest of the world catches up, we have to get another PHD? and another? Fuck that.
I should be able to keep a stable job for 5 years without having to worry about the third world catching up and robbing me of my job every 5 years. Not all of us can afford to be in college all our lives and not everyone in this country is smart enough, so theres going to be a problem.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
If this is implemented, then it will create a disadvantage for companies located in the U.S. relative to companies in other countries which are free to make use of cheap labor resources. For example, a company located in Canada that was free to contract out to Indian programmers without paying a tariff would have an advantage over a U.S. company that had to pay a tariff, all else being equal.
This would encourage U.S. companies to relocate their entire operations outside the U.S. They might not move to India, but moving to Canada, Ireland, etc. would not be far fetched in this scenario.
Look at the history of tariff-protected industries around the world. Tariffs are usually a crutch that props up weak companies.
The best example of the ills of propping up the weak is Japan's banking industry.
At the moment, the U.S. software industry is probably the strongest in the world. Let's not weaken it by adding barriers to doing business.
It seems simple enough. What we are experiencing here is a reversal of an issue Canadians have had to deal with in the height of the dot-com hype...
Many, many talented IT workers, doctors and other skilled labourers were moving down south, because the jobs were there and the same jobs were paying more. Now, the tables have turned. The employers seem to have the upper hand, and the jobs are returning here. True, I don't earn as much as someone with an equivalent job in the U.S. (ie: I earn the same amount in Canadian dollars as someone in the U.S. would earn in U.S. dollars).
I hate to say "that's life", but that's what it is. I didn't move south, even though I had considered it. I stayed put in Toronto, earning less, but I am now rewarded with somewhat improved (arguably) job security. I've had the same job for the last three years, since I left school. Bad or good, the world economy is certainly changing things around a lot.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Why send aid to third-world countries to help them develop, then prevent them from selling what they make by imposing import tariffs? It sounds like a terrible waste of money.
Or, to take another perspective, compare the industries in the U.S. that do have tariff protection (such as steel and agriculture) with the ones that do not (such as software and entertainment). In which ones does the U.S. lead the rest of the world?
If you charge too much people wont buy your shit, problem solved.
Tax them, use the tax money to fund our schools and colleges so our students can be better educated than the third world.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
An instructive comparison might be the tariffs Intel wanted on cheap RAM from Asia.
Cheaper RAM hurt Intel in the short term - Intel accused foreign competitors of "dumping". But in the long term, cheap RAM made the tech industry grow. We wouldn't have 128MB video cards today if Intel had successfully lobbied to use tariffs to stiffle competition back then.
---
"Most of the statutes, or acts, edicts, and placards of parliaments, and states for regulating and directing of trade have been either political blunders or obtained by artful men for private advantage under pretence of public good." -Benjamin Franklin,
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
Tariffs are used to boost the US economy (or any other nation that uses them). A Tariff on incoming software will BOOST the sales of US produced software and encourage corporations to make the software within the US. As a result there would be more demand for more programming jobs.
Tariffs are used for a reason (or else they would not exist) however complex to approve. The NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) is an alliance between US, Canada, Mexico and is growing to include the Carribean Islands and Argentina. It was put into play to decrease the over all Tariffs percentages (I believe the average for the US is around 5%) in the involved countries. Instating a Tariff must first be approved by the WTO (World Trade Organization) which takes a very long time because an individual agreement must be made with each country affected.
I think the real challenge is finding a percentage that will in a sense, "equalize" the software industry in the US with it's foriegn competitors.
As far as out sourcing works it is a complicated task to Tariff. Some corporations such as Keane Consulting have two locations in India where all of the programming is done. So in a sense they are not outsourcing and it would be difficult to Tariff such a thing. However other companies do outsource their programming to other countries.
Overall they are an effective strategy for to increase US made products, let me know what you think.
- Austin T Smith
austintsmith.com
...you should either (a) lower your costs (b) move to the country in question AND lower your costs or (c) consider another job class.
And before you get all shirty with me, our office is probably going to close in a week due to two clients failing to make payments to us over the last few months (now in litigation with them over their breach of contract), and I'm considering if it's worth staying a software developer in the current climate.
It seems to me obvious that the USD is overvalued, making US-produced goods and services wildly overpriced, and imports too cheap. So why isn't the US dollar devaluing?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
It's near impossible to enforce, and it's not in anyone's economic interests but domestic software developers.
Can you really picture the American government taking an altruistic stand to preserve our domestic software developers?
I thought not.
Our government will sell out cheap (sorry, have sold out cheap) to the big indistry consortia that stands to benefit from that particular kind of cheap labor. This is old news.
Taking the long view on "cheap foreign competition" over the years, the lesson of history is that labor always loses.
Fans of capitalism will announce that even though you're out of work, the economy benefits because as goods (and now services) are cheaper, everyone (businesses and individuals) can afford more, and be more productive, etc. Theoretically you'll get another job doing something else and progress marches on.
Globalization as a whole is tricky, though... simplistic thinking like this doesn't take into account the vagaries of currency markets and national conditions. I'm not qualified to really get into currency and other macroeconomic games, but as for the other... overseas software shops may never be as bad as it is in the garment industry (though I won't bet on it), but generally speaking "free trade" is often just code for "legal loophole" - it allows one to shop around for a "friendly" environment (child labor, inhuman work weeks, totalitarian security, exploitive wages and contracts, "flexible" legal system, no environmental regulations, and even the occasional ability to "disappear troublemakers without too much fuss"). They could never get away with this stuff in America - we have (or had) decent public education and functioning democracy. So they shield themselves in the complexities of trade to do it elsewhere.
Ultimately I think favorably of globalization only as long as there are enormous punitive tarrifs to correct for legal imbalances, and a very healthy reexamination of global economic (and especially currency) policy to insure that games aren't being played. But I am always learning more about the topic and I would love to hear other opinions about this.
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Foreign economies rely on this type of income: India for example has had a huge economic boom because telemarketing has been moved to that country by many US companies. If we imposed taxes on imports, then foreign economies would suffer. US companies would move their workforce back to the US, and while it would be good for our economy, it would devastate the rest of the world.
It's free when they want it.
... and they wonder why the world hates them.
If you want it, you gotta pay out the ass.
The reason I can do this is because the first time I went to Romania, the exchange rate was 17000 Romanian Lei to $1. The second time I went it was 19000 Romanian Lei to $1. In a word, the exchange rate favors me.
SO... obviously what you need to do is devalue the dollar against the world economy to the point where a dollar is roughly in line with the Romanian Lei. And the only way to do that is to have rampant inflation. The easiest way to do THAT is to get the Fed to print more money. Lots more money. While this WILL cause a massive devaluation of your savings, if you are like most Americans, you won't have a lot of savings to devalue in any event.
Once we've persuaded the Fed to print a few extra trillion dollars a year, we can start working on repealing some of those pesky workplace safetey laws. My company just had to spend a lot of money to remove some asbestos and really, was that asbetos really bothering ANYONE? I submit that it was NOT! If it weren't for some goddamn hippie worried that someone might get cancer, that stuff could have stayed up there forever.
Once our population becomes one of the poorest and least safe workforces in the world, there should be no further problem with overseas IT outsourcing.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It is that the federal government can do anything it damn well pleases..... The arguments about 'They can't do it' don't hold water.
If it comes down to it, drop the tarrifs for intangible products and raise the corporate tax for companies that make a product where the producers overseas outweigh the consumers overseas. If 95% of your production takes place in foreign development centers but 60% of your sales take place domestically, then you have a trade deficit. It is a pretty simple damn model.
Taxes/Tariffs won't help. What we need to do is form a Profession, with:
- a significant educational requirement (degree)
- licensing
- ethics body
- core standard for practice
- discipline for malpractice
Face it, high-tech failed as a commodity-based industry and has become a service industry.
Without being Professionals, practice in our industry will get worse. Look at what happened to the food and manufacturing industries. If we don't -do- something we will follow.
Look at how doctors/dentists, accountants, lawyers, realtors have protected their businesses as a good example.
Being an enemployed Canadian in a similar situation, I can sympathize with your loss. I will personally visit said company and discuss this issue with them. Please respond with complete contact details and job description.
Thank You.
There's such a big push for Intelectual Property and all the other DRM/DMCA which makes bits and bytes property. Yet, when it becomes expensive or effort filled, the same organizations that are fighting for those IP rights then decide that there's no tangable good.
--
If I actually could spell I'd have spelled it right in the first place.
As has already been noted, tariffs would do more harm than good in the tech industry. Perhaps what IT workers need to do is rally support for products built by American labor. For example, I haven't heard of Microsoft outsourcing its labor to other countries, and it continues to hire many people even in the middle of this recession in the tech economy. Perhaps our (as in tech geeks) disapproval of Microsoft software and support of companies like Sun, who is planning to do massive foreign outsourcing, is/will hurt the American tech job market in rebounding. Some food for thought, at least.
If you run an applet on your machine that comes off a server in India do you have to pay import duties?
If not, why not? What's to stop you from calling up versions of everything as "applets"?
Well, since tariffs result in directly higher prices for consumers, you are asking me to pay more for software so you can get a job they could pay someone else less to do. Tell you what, make your case, keeping these things in mind:
1) You are no more entitled to a paid job than the foriegn programmer doing the job you want to do.
2) You could learn a skill that *is* in higher demand in the US so paying you is actually the efficient thing to do.
3) Tariffs to preserve jobs are the equivalent of welfare in that they raise costs for everyone else (not that welfare is inherently bad, but that is what you are asking).
Now you know how American steel workers feel. Should they learn another skill? I think that they absolutely should. Here is an article for your consideration: link.
Boom Shanka
It means, "What would Ayn Rand Do?" She'd hate tariffs, because she likes free markets...or something. Anyway, the most important things is that as a follower of rugged individualism, I should defer all of my own decision making ability to what a dead russian writer who had obvious neuroses would tell me to do...even if I would naturally tend to want to do something else. That's rugged individualism alright.
Sony Music often outsources the support musicians for recordings (who are paid once for their work as they are not the authors of the piece) to Mexicanos down south.
Of course Sony doesn't volunteer to pay them agreed minimum wages in the States.
I don't know where the CDs are produced, so I know nothing about the import tax in this instance, just about the employees rights in recordings.
You wanna talk about loosing jobs to other countries, you should see how many canadians are out of jobs becuase of tarrifs imposed on our wood. It doesn't matter if it's software or tagible items. Free trade is free trade.. plain and simple.
the fr0sty?1!
i will NOT FAIL IT next time... i swear!
Posts like this makes me wonder what an army of disgruntled, unemployed hackers would be able to do to the IT infrastructure. We might be in for some interesting times!
.coms. Perhaps investors that lost a lot of money have a vendetta against 'puter geeks.
I also wonder whether the outsourcing is a reaction to the failure of the
History is so yesterday!
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume that your claim of having thought this through is false
firstly how are you going to determine where the software is originating from ? What do you think these companies will do to avoid the tariff - hmmmm ?
secondly what do you think other countries will do if the US imposes a punitive import tariff , maybe they'd impose them too , maybe they'd even impose tariff so high that it would cripple our software exports. Where do you think your job would be if US software exports contracted by 30 or 40% , at jiffymart probably.
thirdly tariffs don't protect jobs , they protect corporations. Historically every US industry that's been protected by tariffs has shrunken in GDP terms and consolidated - ever heard of Bethlehem Steel ?
fourthly it's not your god given right to have permanent employment.
and lastly if your job moved to Canada you're either totally incompetent or there's some other reason not related to labor cost advantages. Canada is one of the worst countries in the world to do business in , it's like sweden without the pretty women ! No one would ever move to canada to gain a competitive advantage.
One of the reasons jobs are going to other countries is because the cost of living in the US is so high.
The reason the cost of living is high is because almost every imported commodity( from apple juice to steel ) from other countries is taxed to protect local producers.
As a result, a meal that would normally cost you about 1 dollar without any import tariffs, now costs you 5. Hence a person in the US has to be paid 5 times as much as a guy in China.
Thats why people working in free market industries like software are the ones to feel the pinch at times like these.
So the next time you vote for more protection of local producers, remember our software engineers.
Some thoughts:
* The location of where software is developed should be based on some weighted avg. of the best programmers/software outcome ratio to cost. Outsourcing software abroad is a free market, capitalist US decision that we use to become competitive. The consumer benefits, and in the long run leads to a stronger economy. Ask IBM, Intel, Cadence, etc. who are outsourcing their R&D efforts.
* Every US operation I've seen that outsources SW dev still has programmers in the US that direct architecture and leadership issues. These guys are either A) luckier than the counterparts that lost their jobs or B) more skilled.
* If taxes were imposed, you would see companies start to incorporate somewhere else (Caymans?), develop R&D in Asia, and have heavy sales forces in the US while still opening on NYSE, NASDAQ. This would reduce US jobs even further.
