Slashdot Mirror
BusinessWeek on Outsourcing
hotsauce writes "BusinessWeek has a couple of stories on the outsourcing of white collar jobs to India. One is a cover story on GE's fundamental research lab in Bangalore where scientists work on everything from the aerodynamics of turbines to plastics' molecular structure. The other is commentary on "America's worst-kept secret", and the effects of the upcoming elections on it."
Another mistaken argument is that there is only a finite pool of labor in India and so an equilibrium will be reached soon. This won't happen. Because the current level of penetration of computers and internet connections in India is extremely low (e.g: 0.4% dialup and 0.02% broadband). As this situation improves, it greatly decrease the barrier to entering the IT workforce in India and will continue to bring in an army of new workers for years to come.
As with the open source revolution, the internet changed everything.
I'm always surprised at how many /.ers love to whine about how terrible outsourcing is and that it makes everything worse. I'm working in a "developing country" (China) and managing for my company (European) outsourced productions. There are many problems which must be solved when outsourcing and if you don't monitor well enough then you will fail. Outsourcing mainly fails because someone doesn't think enough about it and falls for the "wow, 30% savings" trap. It's not a "we signed the contract, now where are the profits" situation.
I'm not saying that outsourcing is the cure-all as some people want to see it, but it certainly can work and then it can also provide good work to people in the home company. In our company most people are still employed and are doing the quality/project management now.
Outsourcing is an old topic (someone mentioned rightly the outsourcing that happened to the English textile sector in the 19th century). It cuts many people and they have to adjust to the new situation which is often painful.
But if the companies stop trying to be more efficient, then the US/European/Japanese economies can't compete with the new and upcoming ones (India/China). The only way to survive is to try and get higher on the skill ladder. This is true for the individual but also for an economy that wants to compete worldwide. You can't demand 5 times the price for something that can be had with the same or slightly less quality somewhere else.
Everyone wants his/her life to improve always but noone wants to accept changes to the current situation. This is not how it works.
Walmart doesn't sell at a loss.
They sell with slim margins, they also get lower prices due to volume.
Their selling price in some cases is even lower then other companies purchase price from the distributer.
Think about selling at a loss, first what do you gain. Secondly how do you explain to the owners that you lost money by selling below cost?
What does "nigger rich" mean? Are you a racist?
This is an American expression from the past racist days, yes, but the previous writer used it in reference to a false sense of wealth engendered by current American automobile marketing practices.
The origin of the expression is the still-continuing practice of offering deals to undereducated working-class minorities that seem spectacular at first but turn out to be financial disasters later. At the time that these expressions were used in the USA, the better-educated white majority was expected to be aware enough not make such mistakes. Using these 'Jim Crow' expressions in the current politically-correct environment serves to give the writer the ability to extraordinaryly accentuate a point at the cost of being labeled a 'backward racist' by his audience.
For example, in the case referred to by the writer, a car company will make a giant bloated Sport Utility Vehicle from an old truck design for $15,000. Then they will market it people with misleading television satuation ads for $30,000 - $35,000. People are offered $4000 cash back immediately and no interest payments for a year.
What happens is that people buy these things to get the cash now and the low payments for a year. Then they find that the vehicle depreciates at a much faster rate than the payment schedule for the vehicle.
In a few years they have a giant gas-guzzler that is worth $18,000 in trade but for which they still owe $26,000. When it starts to break down, they get stuck with huge repair bills. If they go to trade it in, they find they must pay the difference between the cost and the current worth with a loan with very-high interest rates.
I believe that this is what the writer means by "n****r rich".
Americans are a bit too quick to dump their colorful but nasty expressions, and a bit too slow to dump the underlining racist attitudes that created them. But they are nowhere near a racist as they were only a generation ago.