Slashdot Mirror
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?"
What's the deal? You spent 4 years in an expensive College that gave you a Bachelor degree and all you care about is your bumper stickers? Darn. ... but I was so wrong.
I thought the American IT guys were mostly people from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, [INSERT_BIG_NAME_HERE], etc
During the last 2 years, I interviewed close to 30 people for a couple of Software Architect position sin Atlanta. Most people who were remotely qualified were H1 guys from India. The few Americans that were actually good enough on paper went back home wondering what the hell happened during the interview. Shit, I ended up sending them the questions beforehand and they still got surprised by what hit them.
But then, when I look at what is actually taught in some of those overhyped colleges, maybe the only value is in that bumper sticker... It is definitely time to "move up" to more advanced qualifications.
This comment is utterly preposterous on the face of it. The US has the lowest unemployment rates and highest per capita income of any developed country.
You make the mistake to think that the stats you are reading are actually the same.
The way they are gathered between the US and Europe for example is completly different.
Unofficial it is said the US has an unemployment rate of 10% and that is roughly the same ballpark the EU has.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
Actually, you cant just assemble it here and say "Made in America". Some years ago I worked for a domestic electronics maufacturer. Their label read "Assembled in America from foriegn and domestic parts". When I asked the marketing folks why it wasn't "Made in America", they said it was because we did not have enough domestic components to qualify. All our IC's and discrete components were imported. Only about 10% of the parts were actually made here in the USA.
But all of this is just hearsay.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
Humourous or otherwise, it demonstrates one of the reasons the US cannot handle this - source code is speech so protected.
The entire western economic system is going to implode, just as Japan has done (partly saved by its wildly different culture and huge farming protection rules). The same process - the innovators dilemma - works for countries too. We are inefficient, we are expensive, we lose the layers of industry just as the model says. Soon all that will be viable is lawyers and finance houses, then the whole pile collapses.
Ironically the USA and EU had the power to stop this - they could have imposed taxes on incoming goods. They could have ringfenced that money to go back to workers in those countries, creating ecomic growth,. driving up demand for luxury goods and creating markets, instead they signed GATT and NAFTA and other treaties that drive work to the poorest without rewarding them. When there is no work left in the EU/USA who will buy the cars, the tv sets, the dvd players ?