* From the venture capital and financial perspective, it's becoming more difficult to fund startups because the software/hardware execution costs are so high. You can't make money on a company that you poured 50M into anymore. Did you know Cisco raised less than 10M of venture money TOTAL?! (src: VentureSource)
* India and China are moving from "code monkey" type programmers, to advanced software (solid architecture, innovative algorithms, etc.) and beyond. It is becoming a myth that only simple, "dumb" jobs are being farmed out abroad. An enabler of this is that many foreign-based US programmers are leaving their US-based jobs and going to their home countries in part because standard of living is HIGHER in their adjusted income bracket. They took knowhow from US development processes and are spreading it around the worl. Intel is moving some software and hardware design to India. Cadence has an Indian ops (fairly advanced EDA software). Motorola, HP, etc. They aren't making web pages over there anymore.
* China and India are poised to become leaders in VLSI (chip design) if US doesn't keep up with engineers, etc. Entire chip design is being done in India today. Government and universities are putting a lot of money in this area. They may not develop the latest and greatest Pentium anytime soon, but more of the chips in your cell phone or other high volume devices (802.11) are being designed there instead (read Jobs).
* If you are a top programmer/architect, you will get hired in the US. It won't be easy like it was in 1996-1999 when they were giving 10K bonuses just for a CS grad from MIT to sign on. Programming jobs will not be a commodity like it was once today.
2. No. You do not understand - you can't understand. It is you who are the racist and your damned system that must collapse, but you and it are blind. You think that your exploitative capitalist ethic is the way the world ought to work.
It is ethically impermissable to allow workers, in this case foreign workers, to work at this wage and under these conditions in the employment of corporations over which we (yes, *we*) have economic and political control.
The system you advocate is fundamentally exploitative, and in this situation, undeniably racist.
If it means that these foreign workers will not have a job, then that is how it must be. The situation must be rectified, but advocating exploitation is not an ethically permissable way of bringing this about.
Human beings, workers, have intrinsic value, and a noble spirit.
For you to say that their best hope is to be exploited all their lives is to spit in their face.
We must not extend the means of production, extend the exploitation, for when we do we serve as slaves to our capitalist masters.
We, the workers, noble in spirit, must sieze these means of production, and only then can there be hope of global equality, and realized universal value.
3. Because there is more to life than seeking the most effective way to line the pockets of our capitalist masters?
4. Only you who are blinded by your capitalist ethic think this. You are wrong.
We will *not* be lead by you and your type.
We will *not* be decieved by your propagandizing.
We, all of us, are too good for that.
Go do your homework from Economics 101, kid. People have tried this since mideval times. Go learn something useful
What ever happened to the free market/capitalism that you people loved 2 years ago? No intervention, no regulation, etc? You choose to live by the sword, now you die by the sword.
How do you propose to tax this?!?!
./configure; make; make install;
$ wget http://software.org.du/act/actg-1.4.tgz
$ tar -zxvf actg-1.4.tgz
$ cd actg-1.4;
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Let's say the U.S can produce a widget for $2 and Third-World country X can produce it for $1. Any reasonable business person (and many consumers) would save 50% and buy the $1 widget. Of course, the American Widget Workers will scream bloody murder, and ask for some government protection.
So the U.S. puts a 100% tariff on widgets, so that the U.S. companies can compete. Great for the widget makers, but everyone that uses widgets is paying a dollar more than they would have to. Any product that uses widgets is that much more expensive. Companies that use widget-based products need more money for inventory and can spend less on salaries, so there are less total jobs in the economy. The only people that benefit are the American Widget Workers. And even they don't benefit as much as they think they do - the tariff works it's way invisibly through the economy, making the goods they buy more expensive than they would normally be. Plus, the third-world manufacturer can still sell widgets to other countries, whose products will have an advantage over the U.S., since they'll be using half-price widgets! There goes the exchange rate on a dollar...
Now replace widgets with software, and it gets a whole lot worse. What business doesn't use software? What sector of the economy wouldn't be helped by having to pay much less for software?
If job security really bothers you, there are some software jobs that can't be outsourced. Most U.S. military projects go to American companies, for reasons of security. It's even better if you can get security clearance.
It's not easy to be a worker in a fast-paced economy, where the skill sets are changing and job security is non-existant. But it's a lot better than the alternative, a broken economy where the government protects the jobs of a few privilidged workers at the expense of everyone else.
Look on the bright side. Some Canadian got hired for less then you, and within the next year (if not already) he won't have a job either once the company gives that guy the shaft and moves his job to India.
The debate over trade protection might seem like a complex issue, but in fact it is resolved by recognizing one very simple an irrefutable fact. THE TOTAL NUMBER OF JOBS ON EARTH CAN INCREASE. Protectionists incorrectly beleive that the total number of jobs in the world is constant; If a programmer in India gains a job, then someone elsewhere in the world must lose their job. That is quite simply FALSE.
In fact everyone already knows that employment grows, even those who do not know that they know it. There is a statistic recited in the news, to the point of tedium, called the "rate of employment". It tells you what percentage of a population has jobs. That number changes. And what that change tells us is that the number of jobs is not constant. Yes, it really is that simple, yet totally unobvious to so many.
So refuting the arguments for trade protection is a trivial exercise. Just point out that it is not necessary for one person to lose a job for another to gain a job. End of debate and the protectionists lost.
How can so many be so wrong about something so obvious ? They way the human mind works is interesting, but even more interesting are the ways in which it fails. Protectionists believe in a conservation law where there is none, while those who invest in perpetual motion machines are unaware of a conservation law where there is one. (Energy, of course). While opposed with respect to their faiths in conservation, they are alike in getting the facts wrong. Both groups lack essential knowledge about the way the world works, operate on false convictions, mispredict consequences and outcomes and ultimately misadvocate.
The difference between a stupid investor funding Perpetual Motion Generators Inc. and a protectionist advocating tariffs is that, while a the investor loses only his own investment, a protectionist harms others by unnecesarily denying them employment. Furthermore, those denied work as a consequence of tarifs are often the ones most deperately in need of pay.
There is a saying, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions" by I think in this case "misguided intentions" is more apt. Protectionists are out to protect their own jobs, at the expense of other people, so in the benevolent sense of the word, their intentions are not "good", but selfish. And they are indeed misguided, for we can identify the misturn exactly: The FALSE belief that the number of jobs on earth is a constant.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
America/Europe/Canada is in trouble. Labor is cheaper elsewhere. Look at what this did to the textile business in the US.
And software is easier to import. And its comodification will drive the value of developer down.
Compaq laid off an entire department in the US and is moving the jobs to india. The US workers spending there last months training the people who are taking there jobs/
Or is it that you only want free trade that works to your benefit, as a programmer?
I have come to grips with the exporting of the american software industry. We do live in a global economy, and it will be done, whether or not tariffs are introduced. The real question, I suppose, is what is the future of american industry. During the Great Manufacturing Exodus, the argument was, "Well, this will allow for cheaper products for customers, and future jobs in America will be well paid cutting edge jobs requiring a highly educated workforce." Now, those technical jobs are moving. So here's the question I have for slashdotters...
What is the future of industry in America?
And here's a second question that will get a lot of flak from the 'Tough Buttons' crowd.
What can America do to maintain its leadership in the world economy?
I've lived in the U.S. all my life and understand how lucky I've been to enjoy the quality of life that I do. I very much want that to continue, but don't think that tariffs are the answer. Any ideas?
I propose we give government subsidies to corporations who choose the cheapest labor possible.
We need to do more business with countries where child labor is encouraged, and where prisoners provide more skilled work for free. The United States needs to take the lead in encouraging nations to avoid imposing socialist employee safety laws on employers.
America! Of corporations! By corporations! For corporations!
Sincerely,
Fascistus Maximus
CEO, Omni Consumer Products
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Another method of retaliating is to impose *export* tarrifs on critical goods sold to the USA, thereby causing inflation in the USA. I live in British Columbia, where the huge softwood lumber industry is being crippled by unfair (as ruled by the WTO on several occasions) US import tarrifs on finished lumber even while the American saw mills are asking for lower prices on raw Canadian logs. There is a huge resentment up here because of the way the tarrif has caused 90% unemployment in some towns, and the silly trade war has caused housing costs in the USA to jump significantly.
Many people are calling on the Canadian government to impose a punitive export duty on oil, water and electricity, particularly since California is still in default on its electrical payments to B.C.Hydro from last year's shortages. You (Americans) don't mind raping other countries when you are in need, but quickly turn on your friends when you see an opportunity to fatten your wallets and protect industries that aren't competitive.
A tariff such as this (a tax imposed on a product when it is imported into a country) serves to protect high wage jobs - the kind we all like - they also protect the poor and the environment (I'm serious). How can a tariff do this?
It's pretty simple - A product costs $10 to make in a high wage country. Corporation moves to country where product costs $.01 to make because they can hire 12 year olds who work 16 hour days for $3 dollars a week (no child labor laws or pesky worker's rights or expensive toxic waste disposal requirements etc...). This has already happened to entire sectors where tariffs were relaxed and "free-trade" (the euphemism of the century) has been imposed. Corporations exist to maximize shareholder value - the majority of the $9.99 in savings is not passed on to you - it is used to build - you guessed it - shareholder value.
Now, if a tariff of $9.99 is imposed for importation of said product the corporation has no incentive to hop from impoverished nation to impoverished nation paying slave wages to powerless peasants until they grow weary of slavery (at which time they are dumped and a nation poorer still is recruited for the next round in this trans-national dry-humping). They have no incentive to drag wages down to a global lowest common denominator polluting and dragging everyone else down in their pursuit of wealth.
I highly recommend the book Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights
by Thom Hartmann (which if i remember correctly was reviewed quite positively here on slashdot recently). It completely changed my mind on the whole issue of tariffs and the government's legitimacy when it comes to taxation as it relates to promoting the greater good.
Now the rest of the world can tax the Microsoft Exports.
Heeltoe, the reason that you will not see any government action is quite simple, it has been decided by investors (rich people, rarely do work themselves, all about greed) have decided that as a highly educated, intelligent developer you are making too much money. The problem being that software developers make about 40% more than your average factory worker, and that's 40% that could be going into someone elses pocket.
The first solution is the beloved H1 (amongst others) Visa. This was designed to reduce teh so called "tech labor shortage" (read: high salary) of the high-tech sector. When this failed to increase corporate margins, companies were forced to make prfound sectors about the bold new global economy (read: outsource work to places labor is cheap). I have watched a number of projects get outsourced to the 3rd world for exactly this reason.
So when I think back to those years when mom was telling me that all I needed was a good education, work hard in school, etc. I get sad. I should have tried to be a football player like those "losers" I figured would work a check out counter. I was right of course, they are working the check out counter, but the business world won't stop until my salary is reduced to the level of a check out clerk, but those football players sure got laid more.
hmph.
The US Govt. has various technology agreements with other countries that tend to override such things as import tax, duties etc. These agreements cover such things as human resources, education research grants, software, hardware, etc. Software isn't the commodity you suspect it is...
if he is working on the theory that employment should be in the country where the product is used, then the same rule could be applied by all other countries. Wanna see what happens to the US economy when other countries insist on the same rules?
You need to study how the economy works. Then you will realize that tariffs, like embargoes and any other restraint that is inflicted on the free flow of goods and services, always ends up hurting people rather than helping.
f
The road to hel is paved with good intentions, and in the same manner, opportunism and political actions always have unintended, opposite consequences.
For a start, read http://www.mises.org/power&market/power&market.pd
Then read "The theory of money and credit" and wou will understand how government intervention is never the solution.
And don't say "well capitalism has failed and is evil therefore we need the government to correct those wrongs" because neither I, nor you or anybody on this board has ever got to try real capitalism. We live in a bastardized socialistic controlled half baked shadow of capitalism, that is capitalism in name only.
Jesus Christ, I have never seen such utter bullshit posted on Slashdot before. Give me ONE GOOD GOD-DAMN reason why every fucking job in the world should be in the United States?
I am a Canadian, and right now my part of the country is experiencing a slump in the lumber industry because the neighbour to the south does not appreciate the fact that the government gives subsidies for lumber exports. Since that, the fucking companies in the United States have imposed a fucking 19% tariff on all processed log exports.
Shut the fuck up and get a God damn job you fuckhead.
ummm no clue
We're a US company, but we've always developed our products in russia. Why punish us? We didn't take your job.
I feel for anyone that lost their job, but the world changed people. Businesses have to make money, and be profitable. If they don't, then they aren't going to be around for long. Certainly their are abuses, and I'm not going to go universally defend the practice, and say its always done for the right reasons. But at the same time, inasmuch as people might complain about a business doing this to make more money, you as individuals will job hop to make more money too.
First, as someone who works a lot in both the USA and Canada, I can guarantee you that living costs in Canada are, on average, HIGHER than the USA.
Hm... I'm considering moving to Canada (Vancouver) and am very curious on this topic. In particular, I'm trying to figure out how to compare salaries in the US to those in Canada, adjusted by my lifestyle.
For example, housing appears to be much cheaper in Vancouver than SF (even when both are priced in US dollars), but because I'm only renting the smallest, cheapest place I can find, the overall savings for my lifestyle are very slim. At the same time, those areas where I do spend freely (nightlife, restaurants, imported equipment, international travel) are definitely more expensive in Vancouver than in SF. On top of that are the higher taxes, as well as intangibles like slower health care (it may be more expensive in the US, but it's faster and not taken out of your salary in the form of taxes), and so on.
Thus, I'm struggling to figure out what salary in Vancouver/Canadian dollars would be equivalent to a $85k US salary in San Franciso. Right now I'm thinking a good number is around $130k CA, but I really don't know. Any insight? Thanks!
