Slashdot Mirror
Ask Indian Techies About 'Onshore Insourcing'
This Slashdot interview has a little twist to it. Instead of using email, I'm going to relay your questions 'live' to people I meet while I'm here in New Delhi, speaking at LinuxAsia2004. Offshore outsourcing has gotten a lot of attention on Slashdot (and NewsForge) lately, but I figure that from this end we ought to call it 'onshore insourcing' instead. Feel free to ask other questions about 'geek life' in India, too; I'll ask as many questions as I can of as many people as I can, and post their answers when I'm back in the U.S.
What training is given to them to understand the Western culture that their products are meant to serve? Is there some sort of liason who answers questions about the good ol US of A? Are you meant to assume certain things?
And this was not the case here in the USA during the "Dot Com Boom"? I sense an invalid argument...
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I'd ask: what are you all planning to do when your jobs go to Russia as soon as you become too expensive for the US corporations? Plan now, because it's starting to happen.
Hopefully you guys are able to weather the storm better than us.
"The market alone cannot provide sufficient constraints on corporation's penchant to cause harm." -- Joel Bakan
11K a year is about minimum wage, BTW. So the people in most US cities who are making your lattes, flipping your burgers, and bagging your groceries are expected to live off of that.
(Ultimately, it should be hoped that living costs will come down in those US cities, but the monkey wrench in the works is housing: people are not willing to sell their homes for less than they paid for it, and with low interest rates on financing, they haven't felt a reason to yet.)
How do you feel about the American programmers that are angry they lost their jobs to outsourcing? Do you think they have a right to be angry?
You don't have to be bitter, it works both ways: many european companies prefer hiring US firms to do software or hardware projects, depriving local computer engineers of their jobs, because of the higher taxes and stricter employment regulations in the EC. Nobody in the US seems to complain about this, or feel bad about jobless EC workers, so why should Indians should feel bad about the US programmers they put out of a job?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
First off, for the record, I underwent a 5 month unemployment (wonderful economy we now have), and am still digging out from the debt that I went into.
Currently ATT, IBM, and HP have been busy off-shoring (BTW, after the Nov. election, Sun and MS will be joining that in a BIG way if my friends from these companies are being honest). These companies have moving to places that are preceived lower costs. The real problem, though, has been bad management that selects based on politics rather than on skills. With the off-shoring, they will also go and in these sites, costs will go up.
Now, the real thing. If you have smarts and you have a good degree, quite your carping. Think about what is lacking out there that you can develop and sell. There are plenty of interesting ideas and business models. Jump on it. My only suggestion is do not simply hire your friends. Look out on the web and find some of the best ppl for the job. The tech industry has already shown that a distributed model works for it. This is your opportunity to create something. When there is upheavel in an industry is the time to be there.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
-or-
Is the "globalization" playing field really level when corps can use it to drive down costs, but citizens can't us it to buy cheaper drugs from Canada?
No more than the characters of Homer (fat, lazy) Barney (drunk, flatulent) and Mr Burns (immoral, greedy), Mayor Quimby (venal, corrupt) are insulting to Americans.
I find it interesting that us American programmers are so elitist. Most think that your education and creativity must be less than the American whos job you are stealing. I find this trite and rude. When I was in college in California we had Indian programmers who were excellent programmers. They were educated in the UK English system with excellent math and computer teaching. I know that India is a 3rd world country and many students travel abroad to get a quality education. How would you rate the Indian universities and programming vocational schools for preparing programmers to be great at their jobs when compared to their US counterparts?
- Kill Yourself, spare us all! -
Only in the U.S. would "medical" and "dental" [insurance] be considered benefits. In every other country I'm familiar with in the world, medical services are either universal, or non-existant; in such countries, the idea of an employer subsidising medical insurance seems as ludicrous as an employer subsidising your public library membership.
I'm assuming this is not a serious post...
1. How's it feel being detested by most of an entire industry back in the US of A (with the exception of the bean counters) ?