I got an idea. How about for every time Windows crashes, Microsoft has to pay us $10. Imagine all the money I'd make!
The way I see it is that there are multiple issues here. Companies that outsource, and go outside of the local (US) norm are usually in trouble. They are dysfunctional internally and outsourcing is the "politically" easy way out to address their lack of internal acumen. It is a management issue. The average I/T shop has a "butt kiss" attitude to servicing their companies needs. Little emphasis is placed on need or benefit to the company. Often users know more than I/T. We talk of business aware I/T people, but might I suggest your average I/T person might make a better plant manager than they would a I/T tech specialist. But the reality is tech usually do not command the power to correct such issues. It is a organizational disipline issue, and not a technical one. In the mean time the CIO/CTO are out making techical decisions over lobster and wine, they bitch about why they are in finacial trouble. Vendors often have more clout than the people who have the most to loose, the employee. Yet management refuses to change. As an investor, I would suggest to the CEO, outsource the whole thing including the CTO/CIO. Eventually you must cut to the problem and outsource managment, and the problem. But for companies that outsource, they should read more. Often the company you outsource to will sell your expertise to others at a discounted price. It is like playing with fire. Often the match holder gets burned. I once worked for an employer (in Canada no less) that brought in others from other places to show how how "cheap" and most residents fell over laughing. Needless to say the company is near bankrupsy as of 23 some C++ gurus in the 80's and 90's, only one remains. The real issue here is companies wish to surpess wages. They isnore the fact that a 12 million dollar a year CEO can afford 120 of the best programmers around. They base their value on political hype and not peoples needs of a decent wage. In the end the I/T organisations must become more like consulting companies with a solid engineering philosophy. After all teh customer is always right, but it does not give them the excuse not to pay for it. By oursourcing, it forces engineering principles and appropriate charge backs to the customers needs. As it is is the users responsibility to know if the cost is worth the benefit. In the end, the market will win.
This is no concern for the rest of the world. Shouldnt this be labelled "US"?? Oh, btw, this is the reversal of roles - last century millions of people in thirdworld countries (aka colonies occupied by the european land grabbers) starved themselves, when their manual processing labour was exported to the industrializing europe. I cant tell you all how much I love capitalism now! Those british call center operators are going without jobs just like the indian weavers did last century! duh! revenge!
The same thing that's happened in Sports Shoes, Nike for example, is happening to IT jobs. Eventually they'll be Geraldo Rivera reports of sweat shops in Malaysia with kids hunched over screens.
Unfortunately, Companies are finding cheaper ways of doing things in IT and still maintain big profit margins. This was one of the presumptions of the H1-B visa program which Software Companies "Couldn't find qualified people." Even though there were people available. This fortunately meant that at least the people who were brought in under the H1-B program contributed to the society and the tax base, now the revenue is going completely overseas. Unfortunately what the Economists don't realize is that a "Service Based Economy" doesn't necessarily mean that the Service comes from the U.S.
So, next time you buy a pair of Nikes, or Levis remember that at one time there were U.S. Jobs making those products, now it's all outsourced overseas, not because the U.S. Laborforce was greedy, but because they could be made cheaper and still maintain high profit margins.
Remember that when the some CEO gets his $18M bonus next year. Right. Unless the IT industry starts to stand up for itself, then all of it will be in Bangalore or Singapore and we'll all be poor.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
I'm a computer programmer as well, I refuse to behave like some US farmer or special interest group using the government to protect my lousy ass. If people in other countries can get the job done for less it will make the products cheaper for the whole economy.. maybe not the greatest of news for myself but good for the economy as a whole. Living in the US is still a huge advantage. Don't be a player hater and use the goverment to screw everyone to pretect your self interest. Tariffs are a bad idea, they get in the way of free markets. No good!!!!
If we set a global wage for industry X (here software) by using tarrifs to up all the prices of goods so they reflect the global wage it will have several shitty side effects. What you are suggesting is that if the US pays $10 an hour for workings making X, and India pays workers $1, and both take 10 hours to make X, set the tarrif so the Indian version costs $100, just like the US version. Some people advocate this for another reason -- to raise wages in the third world.
So now someone in the US cannot buy the cheaper version of a product. Some people will buy the $100 Indian version, some people the $100 US version. The US makers of X don't have to compete with India on price, so there are still jobs.
What about the people that would buy X if it cost less than $100? It would help their business $50, so they would be willing to spend $49 for it. But they can't buy one because of the tariffs.
So the people who would buy X at less than $100 get screwed. And the Indians who would be employed making cheaper Xs get screwed because they aren't allowed to sell cheaper Xs. The US workers aren't much better off, they are now sharing the market with the Indians.
So you get collateral damage to US consumers, and Indian programmers. For the benefit of a few workers who are now garunteed a job for life by the government's tarriffs. As other posters have pointed out, this is what happened recently with US steel. US companies that use steel went belly up because the price of steel was set artificially high through tarriffs.
Do all the tax payers a favor and go straight to welfare. You'll take fewer people down with you. Or do them a bigger favor and learn a different skill. You might not like the job as much, but the idea that you are garunteed a high paying job you like is silly.
This same idea also goes by the names 'living wage' and 'ENVY'
.sig Karma out the wazoo, better to spend points elsewhere if this is above 2 or below 0
There's one thing that seems to be forgotten in the minimum wage idea of the original post -- all Canadian workers (even those earning minimum wage) have wages that are wages plus full medical benefits (yay, nationalized medicine!).Of course a company would want to move jobs to Canada they don't have to pay medical benefits. Perhaps to increase jobs Washington should think not about taxing imports, but nationalizing health care.
With the WTO as it is, sovereign nations no longer have the exclusive ability to control their own tariffs. Though the U.S. might want to levy a tariff on software exports, we can propose the tariff to the WTO, but there's no guarantee that we'd be granted one.
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
Tariffs. Import duties. Import Taxes. Unfair trade. Wahhhhhhhhhh!
You can't find a job, so you want to impose on your sector the same problems that France, Germany, and other euro countries have in their overall economy?
You're probably too young to remember, but the Russians had to wait hours to mail a letter, buy a pound of beef (if it could be found), or buy other goods and services.
Remember those fabled rude french waiters? The tip is built into the bill, so they don't have to worry about getting stiffed if they give you bad service. Pretty much the same deal with most other service businesses in the euro countries.
It takes many months to fire someone in french and german style economies. Six months, and very expensive is the norm, as a minimum. You have protected industries such as artists, that have unemployment funds lasting years.
You can't compete? Go back to school. Or leave the country. Your solution to impose tariffs puts the US at a disadvantage to compete globally. The US is not selling goods and services to just US residents. It must compete globally. Your solution in your mind benefits you, but cripples the rest of the US.
The french and german governments, through legislation, force companies to give generous vacations and benefits. Months of vacation time. Super generous family leave. Super generous medical leave. So great that the countries close down for several weeks during the holidays. And so onerous on business that they are afraid to hire. They keep staffing at minimums because they can't fire or lay off anyone when they need to. Got a job there? You are pretty much set. A company finally forced to lay you off? Good luck finding another job.
Want to get into the health care debate? Universal health care in europe and canada. In the US, you can get a mammogram or catscan in a few days or immediately if necessary. Try getting that in Canada or Europe. Actually, you'll wait months. And you'll be lucky if that bump is not benign or hasn't spread by the time you take the test.
But, we're not talking about health care here. We'll leave that to another slashdot article with the subsequent 10,000 comments. But the inability to compete is what is relevant. That's why the european countries' economies have been in the toilet for so long. Heard of the euro? The european union? Guess why they invented that? So that they could be "forced" to layoff workers to bring their countries' economies in line with the requirements to enter the european union. So that they could be "forced" to get rid of some of the protectionist health benefits and trade tariffs/taxes, similar to the ones you are proposing.
The tech bubble burst, and took the rest of the economy with it. Our asshole fed chairman and fed governors, who have refused to lower interest rates in time, were warning about "irrational exuberance" years ago. No one listened. So the economy tanked, and layoffs came. Guess what? Think the companies layed off their best and brightest? Not. The companies had to reduce the workforce. So they cut the slackers. Got laid off? You got laid off because in the companies' eyes, you are a slacker, and a liability to the company. If you weren't a liability, they would have kept you. It's that simple, and that basic.
Can't get a job? Time to learn a new skill set. Or add some degrees. Still can't find a job? Time to look in the mirror. There's your problem. Survival of the fittest. If you really want a job, and have the skills, you'll figure out a way to land the job you want. Still can't do it? Time to start your own business. Can't do that? Then run home to mama and go get your fuckin' shine box.
That's all the US needs. Another fuckin tax.
dumbass.
The part that you don't see is that lower software prices are actually good for the rest of the U.S. economy. Sure it means that it is harder to get a job programming here in the States, and it also means that you can't charge as much as you would like, but that's good news for the small business down the stree that needs some custom programming done. All of a sudden even Mom and Pop organizations can afford custom software.
In the long run when the economy expands in this manner it is good for everyone.
Now take the contrary example. Let's imagine that we imposed heavy tariffs on "imported" software. Well, that might save some programming jobs here in the states, but it guarantees that American companies will pay a premium for software. Meanwhile our competitors in Mexico, Canada, Europe, India, China, and wherever else are able to buy software at lower prices. Possibly considerably lower prices. Now all sorts of businesses are having trouble competing. This is precisely what happened when we slapped tariffs on sugar and steel.
One of the primary reasons that our standard of living is so higher than the rest of the world is that we are an open market.
The theory behind free markets is that the most efficient producer wins. Over time, the system as a whole wins, because it's optimally efficient. What I'm curious is: in a free market, would the US win more or less than others? Does the US have any defensible competitive advantage for producing software, or indeed anything?
On one hand, some might argue that our safety and envionmental laws limit our competitiveness, and that less regulated countries will thus dominate the markets. But on the other hand, it could be argued that our very dominance comes as a result of these very same regulations.
The same could be said about economic disparity: while it's not great in the US, its orders of magnitude worse in China and India. Thus the problems we face in the US will only be magnified in the others. Ultimately this might affect their stability and security, which may hinder international investment.
Finally, the US has evolved its societal infrastructure over the course of literally hundreds of years without substantial interruption -- security, clean water, reliable power, and (some) political representation have been the norm in the US for generations. The destabilizing events of the modern world affect everyone, but affect the US less than most.
So in the end, I suspect that the US will ultimately benefit more from free trade than by protectionist measures, but not because we're better coders or inventors. Rather, I think the product of the nation's entire history gives us a competitive advantage that isn't going away soon.
Howver, I really don't know. Any thoughts?
First, why should consumers in the United States pay more to "protect" the job of someone in this country who charges more for his work than someone is willing to do it for overseas? Why should the vast majority pay more to put extra money into your pocket?
Second, following this logic to its natural conclusion, this will end up destroying almost ALL international trade. The Europeans already pay too much for food simply because many of the countries have systems that "protect" farmers in those countries. Using your logic, consumers of all products should subsidize less efficient (or more expensive) producers of ANY product. (U.S. consumers also pay too much for many products, both because of production limits and tax subsidies.)
Third, this logic will lead to reduced incentives to innovate and cut costs, which LOWERS standards of living everywhere -- as consumers pay more and get less.
Fourth, on a pragmatic level, have you even considered that there are plenty of products where the U.S. company is the low-cost producer who would be hurt by this system being enacted in other industries by OTHER countries?
Fifth, what moral right do you have -- or does anyone have -- to tell two individuals (or companies) that they can't enter into consensual trade that is to the benefit of both parties?
What you propose is wrong from the standpoint of individual rights AND pragmatic economics. There is NO reasonable argument in favor of it unless you're an inefficient producer who is demanding that he be subsidized by his neighbors.
David
The sad truth is that every time you call Dell tech support, you are now most probably supporting terrorists.
Don't believe me? Read this article.
How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life
What are you guys talking about? Remember this key to ecomonics: TARIFFS ARE ALWAYS BAD. Govertments cannot "make things fairer economically" or "level any playing field" . Tariffs will kill all jobs in the foreign countries and not save a single job in the country it hopes to help. If overseas software is artificially inflated to cost more in the US, it still cost the same in the foreign country to make it. The software engineers over there are not going to make any more money off it. And fewer copies of the software will be purchased by americans. And just because the foreign software costs as much as the US software, it makes no difference in the purchasing decision.
People are not going to say "Oh, this software from Japan now costs as much as this software from the US. But the Japan software does more that I want it to do. Therefore, I will be patriotic and economically fair and purchase the less useful US software to ensure that my fellow US employee has a job, just like the government wants."
The *ONLY* way to level the playing field is for the government to not interfere. What should happen is the US company to say "we are losing market share. Let's make a better product to distinguish ourselves from the international competition." Or--even better--"we are losing market share. Let's do something revolutionary and completely new--something that does not have cheap foreign competition."
It's called market advantage. You do what you do best at a price that is right for you and the market. Who cares if there are 1 million programmers in India making $1/hour. (not a reasonable amount--but it doesn't matter for this discussion). But charging $1/hour does not necessarily equate to the best programmers. But if the market for programmers really drops to $1/hour, then you must charge $1 for your programming. No one in the US will do it for $1/hour, so they will HAVE to change jobs to something else. If they are smart, they will do something revolutionary and new and make a LOT MORE MONEY. If they are dumb, they will lobby the government to make their life "fairer". Which we all know is impossible to do--especially for the government to do.
---gralem
I read not too long ago an article (can't find it anymore) about the US tariffs on Canadian softwood lumber. It was interesting because it stated that some Canadian companies learned to live with it by becoming much more efficient. Now they again have lower prices than American lumber companies, even with the tariffs. While American lumber companies sleep and continue to use their old technology, Canadian lumber companies become more and more competitive, particularly OUTSIDE of the US. And of course they make more money than ever. At the same time it develops other markets for the new lumber mill technology.
So tariffs are a bad idea in the long run.
Software is no different from other products. It's not the lack of tariffs on software that's wrong; it's the tariffs imposed on other products.
By imposing tariffs on products made in poorer countries, you are essentially forcing them to lower their prices even more (to stay competitive). Result? USA workers lose (because tariffs are never enough to really offset the lower initial cost), foreign workers lose (because tariffs are never low enough to let them really raise their standard of living), US state wins. In a country with good welfare / unemployment funds / etc., this could be a good thing. In the US system it's not. The money ends up being spent on obscure government and defence projects, and the programmers remain unemployed and broke.
Capitalism can be a reasonably fair system if all markets are open. Tariffs screw everything up, for everyone. If there are no tariffs, the tendency is for all markets to become level. A poorer country may have an initial advantage (lower wages), but as it becomes richer, its workers will want higher wages, until it has reached the same level as richer, more developed countries, which means workers in those richer countries become an economically viable option again.
And everyone lives happily ever after. As it is, you have a lot of unemployment at home, a lot of people that hardly make enough to eat abroad, and a cowboy that spends hundreds of bilions of dollars in toys that go "boom" on other people's homes.
RMN
~~~
Sadly you have to think both in
a) Final consumer
b) Corporate earnings.
America has a long history of moving operations to sweatshops abroad as soon as American labor becomes too expansive. There are examples enough to make this clear (Mexican maquiladoras for electronic parts/appliances, Central American and Asian apparel industry) where minimum wages are 1/4 to 1/10 of an American wage. There are even some high speciality services both in Mexico and Asian countries where you can get high quality health care for a fraction of the American price.
Don't even dream of "High Quality Education" as a mean to keep labor at home: overseas workers are at least as qualified Americans: a good hacker is a good hacker anywhere.
America is simply too expensive. America has been hiding a high inflation rate derived from continuously increasing earnings in wages and salaries by keeping reasonable prices on goods -and achieving this by moving manufacturing and now services abroad, and getting more and more Free Trade agreements with any country who has cheap and reasonably qualified labor. So forget about any probable tariff to mostly anything... and please, please, how do you apply tariffs on a service? Will you close all telecommuting roads? Will you place Customs on Internet hubs? Yeah, right...
It seems sad/funny to me that in the end Free Enterprise behaves a lot as communism: new jobs moving to poor countries will increase life quality of those abroad while impovershing formerly "wealthy" Americans, -seen with poor country eyes- and all in the name of better corporate earnings. The only imaginable remedy is to be a corporate czar somehow (Wow, same as Communist Party leaders, yeeeehaw)... other possible thing to happen is to force other countries to have equivalent wages on professional areas (I can't imagine how, tho, high local taxes in poor countries, maybe?)
This is a long time trend where I can't see any reasonable end for America. You simply CAN'T compete with non-american wages. As a corporation you CAN'T afford a balance sheet with a big payroll when you can get it cheaper, because stockholders will ask for your head... so no way!
To me, being abroad now, this is an opportunity for a decent life, and really, really it saddens me to think of my American colleagues having the same hard time most of my local colleagues have had for a long while now.
I hope Sun loses the descriminitation suit filed against them. Fucking curry munchers.
If you're so concerned about your job, then why did you major in something that can be easily be replicated by a developing country such as India?
Also, as a shareholder of a global company, don't you want your company to source talent globally? Especially if your competitors are?
Think before you speak...
I think the #1 reason United States hands out visas to foreign programmers is that it lacks enough of its own competent programmers. Same goes for Computer Scientists, who are by a big majority foreign when it comes to Ph.D. levels.
This is not gibberish -- these are well-researched facts, check them out yourself by picking any random well-known college and checking out their stats in CS departments.
I say, do not impose import tarriffs (and thus cripple your IT sector).
I do not believe that everyone is replacable in IT industry. Programmers are the workforce and the work-capital (thinking-coding machines, if you will) of all of the IT companies. Some foreign countries make better thinking-coding machines or make more of at least as good thinking-coding machines as US of A --- the salary they require is a secondary concern.
The reason United States hands out green-cards or work permits to highly-educated foreigners is the same reason it outsources some of it IT work -- the companies at home are not competent enough.
This is the same reason other countries do the same.
U.S. IT companies outsource their work because they need people who will do it better for less money. These people are very well educated, capable of grabbing mucho $$$ contracts; the reason they offer their solutions cheaper is because they know they will build them with less people in less time than your average United States IT companies that rely on soulless code-droids.
Another interesting fact is that the car industry managed to get import limitations (in imposed per-country quantity-limitations rather than tarriffs) and it resulted in thriving domestic market of inferior cars that would be swiftly overrun by Euroasian manufacturers if it weren't for these import-limitations. The reason for the superiority of the average foreign automotive products is not (only) that Euroasian cars might cost less (which they really don't), it is that they have in many cases more advanced production and/or car technology and smarter people in their engineering departments.
Many US programmers grew up in high-school angst, being singled out as 'geeks' and further bullied into accepting that view of themselves and perpetuating it further. Most of Slashdot qualifies.
This not only makes them susceptible to glorifying their skill-set that is really not that good; it's only good compared to their middle-of-nowhere college/high-school average, but also compels them to guard their sacr3d sk1LLs by attacking anyone who doesn't fit their favorite no-life-dork role-model. Thus, faced with people who are not only MORE COMPETENT and BETTER EDUCATED, but in fact DO HAVE A LIFE, some of these US "IT professionals" [read: soulless code-droids] feel pitted against the wall and lash out in pre-1990s xenophobic propaganda.
You can not easily get someone to program well for you for $1/hour -- if you do, then the government has invested much more than that into education and other things for that person.
Would this tax work the other way around ? If a country outside the US has a higher labor cost, should they get tax deducted ?
I ask this because we pay a whole lot more tax in the country I live in.
PS : I'm French [ducks and takes covers]
I'll change my sig when I have the time...
Good point; trying to tax an intangible will simply create a black market that the government will have no control over but will frivilously spend billions trying to police.
After all, once a piece of software is written and transferred via the internet to its final destination, who can say where it originated? It's completely untraceable.
Besides that, the most obvious problem to me is how to tax something like that. By the number of lines of code, or by the number of bytes? Well, how would the government know how much of that code may have originated in the US, how much of it was foreign-made but already taxed, and how much was left to be taxed? This would be particularly troublesome for programs where great blocks of code need to be rewritten. Again, this tax would be completely dependent on the honor system, and most companies would only pay a token amount to give the illusion of compliance.
The only way for the government to get an accurate measure of software written overseas would be to set up some kind of software auditing system, with tens of thousands of software accountants whose job is to monitor software development in corporations and determine the amount of tax owed; unfortunately, the US government has no jurisdiction to enforce such things outside of the US.
Finally, a software tax would only give the advantage to overseas companies, because they don't have to pay the tax. The effect is that software companies in Germany, India, et al, would grow at a much faster rate than US companies. Do we want to be competitive with the rest of the world, or do we want to protect salaries?
I hate to say it, but it's better for the market to simply work things out on its own. Already we are seeing that outsourcing overseas may not be the cost savings that it's cracked up to be; there's really no substitute for having someone who's local and accountable who's working on your project if you want it done right and on time.
Isn't the rule of capitalism, whatever makes money goes? If outsourcing helps in rofit, it should be OK. I remember when IBM & Coca Cola was asked to close shop in India to protect local industry from on-slaught of cheaper things which local industry could not compete with, US and IMF had protested the 'protectionism'. Now as economy goes down here, we abandon the priciples we grew rich on and follow short term gains of protectionism. Given the rate at which it is going, the protectionism against everything foreign is bordering on socialism and soon find USSR's policy favourable for 'good of locals'
I really wish something would be done to this effect. As a senior graduating in May with my undergrad in MIS, many of us are looking at a Catch-22 job market where entry level programming positions are being moved off-shore, and other available corporate positions require that work experience as a prerequisite.
It's definitely not fair IMNSHO that minimum wage laws that aim to maintain a quality of living in this country make beggers out of degreed job-seekers and shift lost wages to other countries.
Be very, very careful what you put into that head, because you will never, ever get it out. -Thomas Cardinal Wolsey
We think you're a protectionist idiot who needs to go study economics.
No, don't just take the jobs oversees, take the companies that use foreign labor overseas as well. Look, there's no solution to the 'problem' of foreign labor. Adapt, overcome, and continue to innovate and you'll be fine.
If programming really is so easy that anyone can do it, why should you get a premium for being an American?
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
Self Righteous Misguided Little Fat Prick
BTW, lot of people here seem to be assuming Indian IT to be a sweat shop back yards. Wonder why? Sad to see prople at /. are just like other cultural deficit people believing in 'typecasts'. Any of you ever been to an IT copany in India?
Think about this for a second. If the US puts tariffs on software imports, then so will other countries. Then Microsoft software becomes that much less appealing to the 96% of the world that matters, and they lose money. So they stop buying senators and congressmen. Hundreds of congressional aides, etc. are thrown out of work. The economy collapses (well, even further). All so your little job doesn't go running to Canada.
Is it not superbly ironic that a technologist is questioning whether we should impose a tax that would inhibit the movement of jobs over seas so our own human capital would be used less efficiently? Technology has brought about the questioner's dilemma. Moving jobs over seas is an economical technology, imposing a tax prohibiting this movement is technological hindrance. The questioner would be best suited if he changes with the times, and employees himself as someone who moves projects to cheaper, foreign countries, rather than one who sits idly and inquisitively by wondering how to stop the inevitable: technological evolution and his, rightful, unemployment.
This'd just cause another trade war with Europe, think how much we could bring in taxing all that american (ok mainly microsoft) software in Europe in return, only then you could impose tarrifs on steel or bananas in return, just starting this whole silly cycle again...
test slashdot seems to be down
Let me get this right. You loose your job because your too expensive, annd now you want to find legal/political solutions to your problem?
Face reality, the economy sucks. Stop being a selfish bastard.
What does Slashdot think?
I don't care about US.
To fuck the industry and make them go out of business so they will later raise prices.
You can work around capitalism and succeed.
They're just jealous that we have universal medical coverage for less per capita than they spend for partial medical coverage because of HMOs,
I live in Ontario and it's been four months since I have been diagnosed with cancer, and if I am lucky I may get in for surgery in April. And you're bragging about this joke healthcare system Canada has? Most industrialized countries have better healthcare than Canada. Canadian Medicare pays for the basics and that's it. If my employer didn't provide private medical insurance I would have had to pay thousands in the last 18 months. In the states my treatment would have been long finished, even in a public hospital.
and everything else that makes us different.
Let's see...the tv show that is #1 in the states is #1 in Canada. The movie that is #1 in the states is usually #1 in Canada. The album that is #1 in the states is usually #1 in Canada....shall I go on? Seems to me we are Americans!
What's next, bragging about how Canadians (mostly British troops and Indians) beat Americans in a battle over a hundred years ago?
This article is a great example of why white-trash computer geeks should NOT be deciding our country's economic policy. Some of you need to get econ degrees or MBAs and understand the basics of comparative advantage and why cheap foreign software is good for everyone involved.
> Why doesn't the US tax the import of software?
Because if they did, then other countries might do a similar thing and start taxing the import of software from the US. As the US is the largest producer of commercial software, and is in an economic hole, this would hurt the US more than it would any other country.
It might have worked a few years ago, before there were viable options to Windows and (low- to mid-range) Solaris and HP systems, but now Linux and BSD make it viable to run companies without US-produced commercial software.
If that's the only change made, then those companies would open IT shops here and staff them with imported workers on H1B visas. If the desired outcome is to employ more native born US citizens, imposing a tariff isn't sufficient by itself.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Having worked at companies that have outsourced from everything from local companies to German companies, I've found that outsourcing really does have its limits.
If you run a company that only needs small easily defined utilities to automate tasks and don't need them done immediately, outsourcing works very well.
However, if you run a company that needs to turn on a dime to enter new markets, exploit existing ones, handle complex B2B integration issues or have vague software requirements, outsourcing falls flat. Even if you are dealing with a company 20 miles away, the simple fact that the programmers there don't understand your business leads to design mistakes and missing features that a dedicated well trained programmer that spends his time thinking how to improve your business should have caught.
As businesses face stiffer competition in the world market and the complexity of the software systems they run increases, I believe they will find it harder and harder not to justify hiring local talent they can train to understand their business.
If anything, I believe the US needs to do two things to help slow the departure of development jobs:
First, we need to better educate programmers to make them more rounded. The better they understand the complexities of specific industries, the better they can anticipate the needs of their employeers. A developer should be positioned in a company to understand how it can improve, not be a monkey that hammers out what the business side of the company thinks it wants.