I'm a developer in the US, and I still have my job, but I'm having a hard time finding a software job in the geographic area where I want to move. But I don't detest the Indian people, nor do I feel that they've "stolen a job" from me. They're people like us. They want to make a living, they want to provide for themselves and their families, they want what most of us want. Jobs are available, and they're taking them. It's not like they're gathering together in some secret clubhouse buried under a cavern in the Himalayas and plotting how to make Americans' lives miserable. The reason this is happening is because of globalization, and personally, I still haven't decided if I think it's a good thing or not. I'm not going to have the knee-jerk reaction of "Of course it's bad", because the fact is, monetarily speaking, one of me is worth about four top-notch Indian developers. At the same time, though, enrollment in CS and engineering in US schools is plummeting, with the exception of foreign students. Globalization is great until relations break down between us and the country where our talent pool lives.
So speaking as an American programmer whose current livelihood is threatened by globalization, I can say that I hold no grudge against India, Russia, China, or any other country whose citizens are no less human than I am, and whose governments have the same capacity for corruption as my own. My job is marginally safer, since I work for a defense contractor. But it's just a matter of time before my job goes away too, and I'm willing to change careers if I have to. Sure, I could rail against India and American CEOs and bean counters, but that won't put food on my table.
---
"Every jumbled pile of person has a thinking part that wonders what the part that isn't thinking isn't thinking of"-TMBG
I would not phrase the issue the way you have quoted.
I would instead, with experience in the matter, address the dichotomy this way:
It's not that the Indians are not capable of all those things; they are. But it is a matter of maintaining your core competencies, and ownership of design. Any outsourcing contractor has only one stake in the success: money. You have a stake in the success in many ways, and should always work to refine your own designs until they're perfect. No other firm in the world cares how effective your products are. These offshore companies excel at turning a definition into a production: that's their business model. The outsourcing houses are not geared up to do your designs for you, to read your minds, to focus-group your market, to educate you, or to replace you.
Paraphrasing the old maxim, Make it work, make it work well, then (get someone else to) make it work cheap.
[
It will never be possible to live on $11K a year. Never.
Sure it is, you're just used to a high standard of living...
Yes, but you are guaranteed many things like family and medical leave, workplace health and safety standards, freedom from discrimination for a laundry list of protected classes (race, sex, age, sexual orientation in many cases etc.), a minimum wage, at companies of a certain size (which isn't very big, like 250+ employees) you must be offered health insurance at group rates, unemployment insurance, social security etc. I completely agree with your assessment of how hostile things have become, but what still remains is a huge percentage of the cost of American labor.
I underwent a 5 month unemployment
Chickenshit. I've been out of work for three years.
Currently ATT, IBM, and HP have been busy off-shoring (BTW, after the Nov. election, Sun and MS will be joining that in a BIG way if my friends from these companies are being honest).
And you find no problem with this?
Think about what is lacking out there that you can develop and sell.
Won't be long before there's nobody with a paycheck left to buy whatever we develop.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
This question of "reverse resentment" has an interesting implication. It asks if Indian engineers resented America, apparently suggesting that American engineers harbor resentment of India.
If so, I believe resentment of India or its people is misplaced. I'm a U.S. programmer; I'm fortunate in that I haven't lost my job to outsourcing, at least not yet. If I did, however, the "blame" would reside perhaps with myself, perhaps with my employer, or perhaps with the stockholders that my employer answers to. Pretty much an all-U.S. list, I'd expect.
It's not the fault of someone in India, or China, or Russia, if they happen to choose the same occupation that I did, and can make a good living at it. They're just trying to feed their families, same as everyone else.
I'm not making light of the difficulties facing U.S. engineers. I have friends who've been displaced and are looking for work, and others who've moved on to work outside of engineering altogether. I may very well join their ranks. But I think it's important that, regardless of what comes next, we don't let it turn into a resentment of countries and people who, really, are just trying to do the best they can.
They should feel bad because they are being paid about 1/7 what the job is actually worth.
1/7th of what the job is worth *in the US*. In India, I suspect they're pretty well paid.
That's the flip-size of globalization my friend: since the end of WW2, the US have been busy opening new markets abroad for themselves. Now the new markets in question start to have the ability to compete on the same fields as US industries, and the ole globalization tactic is backfiring.
The USA hurt european countries bad in its days too, now it's their turn to get hit by emerging countries. Every part of the globe has had a glorious economic world-domination era at some point in history, be it Portugal, Italy, France or Britain. America's has started to decline. Tough luck, you're watching History in progress.