Second, we need to sell the benefits of hiring in-house programmers over outsourcing. Marketing is really something developers aren't particularly good at, but has to change.
Now this won't stop the migration of jobs to foreign countries, but it will assure that it is relegated only to simple grunt work keeping the highest paying skilled work at home.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
AntiHanzoSan I'm not against competition, I'm not against globalism, I'm against how its being done.
Currently we dont have a Global Economy, because people in other countries dont get the same wages, You shouldnt be able to have seperate currencies yet still have a Global Economy, because when you convert the Yen to the Dollar, our money somehow is more expensive than their money, making their version of the dollar "BETTER" than ours, pricing our people out due to some kinda glitch in the system.
So I get priced out as a programmer because my dollar is inflated? Thats Bullshit, look, if we could convert the Chinese, the Japanese, and we are the USA, all converted to the Euro, no one would have a problem with Globalism, we would all make the same exact wages and the competition would be based on actual merit.
Instead, the competition is based on stuff we have no control over, its not even about merit, its about where you live, if you live in China you have a job, if you live in the USA you dont. So the solution? We should pick a fucking dollar/euro/yen and everyone use it.
We should set up a global minimum wage for EVERYONE, and then finally labor will cost the same in EVERY country. A programmer who makes $30,000 inn the USA would make $30,000 anywhere else in the world and then we will finally be able to compete without being forced to leave our home countries.
I'm all for competition, I'm convinced that the USA has enough of a headstart that I'll be just fine if we finally made things fair. But I dont agree with an unfair competition where I have to leave the USA because the jobs are being given to China, and from China to India, and from India to Africa, I mean what the hell, everyone will have jobs but us, why? Because we are the most expensive, so unless you are a Doctor, Lawyer or Teacher, be prepared to be without work.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Well, the USA is supposed to be in favour of the free market, competition, a level international playing field, and so on. Tariffs go against that. On the other hand, US farm subsidies also go against that, and put efficient farmers in other countries, like Australia, at a disadvantage. The US doesn't practise what it preaches.
Regards.
Wondering where the hell I have been.
The Protect Domestic Employment argument has historically been one of the strongest arguments for protection. The argument is that if protection levels were not in place/reduced, the level of unemployment would rise.
But it also argues, in it's strongest form, that increases in protection would promote higher employment in the U.S.
A few points of qualification are needed:
- There can be no denying that if protection levels were reduced in the U.S. there would be in the short run an increase in the level of unemployment...there can be no denying that much of this would be structural unemployment. So in the short term, the tendency is to increase protection to maintain jobs.
- However, in the long run, no tariffs have the potential to create more jobs. Protection divers resources into relatively inefficient industries and away from relatively efficient uses. This misallocation of resources will reduce the rate of economic growth.
So, continued protection will, in the long run, reduce the rate at which jobs can be created.
What about taxing e.g. Nike for making 6 year-old children make their shoes in south-east asia ? Would you agree for that too ?
What does Slashdot think?"
That you cannot consider the subject merely in the context of US IT jobs, but rather, you need to see your single-issue tarriff in the overall context of US-World trade.
The US can, or course, impose a tarriff. However the cost of so-doing will be whatever penalty is levied by the World Trade Organisation. That penalty will be in terms of explicit permissions given to other nations to impose retaliatory tarrifs on US imports.
The US is a member of the WTO for self-interested reasons (as are all members, presumably). It has to accept the obligations of membership as well as the benefits.
An illustration of the immediate effect of the unilateral imposition of tarriffs is yesterday's ruling indicating that the US will be severely penalised for imposing tarriffs on certain sorts of steel imports. (The US is appealing...)
Another was the recent WTO award to Europe of the right to impose $4 billion worth of trade sanctions against the US for giving tax breaks to American exporters through foreign sales corporations.
Meanwhilse the historical perspective (and reasonably orthodox economic market theory) is that protectionism is not a good thing; specifically, that it generally fails to protect whatever it was that needed to be protected; that it adds costs & disbenefits to all sorts of other things; and that it impedes global trade, which itself is a bad thing, since trade is normally profitable.
Ultimately, I see your question as being not so much about the narrow issue of jobs in the IT sector, but rather whether it would or would not be in the US national interest to adopt an isolationist trade policy. The orthodoxy is that it would be peverse in the extreme for it to do so; and by that yardstick, it would be peverse in the extreme to sanction tarrifs to protect one industry sector - even our own sector.
And whilst it does remain in the US national interest to take part in the WTO, then it must anticipate the possibility that specific sectors - IT jobs, for instance - will from time to time be affected adversely.
Of course, there is wide scope for debate; not least, about what will be the makeup of regions, states, supranational bodies, and how will trade work, in the future. Many of the scenarios painted are not particularly pleasant. Your question - and apparent supposition that the idea of protecting US IT jobs by the imposition of tarriffs is even worth considering is, perhaps, a harbinger of the sort of unenlightened self-interest postulated as being one of the drivers for the future.
Most software that is written is not produced for sale, but rather as internal systems used within a business -- most programmers are doing applications work for corporations and/or government entities, NOT writing the next MS Word. Therefore, outsourcing will continue whether you charge tariffs or not, because software like this will be conveniently exempt from the tariffs. The tariff question will just be a big noisy show to distract us all from whatever weirdness Congress is up to, and the IT industry will die anyway.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
It wounds me to see just how much the rest of the world hates us.
We don't hate you, why do you insist on hating us?
The majority of American's are AGAINST the War on Iraq, we just live under a corporate oligarchy.
We can't help it, we don't even vote for our leaders anymore - they just fix Florida and game over, man.
I still call it Operation Iraqi Liberation (OIL).
I am ashamed to be an American.
Posting this via lynx because that all the Slashdot man will give me.
Does the tariff benefit the worker or the consumer of the products/services? A protectionist tariff may have short term benefits but it hurts in the long run. The key is to be more valuable as a developer than your offshore competition justify the extra expense. Sadly, that's not easy for most software developed these days.
Taxation is not the answer. Trying to rig the market does not work.
The way to win is to play within the rules of economics. Either lower the cost or diffrentiate the product significantly so that cost is not a factor.
I think that what we are seeing in the software industry is not so much foreign companies trying to use their low cost development facilities to take over the US market but rather US companies looking for an edge against each other.
You just can't mess with economics. It's powerful stuff. Don't push against the river, carve a paddle and move to a better place.
Think why you don't have a cattle ranch in midtown NY or an office block in the middle of mountains in Montana.
There will always be differentials in cost of labour in the same way that there will be differentials in other costs.
Using land - why is it that an acre of land could cost 1000 times as much in one part of the US verses another for maybe very similar scenic views ?.
What you are saying when you want to tax other countries because they work on a lower (in US dollar terms) cost base is that you also want to harmonise land prices across the US too. You want to make it illegal to charge more per acre for similar land or to have differential taxes so that the result is the same.
I don't think you really want to do that between US states so why do you see it as nessessary to harmonise cost bases between countries ?
New Zealand is able to produce butter cheaper - without subsidies - then a hill farmer in say the US East coast or say Wales. A Thai programmmer is able to produce code cheaper than an Indian and an Indian will produce cheaper code than a US coder.
Alternatively, in pure lines of code someone writing Assembler will have lower "productivity" than someone writing in Perl. DO you tax the use of high-level languages because they produce more lines of code equivelent than lower level languagues ?.
When you work out what you are measuring and how you want to measure than and have an answer as to why the land prices vary in various parts of the world then come back with your ideas on harmonising costs using taxes.
Money is a good, just like programming. It just happens to be a convenient good for barter. The fact that different currencies have different values per unit is irrelevant. That's what exchange rates are for. Or can't your programming environment handle fractions?
And it's not about your rights. It's about the consumer's rights. She gets to choose who to buy from, and you have no right to deny her that choice, or to force her to buy from you. To do so is to be no better than a mobster running a protection racket.
Think about it... if software imports were taxed, All internet communication would be considered "ports" and thus monitorable by authorities!
Also, I guess international distros would now have a tax? Bye by GPL!
The alternative-a"services import/export " tariff is the solution.This way it charges the domestic company directly for outsourcing temporary or contract technical labor overseas. We should not tax a physical entities such as software on physical media , it's an open for way too many loopholes.
This is an issue that I have become increasingly concerned about , and I will be writing to my states members of the U.S. Congress, and I would encourage all of us to do the same.
Most of us have been fucked out of an industry and we will never have those IT jobs again. Get over it. Yes, I am a bitter underemployed programmer. I got a whole three and a half fucking years out of my CS degree. I now have an evil job where I am chained to a desk and answering phones for pissed off SprintPCS customers. And I still have my student loans to pay off. At least I have an income. The bubble burst and now the economy stinks. It's not the Great Depression. I won't starve or go homeless. Thank God! but still is sucks ass.
Such tarrifs would be extremely difficult to enforce. The tangeable goods cross the border where customs can examine them. Software does not cross the border in a physical form. Thus it's very difficult to attribute the value added at the overseas office. If a US company wants to hide the cost of outsourcing, it would be extremely difficult to catch it. It would result in software companies paying in tarrifs as much as they see fit and government spending more money policing the tax than it's actually worth.
Regardless of the economic and political implications, the technological difficulties involved with enforcing such a tariff are simply staggering. Software is completely liquid. You can e-mail source code, compile it in a native country, and then sell it. How would you tariff software developed in multiple countries by persons of multiple nationalities? Allowing for that would make it too easy to get around the tariff.
Statistically speaking, there's a 99.998% chance that my IQ is higher than yours. Get over it.
I'm glad to see someone bring this up. But I see from most of the comments that people don't get it yet. These jobs are leaving and they are not coming back!! The only good jobs that will stay are those of lawyers and upper managers. The "owners" of America as it were. And you all are stupid enough to let them get away with it.
Even call centers are being off shored you idiots.
And of course there is a way to tax at AND enforce it. You think the IRS hasn't figured out how to enforce tax code?! Geez. For example, do you know how they check on mostly cash only business like a dry cleaners? They sit outside dry-cleaners and count customers and do an estimate then walk inside and ask for receipts.
It would be the same for off-shore code. They could audit the emails from off-shore and estimate how much code was sent. They would require by law some email type record. Its simple because if you get caught you get in enough trouble its not worth it. Or at least that's the way it was 10 years ago. But IRS enforcement isn't what it once was. And that too is a big problem because rich people and much of the middle class is just not paying. And look at the roads and schools we have compared to Europe and Japan. Geez. We are so freaking backwards. Maybe the jobs should leave.
If a company based in the US hires foreign programmers, are those programmers are performing a service for that company or producing a product?
If a whole factory is moved or built in another country, there is something to import and transport. With software we have source, binaries, libraries... at what point can we decide they've made something versus done something?
that nearly took down our stock market with all their inflated financials who are the genious behind this move. I recently went thru a course where on of the participants worked for Bell South and he said that his job has shifted from 100% development to 100% project mgmt of a team in India. The India team has 50% more developers and still cost half as much as in the US......so he said (his words mind you) "a quality result is not achieved usually on the first pass but with 50% more people you can make up for it. Hell they will work around the clock and it costs us peanuts."....doesnt that just sound great.......Oh yes forgot to mention the best part was that everyone on his original staff.....Fired.
For those of you that think that the "rising tide" of globalism will raise the worlds salaries you are sadly mistaken. It will only be true if you OWN the company. Say goodbye to decent living if this trend continues....unless you live in a country where 20k makes you rich.
free mark^H ^H ^H ^H ^H ^H ^H ^H ^H Tarif. And i thougth most American hated socialism (support of the gouvernement to firm/people which could not autosupport itself without a crutch).
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
It is amazing that US - claimin to be the most ..
free country - with free market etc. is protecting it so heavily. This protection is actually a
form of newcolonialismy - reason why China
does what they are told too. Right now poor
people in the 3rd wolrd work for a $1 a day,
then US imposes $9 tariffs on this and
pays back these $9 to US farmer. So actually
the poor 3rd world worker works while
US farmers got the money. It was called
slavery 200 years ago
The real problem is, of course, that the cost of living the U.S. is way too high. In other countries you can live comfortably on half or a third of what it costs to live in the U.S. (and if your willing to live in the developing world, you can get by on a tenth or less) Almost everything is cheaper: housing, food, clothes, the only major exception is gasoline.
The main reason that the U.S. cost of living is insane is that we have never recovered from the inflation of late-seventies/early-eighties: prices went up when comodities surged, but never went down again. Salaries have had to follow suit just to maintain parity.
And all the while there are talking heads claiming that we are the most productive and efficient work-force in the world. If that's so, why do I pay 10-times as much for a shirt here as I would in Viet Nam? It's the exact same shirt! (check the tags at your local department store, at least half will say Made in Vietname or China) Someone is making out like a bandit on this stuff, and I don't think it's the seamstress' and tailors in Hoi An! (They're not doing so badly, by their own standards, but they're still only seeing about $10 of the $50 I paid for my last jacket)
It's all a pack of lies: The workmanship on Vietnamese made products is the equal of the same products made in the U.S. and the Vietnamese workers are getting paid less than a dollar and hour. On top of that, the level of education in Vietnam is at least as good as it is in the U.S. (maybe better) so we aren't talking about unskilled labor. Finally, the Vietnamese are no slouches: they do things fast . Obviosly the productivity of the Vietnamese workers is five or six times that of U.S. workers, by any reasonable measure (output/dollar, output/time, etc.).
Again, it's all becuase the cost of living in Viet Nam is an order of magnitude less than it is in the U.S. and there is no way that the U.S. workforce is ten times faster, or ten times smarter, or ten times more accurate than almost any other workforce in the world. Tarriffs won't change that, they will just ensure that our own cost of living will rise even further, making it even more attractive to send jobs off shore!
So go right ahead, get them tarriffs imposed. I might as well sell my house and move to Viet Nam (a couple hundred thousand dollars will go a long way there, and the scenery can't be beat!). And, heck, it can't be too much worse than living in Bush's Amerika, at least the government in Hanoi doesn't make any pretense to democracy or freedom.
i was puzzled to see slashdot have two stories for which no comments were present for quite sometime. one of them i remember was "windows xp patch slowing things down" or some such. anyway after sometime i happened to flush the cache and i come to slashdot again, i dont see those stories. whats up ? i am NOT a subscriber......but then how did i get to see the stories ? or am i making a mistake ? if so please correct me. thanks.
vv
There is this orginazation called The World Trade Orginazation (WTO) The United States Congress Passed laws binding the US and all the people and the corporations in it to this World Wide Trade group. If any country feels that the US is not playing nice they take us to court. The judges are all from countries chosen by the group. Basically the ability to enduce tarriffs on foreign goods and services is null and void. Just to note some of the countries who signed the WTO agreement: China (they really love the US) Iraq, Russia, Euro countries, India (very soon to be the next Taiwan) etc. Everybody gets ONE vote. So if you make too many freindly countries angry at you, they win the law suit! Chalk one up to all the attorneys that you helped elect to office in the US. Congress.
Many have pointed out that there are lots of ways around the tax, and that enforcing it would be difficult. Simple enforcement idea that will grab the companies inclined to do this by the short and curlies: Evade the tax, get found guilty, lose ALL COPYRIGHTS. There. That ought to do it.
The first time a working stiff gets laid off because his job moved to elbonia, don't you think he's going to blow the whistle?
For those that say taxes are wrong, let me ask you this: If taxes are wrong, whose going to pay for the roads, public schools, defending our country, inspecting the food we eat, licensing the doctors we see, and so on and so on.
When American wages are too high, where are the customers to buy your product going to come from? What's to become of the American workers? Will we all live on welfare?
I've seen quite a bit of "getting government out of the way of business". Personally, I'd like to see government more in the way. Enron and that ilk should have been watched much closer. The whole power crisis thing in CA was just a scam to profit by billions for the people already rich.
Same thing with exempting dividend income from taxes. The reasoning is that "the tax has already been paid on that money once!" Hey, quit being stupid. Clue for you; the money earned by the working schmoe has had the tax paid on it once already too.
Look to see who holds more than 70% of dividend stocks. Hint: Ain't you and I.
So why SHOULD the rich pay "more than their fair share"?
Hey, stupid! BECAUSE THAT'S WHERE THE MONEY IS.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
In my opinion,
If you think the rest of the world hates the USA now, just try passing this legislation.
What's the matter, are Americans too fat and lazy to compete in open markets? Ooooooh, free markets are cool....unless the USA can't compete. Then they get ugly.
This is bad legislation that is beyond the comprehension of the average Yank, and even the average Slashdotter (while you guys were compiling kernels, I was studying economics).
America has a well deserved repuatation in international trade as a very nasty, bullying behemoth. Don't push us too far; the USA needs the rest of the world more than we need you.
You want to build some trade walls? YOU WANT TO BUILD SOME MOTHERF**KING TRADE WALLS C**KSUCKERS? Go for it.
Signed,
Canada,
The country with the freshwater, net exporter of oil, huge natural gas reserves, gold, silver, diamonds, uranium, lumber, *COMPETITIVE* wages that the USA evidently can't compete with so they gotta erect wussy tariffs, French women, good beer, cheap land, cheap hydroelectricity.
And all it takes is a quick amendment to our immigration policy to add, say, a quarter billion of the best and brightest from India and China stationed on our south border with armed to the teeth with AK47s.
Protecting jobs wich have become obsolete is tantamount to burning perfectly good houses just to create jobs. It doesn't make a lot of sense and in the end it doesn't raise anyone's standard of living.
Isn't it funny how you are all so afraid, but of the wrong thing? I mean you are thinking small, fearing to lose your jobs and such, without realising that if an American company lowers its costs, the higher profits will STILL go to America. That is YOUR country, dumbass!
And you know what you should be REALLY afraid of? That entire high-tech companies will be founded and operated outside of good old USA. And you should be very, VERY afraid of this, because you are not going to see one cent of the money those companies make.
Take my case for example. I came in the USA during in the mid 90's on an H1B visa, worked in Silicon Valley in higher and higher positions at some kick-ass companies for some obscene salaries. Then, when the bust came, I didn't look for another job, I didn't apply for unemployment, I didn't whine about how tough it is now.
Instead I decided to go back to my country. You see, I found out that I don't like America much. I don't like its CocaCola and McDonalds culture, its puritanism, its greed and especially I dislike its fat, ugly feminist women. So I left.
And back home I discovered that I can hire software engineers for... well... let's say 6K a year at most. And we are talking GOOD engineers, not the indian code-monkeys the outsourcing companies end up with. And I'm here working with them, so I can make sure they meet my quality standards.
So that's what I did. Our first product will be out in just a few weeks. It comes in market with similar products already present, but it will cost A THIRD of how much the others do. And it will deliver similar functionality at better quality.
Now how do you compete with that? I have to say the only viable solution is outsourcing, but it is darn hard to make it work...
Oh, and btw, you should not be afraid of H1B's either. The pay social security taxes but they CANNOT take those money back when they leave. And they cannot get pension from US either. So they end up supporting your failing Social Security system without ever benefiting from it. You should thank them.
Should Programmers Be Protected With Code Tariffs
Remember, if we allow other, "cheaper" countries to compete freely (which we should), then over time their standard of living and costs will rise to our level. However, as long as we impose tariffs on their legitimately cheaper products to keep them out of our markets, we are keeping them in poverty, and allowing them to remain cheep for a longer time. This is exactly what we're doing in the European Union with all the import tariffs placed on third world food products in order to protect the european farmer. Third world farmers can produce eg. sugar better and cheaper than we can, but beacuse of tariffs, they do not get access to our (huge) markets. It's a disgrace, it's unfair and it weakens both them and us.
That's what I did. In about 3-5 years, India is going to have the infrastructure to OWN the software industry. Their resources are comparable only to China(who is also coming on very strong). There is lots of opportunity here for any enterprising young programmer. The only problem is the Rupee-Dollar exchange rate. A person with lots of debt or student loans would never be able to pay them off on India salary. However, there are many Indian software development companies who are itching to get a few good "western" developers over here.
Other than the spicy food, I'm having a great time over here.
No. You do not understand - you can't understand. It is you who are the racist and your damned system that must collapse, but you and it are blind. You think that your exploitative capitalist ethic is the way the world ought to work.
It is ethically impermissable to allow workers, in this case foreign workers, to work at this wage and under these conditions in the employment of corporations over which we (yes, *we*) have economic and political control.
The system you advocate is fundamentally exploitative, and in this situation, undeniably racist.
If it means that these foreign workers will not have a job, then that is how it must be. The situation must be rectified, but advocating exploitation is not an ethically permissable way of bringing this about.
Human beings, workers, have intrinsic value, and a noble spirit.
For you to say that their best hope is to be exploited all their lives is to spit in their face.
We must not extend the means of production, extend the exploitation, for when we do we serve as slaves to our capitalist masters.
We, the workers, noble in spirit, must sieze these means of production, and only then can there be hope of global equality, and realized universal value.
There is more to life than seeking the most effective way to line the pockets of our capitalist masters?
We will *not* be lead by you and your type.
We will *not* be decieved by your propagandizing.
We, all of us, are too good for that.
There are three types of Software; Proprietary, Open Source and custom. When proprietary software's labour gets taxed because of its country of origin, think what would happen to the "Microsoft tax". Countries would be justified to tax Windows/Office out of existence. Open Source, the work is done all over the world and it is next to impossible where this work is done. As there is money exchanged for getting all this work, it can hardly be taxed and is impossible to value. Custom software, when companies are to be taxed for work done outside one country, consider that the work is done for the WHOLE company. Would that mean that a French company has to have different software made for its US subsidiary? Or would you accept that a US company is to write different software for a French subsidiary? All is all a bad idea. PS I work in IT and lost my job too. The recession, the war they said..
Mostly because the money that's collected never gets back to the people who actually deserve it. Instead it goes straight in the coffers of some politician or worse a private company. eg welfare to work.
The other problem of tariffs is cost of living factors associated with living in different places. In the USA you can get beer & smokes and lots of other luxery items for cheap, eg gas. Here gas costs $.79CDN a liter, thers four of those in your gallon, Beer is $10 a sixpack, and smokes are $10. In Canada all of these things are more expensive, and yes I mean relative to the candaian duck, opps goose, er Loonie, that I get paid.
You get paid more when you live in silicon valley cause it costs so freaking much to live. What's minimum wage there, it's $5.85CDN in Alberta/Canada, more everywhere else except maybe newfoundland. Could you live on $3.40 US in Silicon Valley?
Most large companies that can afford to pay top notch dollar are international companies based out of USA, (cough) delaware. So like someone else said, they'll get around the problem anyway
And for my final feat of mental indirection....
Can we get off the bashing of other people..
People are people, some you like some you don't. doesn't matter where there from. It's the big institutions that try to dehumanize us all that really are the problem.
Alltogether now.
I like Americans, Russians, Brits, Japanese, Sweds, Afghans, Iranians, Cheqs, Canadians, Fins, Auzzies, Mexicans, Peruvian, Argentinian... and anyone else I left out especially the women.
But hey,
I'm Canadian
It seems to me that one reason many American companies are going overseas is because they can't just import talented workers as easily using H1Bs anymore.
I know my boss would be much happier if this was the case, and the company I work for would probably bring more people in from overseas and there would be less temptation to just export jobs wholesale.
While this would probably mean some of us might be faced with a short term reduction in salary (in order to compete), at least the incoming workers would be subject to minimum wage. On top of that, emigrants might expect to migrate to a higher standard of living than they experienced in their home country.
Even if some of these people were only here temporarily on a work visa, it would be an improvement over simply having the jobs migrate offshore, and in the long run it would likely improve the economy and be good for all of us.
Once, it was H1B. It was not cheap enough, so operations moved to Russia/India. One can have five times better Russian/Indian IT worker for same money as European/American one, and it is if you "import" him. He works for 1/2 or 1/4 of that money when you employ him in Russia.
What about domestic IT workers? Who cares. If H1B passed, everything will.
A non-US resident.
http://opencm3.net, http://www.nongnu.org/gm2/
I can't quite believe I'm reading most of this thread. I thought the US was for opening markets for free trade. I thought us Europeans were the protectionist ones. If we want to scrap GATT and go back to building warring trade blocs, plenty of European governments will be happy to impose punitive tarifs on American software, cars, electronics products and so on. And the countries who export the most are the ones who will lose the most by such a move.
Ideologically, France, for example, would like nothing more than to ban American software - I saw an article in the Figaro the other week about imposing import levies on foreign computer games. But, at present, the consumers' wish to buy American products carries the day. And you guys want to hand the government a loaded gun pointed at your own heads?!?!
Virtually serving coffee
"Why doesn't the US tax the import of software?"
Approx 90% of software sold in europe is american.
Understand that will not hesitate to follow such an example.
Now, do you really want that ?
Why should software developers be any different?
If tarrifs of this kind were applied to the import of software, then why not to other goods/services?
Why should Americans be any different?
It seems to me that the American minimum wage is the result of a decision that workers ought to be properly paid, and this should apply to workers everwhere. The tarrifs should be equivalent to the amount saved by imposing on the workers a lower standard of living (in material terms) than an American worker at minimum wage. This would remove all incentive to take work out of the US because of the lack of workers' rights in other countries, but it would still be cheaper to use third world labour because of the of the lower cost of living in the third world. This seems fair to me. If non-Americans can do the job just as well, then they should be given the opportunity to correct economic inbalance by earning money from American imports. If Americans want to maintain the economic inbalance, then they should learn to do something that nobody else can. Of course, the real benefit from software development, like any other commercial production, belongs to the financiers, so even when jobs leave the USA, the wealth probably doesn't. The distribution of wealth within the USA needs to be addressed.
This is a bigger problem for tangible goods that are non-trivial to transport. There is an environmental cost to moving them and there is a strong argument for producing them near where they are used. There should be another tarrif (or existing tarrifs should be increased) to discourage the location of production far from customers. This would discourage the use of cheap foreign labour in some cases, but it does not apply to software (which can be written far away and, if necessary, duplicated near the point of use).
The free software movement has become a cult. No need to be blinded by their lies. You too can be free of religion!
http://www.geocities.com/tuorf/cult.html
As a European I would LOVE to have tariffs on software - especially on M$ products. EUR 1000 per licence would be appropriate.
I have been running an international trading company for over 10 years. There are serious problems with your proposition for the following reasons:
1. If the US decided to implement a software tax, every country around the world would follow suit. I don't know the numbers offhand, but this would hurt the US software economy a lot more than help it as the US is probably one of the top software exporters worldwide, if not the largest (Mr Gates' company's exports are probably higher than at least 70% of non US nations exports, perhaps combined). It would provide a huge insentive for foreign countries to develop thier own software, instead of importing, therefore lowering sales of US software overseas.
2. This would drive more non US computer users to go with open source / free software. While I personally think that would make a better world, but it would not make for a better US software economy, which is what creates US software jobs.
3. I cannot envision how US Customs (which imposes and enforces import duty), would deal with enforcement of internet distributed software either economically or even semi-effectively for that matter. How are you going to police bits?
4. This would further thicken the profits in the pirated software business, and or exagerate the price difference between licensed software and pirated software. You might see pirated software as a percent of non US market share, rise in percentage.
5. WTO agreements that the US has signed and are in place would need to be either ratified to allow for software duties, which means many countries would need to agree. If they could not achieve ratification through the WTO, and went bad on the treaty they have signed, they would risk retaliation from other countries. Retaliation in trade matters usually cross industries, so other nations may retaliate with agriculture, aerospace, steel, textile industries, etc.
6. The world is slowly (some say quickly), heading toward a duty free zone with virtually no tarrifs on the majority of goods and services. To incentivise the politiburos in Washington to make this an agenda issue would take serious corporate money, nothing else motivates the hill.
Like everything else in the world, production will move to the cheapest bidder. Do not expect it to change, but do expect it to destroy the US economy within 2 decades. Take it from me, China is the worlds ever growing production platform, killing off the Asian dragons, then Japan, then Euroland and the USA. It is not limited to any industry, it is every industry. The USA cannot run on a trade deficit close to 500 billion dollars per year and rising for many more years. Something will burst, and save your cash because it will be nasty.
Real men don't need signitures!!!
In Canada, the CRTC routinely requires television stations to broadcast a certain percentage of "Canadian Content" which is defined by specific guidelines. If the station doesn't comply or can't prove it, the CRTC can either fine them or not renew their licence.
Presumably legislation could be put in place that would require a corporation renew their charter with a regulatory agency every once in a while. If the corporation can't prove that they're dealing with at least 50%+ companies in whatever country they're in, the company can't do business in the country anymore until the situation is fixed. A million dollar fine is nothing to a company like Microsoft, but shutting down their US operations for even a day could be very costly.
Obviously not ideal, as anything that would make lawyers overly happy is not ideal. I'm just saying there are other alternatives besides tarrifs.
...I don't think so...
You know who you are.
The reason that steel, manufacturing, and many industrial trades are protected by tarrifs is rather simple.
They have strong unions.
IT workers don't.
___________________________
I'm not a geek, but I play one on TV.
Can you spell protectionism?
Protectionism will just lead to trade wars and that will make the global economy worse, lowering the demand for software.
Suppose we release all the western cows from the meadows and send them on a world trip with a airplay ticket bussiness class. We still can give them 1450 dollars pocket money a cow compared to what we spend on them now.
There are 53 million cows in the 30 richest countries and we spend 361 billion dollor on protecting them, 1 billion a day. Just to protect the agriculture.
Who loose? The customers who pay more for there steak as they should and the developing countries who can't compete with subsidised meat.
If everywhere else (that doesn't already) starts to tax all M$ products....
-- Only information exists, the rest is just smoke and mirrors.
....but as you pointed out, our govt, by promoting globalization, is promoting the welfare of the 3rd world and the "very top of the heap".
THerefore our elected leaders are guilty of a heinous treason.
THerefore I suggest that we try them in a recognized court of law, and when they are found guilty, publicly hang them, starting with George Bush.
Anyone else with me?
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Make a tariff on imported software, and every computer attached to the internet is a "border" and us customs has jurisdiction over every one. Want to fill out a weekly "import declaration" of every bit of software you download from a server outside the U.S. and pay a duty on it? (and declare to the gov't what you are downloading)? A better way is to tax the company with divisions overseas more than a company that is all here.
....not with the indians!
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Simply taxing the software won't impact the situation that much. From what I've observed, most foreign software is component parts of domestic software. What needs to be done is to tax software that is wholly programmed in other countries, and tax the import of work that is represented by incoming component software.
What I mean: Lets say Company A manufactures product X. Functionally, product X is the merging of component Y and Z which are both also made by Company A. Component Y is coded in Singapore, and component Z is coded in India, and the two are combined in the states by domestic personnel to make product X. Although there are thresholds in material goods tarifs for which an item can be considered domestic, companies often come in just under the wire of these thresholds.
Instead what needs to happen is that all development efforts need to be classified as foreign or domestic, and foreign portions need to be taxed. If you hire an Indian consulting firm to help you with a software product, they need to itemize development and non-development costs of their bill. The development portion will be taxed.
Yes, this allows shady companies to simply say "2% were development efforts and the rest were merely research and advisory fees," when in reality it was 100% development, to avoid the tax, but most companies don't operate under those sort of scruples. Most other types of fees associated with foreign consultation should probably also be taxed, this is all stuff that can be done domestically, and is only sent abroad because of other countries' lower labor laws.
So tax wholesale software import, and tax wholesale labor import. In fact, this should apply to far more than just software, all imported labor should be taxed.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
.....didn't you just read in the posts above that now it takes both husband and wife working.....what effect do you think that has on household income (when both husband and wife work).
That is the reason for the increase in household income....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
slashdot is dead?
BUSH, stop killing civillians!!!!!
WTF!!! Do you want to prevent us from a war/terrorist attack, just making another war? Are you dumb?
Why is Pat Buchanan posting on /.?
> As a college student, majoring in CS, one of the bleakest prospects is the fact that I won't have a job in a couple of years when I graduate.
Maybe it'll (tariff) work for a couple of years, but it is not a great solution in a long run.
One of reasons is that competition works FOR YOU not AGAINST YOU. Inviting competition is always a good thing. Competition raises the level in which people and companies compete. It is true that not everyone can survive the competition, BUT those who have no competition will be extinguished in a long run because they cannot deliver quality or price, and that just does not work for commercial companies.
I can sympathize, but if you really want to work in the IT industry (in US for more than a decade), I don't know if you should be supporting the idea.
Either you let free trade show its advantages and disadvantages by letting it run free ..
Herein lies the problem. The US would not be able to compete in a system of free trade. Other countries can produce goods such as software cheaper than the US can, for a number of reasons (e.g. poorer social services, weaker currencies, lower cost of living, foreign programmers are willing to accept a lower quality of life than a US programmer will, etc). The US is simply not the most (cost) efficient environment for developing software, and as the number of quality programmers in countries like India, Russia, China etc increase over time, the situation will only worsen.
This is just good ol' American capitalism at work: if Joe down the road can make similar quality widgets cheaper than you can, then Joe's widgets should, generally, be allowed to naturally succeed in the marketplace. Foreign countries can produce similar quality software (sometimes better quality) at a lower cost than the US can, and if the "market was allowed to decide on its own", the US would over the long run lose out. Protectionist measures are a possible "solution" to this (from the US's perspective), but they are contrary to the notions of free trade generally advocated within the US.
This little corner of slashdot is of the opinion that WTO rules don't allow import duties on products that are produced cheaper overseas. That is part of the free market economy we have created for ourselves with globalisation. ;)
Don't like it? Tough, shouldn't have been so rampantly greedy in exploiting sweatshops and creating the WTO to make doing so cheaper (ok, you lot aren't directly responsible for it, but many of you are voters in countries that support the WTO, so you have a share of responsibility at least
Chris "Ng" Jones
cmsj@tenshu.net
www.tenshu.net
Simple, its a bone to the Unions. IT dosent have unions so they don't get anything when there jobs are outsourced. Hell even customer service positions for Dell are being moved to India.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
Why not simply invade India and China instead of Iraq? I'd bet there are quite many "cheap resources" just waiting to be exploited by us };->
Wow. Some good posts about this tariff stuff. I'll throw in mine also.
What is the root cause of the outsourcing situation today? I think it's the value system of our country.
Anything short of mass murder can be forgiven if it helps the economy in the short term. This is the value system of the United States.
Take away the jobs of millions of people in exchane for outsourcing and substantial harm is done to those people. But since they aren't instantly dead as a result, it falls under the radar of what is socially acceptable for entitities who are big movers of the economy.
A long term view would see the problems the short term doesn't. While outsourcing may improve the economy short term, long term suffers. Millions of people with less to put back into the system. The difference all bleeds out to the foreign interests who've picked up the jobs. Millions of domestic workers whose efforts are weakened by having to spread themselves thin accross multiple low income jobs. Less physical energy to contribute back to the local system.
Millions of people who become discouraged from the constant stress of having to struggle. Health problems, mental problems. Patriotism flags and must be supplemented with heavy doses of propoganda to create an artificial sense of unity within the very group who are technically unimportant from the standpoint of the current value system.
And when regular people organize to protest one thing or another, the message they get can be summarized:
You aren't a big mover of the economy, go pound sand.
And the "go pound sand" was not inserted just for dramaitc effect. Have you heard what plans Oregon has for protesters? Our society knows people are unhappy. What steps are being taken to address their problems? To do whatever it takes to shut them up. People protesting isn't good for the economy is it?
To quote the garbled sounds that last eminated from the Columbia's audio channel before it broke up:
We've got problems.
Companies in the US are pretty heavily restricted by export control laws (ITAR / EAR). This means they get into a lot of trouble (big fines / jail time) for "exporting" technology to foreign entities. What constitutes a foreign entity? Lots of people:
First and foremost are your foreign customers, clients, and even collaborators. If your product/ technology is covered under the EAR (enforced by the Dept of Commerce), you need to schedule about 3-6 months for an export license before engaging in any "technology transfer" (be it merchandise, technical specs, detailed descriptions/pictures, even manuals). In the software industry, I'll leave it up to you to guess what that kind of bureaucratic holdup can mean to your release cycle if you don't get started on it in time. Worse yet, if your technology can be used for military purposes, it may be covered under the ITAR (enforced by the Dept of Defence / State Dept) and may not be exportable at all. This includes things like strong encryption. Ironically, in this time of "heightened" security, it's very difficult for US companies to develop secure, strongly encrypted applications and still sell to a global market without providing some kind of workaround.
More importantly, "foreign entity" includes foreigners who work for your company, just about anyone on an H1B tech visa, etc. In my company, all of our foreigners have to be confined to an area free of technical information, and they need to be escorted anywhere else where they might be "exposed" to export controlled information. Anything they work on has to be cleared of export controlled information. Makes it kind of hard for them to contribute, since they're usually among our most technically skilled workers.
Much of the US's strength has traditionally come from brillant foreing immigrants. However, until they get their green card, their contributions to a US company are pretty limited.
So probably a combination between getting foreign workers and roadblocks against work for/with non-US countries is strongly encouraging companies, both US and otherwise, to do all of their technical development offshore. Again ironically, these export control laws that were supposedly designed to keep cutting-edge technology in the US is now the primary force that's moving technology development outside of US borders (well, second to the availability of cheap, highly skilled, highly educated labor, but these are evidently attached).
American classification of cryptography as a munition did little to limit the distribution of strong crypto around the world. Americans have an arrogant flaw that makes them think that they can control all technological / scientific and economic development through the use of their punitive foriegn policies. They are wrong, they cannot dictate how the world will develop. Their policies can cause a great deal of harm though.
In this case, setting up tariffs on software would simply result in a higher cost for software in america. That is, if foriegn producers decide it is worth their while to sell in the american markets given the additional administrative overhead that would be created as a result of these protectionist tariffs. The rest of the world would benefit from being able to acquire the same software at lower prices. American competitiveness in world markets would be reduced.
So once you have finished getting all bloodied and beaten up in Iraq, why don't you go and perform a labotomy on yourselves.
According to the FTC website, the "Made In USA" cannot be applied to stuff that's merely assembled in the US. All major components intrinsic to the operation must be MANUFACTURED in the US as well. The example used by the Federal Trade Commission is barbecue grills, IIRC. The grill, the shell, the gas regulator all would need to be manufactured in the US to get the "Made in USA" sticker. Only minor objects such as buttons or knobs could be made outstide the US. Failure to comply with the standards results in a fine. Further, EACH of the competitors that sell similar products can collect damages equal to lost sales (eg. everything you sold as "Made in USA" that wasn't counts as a lost sale to your competition).
But who knows what enforcement will be like under the Bush Administration.
You're a great coder but please leave the very difficult field of economic analysis up to the professionals.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Imports are ultimately paid for by exports, so any restriction of exports ultimately reduces exports. (P. 739 of "Economics Today" by R. Miller)
"In this case, setting up tariffs on software would simply result in a higher cost for software in america."
Not likely, since software made in the US would cost less. Get it?
"So once you have finished getting all bloodied and beaten up in Iraq, why don't you go and perform a labotomy on yourselves."
Ahh... now we see why you are posting. Troll. Get lost.
Dirk
Then we have longer term studies that show that the US has far stronger job creation than Europe, and in fact the unemployment measurements in Europe are artificially low because of training programs, early retirement, workweeks limited to 35 hours, etc.
Dude, what's artificial about a shorter workweek? I work 32 hours a week, make a good income out of it, and wouldn't even think about working more hours. And yes, I do consider myself employed.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
I haven't heard the simplest objection to taxes yet:
if you tax software imports, other coutries will tax U.S. exports, thus hindering your export.
---
"The chances of a demonic possession spreading are remote -- relax."
'ta
Since you are so brillant about economic policies why don't you give your opinions a go instead of deriding others.
An Education is the Font of All Liberty
..the exact same economic professionals who caused the great depression? The same guys who helped foster the great dotcom boom trillions of dollars congame ripoff? The same guys who are causing the US to go from the worlds largest creditor nation to the worlds largest debtor nation in only 20 years? The same guys who have helped create the largest upsurge in bankruptices in decades? The guys who are causing the US "dollar" to drop in international value on a daily basis almost? The ones who have almost single handedly destroyed vertical manufacturing in this nation, and are now doing it with the entire IT industry, the same industry that was supposed to automagically replace the lost manufacturing jobs? Those guys?
No thanks, they mostly suck. They are good at stealing money from millions of people on humongous levels. Very, very good at that. They are truly professional analysts at that, and they spend all their time figuring out exciting new ways to do that. On a small scale they are called frauds and bunco artists and get arrested and charged. On a large scale they are called the IMF and Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank.
As it stands, the WTO has ruled that the Bush steel tariffs are illegal. http://www.suntimes.com/output/business/cst-fin-st eel27.html Now, I can't say I will ever take the side of the WTO, but it is food for thought.
The real issue is not that outsourcing will cost US jobs but that it is encouraging lots of people in other countries to become adept at writing software. This will lead to an increasing proportion of inovative software being created outside the US.
The government should fund and arm some religious fundamentalists or a potential dictator in the countries producing software cheaper. This should lead to problems with the software, give the US leverage to get the governments to change policy or, in the longer term, give the US an excuse to impose sanctions or invade the country to restore stable government, liberate the people and ensure that US companies get a bigger share of the market in that country.
Of course I don't believe this and hope the US is learning that free trade and being part of the global community is more profitable for the US in the long run.
Since the difficult parts of software development, particularly for a business, involve communicating to users, there will be an implicit tarriff involved -- the price will go up in the long run because the software will not do the right thing, and will need to be recoded.
Unless you are closely tied to the user, and can observe their process and derive the needs for their software from that automation, you won't get the requirements right. The farther removed from this observational process, the more wrong the requirements are. The more the requirements are off, the more it will cost to fix the software. The software will suck.
Outsourcing at all is one degree of separation. Developers not at the place of business is a degree of separation. Developers that don't speak the same language as the users is at least one degree of separation. This list could easily be expanded, and is meant to give some simple examples, rather than be a comprehensive list.
My point is that the long-term cost of the software choice will increase. But, and here's the rub, in American business, nobody cares about the long term. The short-term quarterly lower initial price tag is what guides MBAs. So they buy the cheap stuff that will be more of a burden to the next vic in their seat. And their company will never realize that it is indeed paying a tarriff for having outsourced their software.
I'm not in the IT or programming industry, but I think I'm more savvy than the average user. My fields of interest include technical and information economics. I get the impression that many who are in these industries have issues with management's lack of understanding of what these professionals actually do and can or cannot do. Now extend that to lawmakers, most of whom have much less (or zero) technical understanding than management and unfortunately [have to] depend on lobbyists for their education. Look at recent laws demonstrating this (DMCA for example). Does anyone in the industry really want these technically uneducated people making more bad laws than they have to?
This is incredible.
/m
- As soon as some lawyer puts out a statement containing technical errors (usually in conjunction with copyright, p2p etc.) the Slashdot crowd berates that lawyer for not having done his/her research on the given technology. This is also the generally accepted way of asking newsgroups for help, when working with something for the first time (basic research first, then bother people on the mailinglists).
However, as soon as it comes to a topic such as economics, all bets seem to be off. Without even trying to find relevant resources within the area of interest (in this case: international trade and its effects on an economy), people are throwing out their (mostly) useless opinions without even asking themselves if there might be some available relevant information on the subject at hand.
As I'm now seeing tons of these "protectionism will save us" posts, I have one comment: READ THE FUCKING MANUAL!!
- international trade is (in most western countries) dealt with as a part of the introduction to economics. Read something like "International Economics" by Salvatore or even "Economics" by Parkin,King before starting to shoot your mouth off about things you obviously do not understand. Taking economy 101 would remove at least 90% of these postings by protectionists - the remaining 10% will never get it.
The
(Would you prefer that we create laws that, say, preventing you from self-serve gas pumping? [like they do in Oregon])
The following is a segment of an excellent series which ran on PBS last year (and will run again this may) called "The Commanding Heights" which discussed and explained the battle between soviet style central planning in the 20th century and the free market economy and also the promise and perils of the new globalization. There are interviews with economists, politicians, businessmen and others who discuss firsthand their experiences with the various economic principles of macro and micro economics. Despite the emphasis on economics the series is interesting and it is designed to get average people thinking about the market forces which exist in this world and control the fate of nations and people. The following is a segment which discusses TARIFS and their effects upon an economy. As many other people have already said, TARIFS are almost certainly the wrong way to protect the American software and IT industry. Here is the link; the entire series is available via the internet as well for those who are interested.
Latin American Dependencia
I was a website developer for a small (<100 person) IT company in the Detroit area. We created web-based applications for <Giant Motor Corporation> Engineering.
When I was working in my department at <Giant Motor Corporation>, under the employment of a different contractor at the time, I found out how much money the people of the company-being-discussed were making. I jumped ship and signed up with said high-paying company. Many of the other contractors' employees were doing the same thing.
When I and a number of my colleagues went to work for the other company, we were surprised to find that the overwhelming majority of the employees were from southern India. We were told that we were to be employed as "managers" and that it was to give the company a nice "American" face. Within two years, we were all let go.
It seems that the Indian management wanted their Indian employees to learn business practices, ettiquete and culture from their "managers." The people who worked under us are now the US interface for large teams of super-cheap Indian IT employees living in southern India. The department we worked in is now impenetrable by US IT contractors because no one can compete with the super-cheap labor rates of a third-world country. They outbid everyone on every project.
I later found out from some friends inside <Giant Motor Corporation> that it was company policy to invite this sort of off-shore outsourcing. They encouraged it.
What is so gosh-darned ironic about this is that a very tight metaphore can be drawn between this situation and the plight of US auto manufacturers and their fickle customers who were turning to Honda and Toyota in the 80s. Back then, the auto industry wept blood over the fact that American consumers were disloyal and buying the products of foreign labor.
Now, in the new millenium, at least one of those same big three companies is behaving just like those disloyal American auto-consumers of the 80s. They're going for the short-term cost-cutting measure without looking at how it will affect the overall long term economic picture.
"And what about you?" you ask. I threw in the IT towel and went back to school to become an architect. There's something enormously satisfying about designing things that may very well outlive me, that aren't dependent on whatever shakey operating system is in vogue at the moment, and which no one ever complains about being buggy. Buildings are solid and real and not subject to the same kinds of scope creep that IT projects are. All in all it's a wonderful life.
So for me, being let-go was a good thing, but for the rest of you, watch your backs. You have no protections.
Well, I have a variety of social contracts, at different levels, with my family, my community, my industry, my nation, and humanity in general.
To the extent global society evolves in a way where everyone on the planet feels a social contract with everyone else, this is a good thing. India is an especially important place to see succeed, since it's structurally a pluralistic democracy, with lots of pressures in other directions, and nukes. Letting smart people used to working with Americans get rich and powerful there seems like a very good thing to me.
My video compression blog
I suspect that the original article was a troll, but still...
The whole basis of this proposal is the idea that the price of imported software should be adjusted to compensate for differences in the cost of labor. This is based on the fallacious notion that the value of an item is related to the amount of labor that went into it. It's a good old theory, but since Ricardo and Marx, not one that has been taken all that seriously (though it kind of made sense for agricultural and unskilled factory labor). The value of software is what someone will pay for it, not what it cost you (or what some self-interested bureaucrat says it cost someone else) to make it. You could burn $50M in labor costs and still produce software with a value of zero. I've seen it done. On the other hand, uncompensated labor can produce software that someone's willing to pay good money for (look at any Linux distro).
Your whole approach is one that appeals most to the software people who are the most likely to be laid off in favor of third-world commodity coders. In other words, the ones who least belong in the business in the first place. The only reliable survival strategy in a globalized business like this is to provide more value than the competition. Firms will pay top dollar for good talent. Even though rates have eroded in the past year, I'm still doing fine, as are those of my peers who are really good at what they do. If you're just another bozo slinging SQL or VB, don't be surprised if someone in Sri Lanka has figured out how easy your job is. And frankly, if they do a better job than you, I'll outsource to them.
And based on the labor theory of value that you implicitly endorse, you'll still be adding the same value when you move on to Burger King anyway.
Get your teeth into a small slice: the cake of liberty
... apart from a subtle tax on products purchased from abroad?
While it is controversial whether Smoot-Hawley actually caused or worsened the Great Depression, it is clear that it didn't help -- the Depression deepened, more people lost work, and we as a nation suffered for years.
If knowledge workers abroad are doing as well for less, then let's face it -- they are kicking our butts. We won't get better or more competitive by taxing them -- we'll just divert the fruits of their good labors to others, and ultimately hurt ourselves. We will invite retaliative taxation on our products, which will decrease demand and therefore reduce jobs here as well.
Rather than letting governments duke this out with artificial numbers, why not let the market decide? If they can produce smart people working with good tools and equipment for less, we had better either reduce our expectation of our own worth, or get smarter or use better tools. Otherwise, we will simply lose out in the end.
The best things in life are free. You can give your proprietary software to the birds and bees, I want OSS. Wooohoohoohoo. That's what I want.
50% tariff on $0 + $0.
We're waiting, pansy.
Pathman, Free (as in GPL) 3D Pac Man
Here's something interesting.
I think it speaks for itself.
American students abroad told to pretend to be Canadians
At least when we leave our home country, we don't have to worry about being shot in the back by some yahoo with an axe to grind.
Utter bullshit. Name those 30 countries.
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
And then take a class in programming, so that you can beat off-shore programmmers on merit, rather than through tariffs.
And this isn't a zero-sum game. In the absence of violence, trades occur only if both parties perceive a benefit. A net loss occurs only in the presence of coercion, or because an agent makes a bad decision (in which case the loss is self-imposed).
Then go to a flea market in an old US town and buy $5 unbranded sneakers. This money will go straight to the sweatshop. The fact is Americans want Nike for $500 because Michael Jordan wears them."
No, Americans want the best quality shoes, Nike makes better shoes, despite what you may say, You'll never find a pair of shoes more comfortable and more well made than a pair of $500 Nikes, the problem is the same problem with have with Microsoft, people dont WANT to spend $500 on Nikes, they spend $500 on Nike because Nike makes the best basketball/sports shoes and they happen to cost $500.
Sure marketing has alot to do with it, but I dont see any small shoe companies with anything better than the Nike Air Jordan sneakers, better meaning in terms of how they feel and how well they are made.
Sure other smaller companies can make good shoes, but Nike buys these companies out.
"It's not your place to comment on how Nike distributes or raises that money. I know McDonalds is crap, but then why does my stomach rumble whe I see one of their beautiful juicy Big Macs on TV mmmmmm? "
Who would choose Mc Donalds over a 5 star resturant? No one. Mc Donalds however is on every corner, and its cheap, until theres something better people are forced to eat there. When you are outside somewhere and every corner has a Mc Donalds, you dont go into Mc Donalds because you like their food, you go in because you are hungry and they have food thats in your price range.
Same with Nikes, People buy what they want, but it is my business to care how they make the food I consume, and how the product I buy is built. Even if I disagree I'm forced to buy a good pair of shoes and a good meal because theres no option, and if Mc Donalds and Nike are well known, and theres nothing else for miles, well thats what I'll buy.
" If China becomes one big sweatshop and Chinese employment rises to almost 100% then the Chinese economy will be stronger than the American economy after 100 years of redistribution. The Chinese will choose better and better sweatshops to work for, and then the best workers will go for perks like "Free jade vase when you join our company". Then the Chinese will be richer than the Americans."
This isnt about the chinese getting raises or having jobs, its about the fact they have a different currency than us, therefore the money isnt properly distributed
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
don't ever ever give the us government, local government, or state governemtn any idea or support for a new tax.
The tax will never be elliminated and will hound you and future generations.
See the 1893 Spanish American War Telephone tax at 3% which still is in effect here some 110 years later. It was proposed and passed to tax the luxury item of a telephone for a short time to pay for the 1893 war.
That war was damn well paid for by 1910 yet the tax stuck around for another 90+ years and is still dragging onward.
(sound of crickets chirping)
Back when we were a great Republic, we financed our government by taxing forgeign trade. There is nothing wrong with it. I'd rather tax India than tax me. Let's do it and rebuild our republic.
Tyb- please turn on the comments in your journal entry. The defaul is "No comments"-
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.