China and India have slowed down the Japanese economy, and now they're banging on your door guys. Time to get used to 10+% unemployment, like the rest of us.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Sure they won't...
But they might find themselves sadly out of luck because of high "cost to exit". See, the capital involved in IT is the knowledge, therefore, the people. Companies are irrelevant. Trying to change the outsourcing provider means discarding currently invested capital and starting from scratch.
The reason this is not yet evident is because we're not through the first wave of excitement over outsourcing, and not too many companies have tried to switch over to "cheaper" outsourcing provider. But when the realization comes, the hangover will be bitter.
I have just abandoned my Engineering job in US, and returned to Canada.
What you said couldn't be more true. People in the US are screaming about worker right and such, but where I was working, there as this thing called "Freedom to Work Law" which states something to the effect that if you want to quit you got the legal right to do so, and if your boss want to let you go, he can do so at the moment notice - so much for job protection.
The result of such law and working environment? Well, when my boss' in his office, everyone pretends to work hard; when he is off, no one work, Period!
Oh, Med insurance, co pay, and deduction are entirely different matter. Talk about the US education system with its "Left no Child Behind" initiative - what a joke.
By the time all these things figured out, my pay checks was much smaller than what I would make here in Canada, where I have to work for a grand total of 37.5 hours per week.
Did I say my US employer only expects me to work a minimum of 45 hours per weeek?
Yup the previous poster was just trolling.
Bye America.
I would imagine it would affect the job in exactly the same way as if you have a person of different color, faith, ethnicity, political view working in your office here.
.. we all know that attitude plays a part in terms of getting a positive/negative review.
It matters to those who are bothered by it and not at all by those who are not bothered. To say that performance reviews are purely based on performance is a lie
Traditional sectors always employ people with a "conservative" bent of mind and the newer computer-related organizations are more meritocratic and less classist. That I presume goes for all nations...
My first rule of thumb is..."I do not work for free". I work, I work hard, and do what it takes to get the job done, but, I do not work for free.
Look into contracting, friend...at least get paid for the work you do. I'm a contract employee...kind of in both worlds. I get 4 weeks a year vacation/sick time...10 holidays..until last 2 years..didn't have to pay anything towards my benefits..now, I pay $8/paycheck for full coverage (med, dental, eye).
Good jobs are out there, but, you gotta be flexible...and go to where they are...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
You might as well ask whether Homer Simpson is insulting to Americans.
It's a coffee shop for Pete's sake !
So what? People used to earn a full-time living running bakeries, cafes, newsstands, small hardware stores. Do you have any idea how much money the average Starbucks makes in a week?
You work there while you're young and if you want advancement opportunities, you look for another job outside the coffee shop arena.
Like where? Do you realize that one HALF of the working population is now either:
1) Employed part-time
2) A temp
3) Unemployed
4) Out of the work force completely (gave up trying to find a job)
ONE HALF. So where do we go to find the "good jobs" again? There AIN'T NO MORE GOOD JOBS.
Starbucks pay and benefits are actually better than any other coffee shops out there.
Whew. Makes you want to drop to one knee and weep openly.
an unusually good company to its employees.
Except that they pay shit.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
First, they aren't expected to live off this. These jobs are expected to be filled by part time workers - house wives, students, etc - to provide them with a little extra income. But should a person with any shred of ambition decide to make a career in fast food, they can end up drawing a larger salary than someone who spends that same amount of time in college.
In 1998, I was asked if I wanted a job making 70k a year. At first I did - until I found out that it was managing a Taco Bell. The stigma of fast food management keeps a lot of qualified people out of the field, hence, someone able to do it successfully can make quite a bit of money.
One of the things which irks me still is that I bought the whole "college is the way to success" bs back in high school. I know people younger than me, without a degree, who make comparable wages simply because they found a niche position in the economy - they took the jobs that no one else wanted and stuck with them. Trust me, it's a lot easier to move up into management when the business has a high turnover rate. Some people I've known have been made managers by force of longevity - they are the only ones who have stayed long enough to learn the whole business.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
I have to weigh in on this one. I am a F&B employee. It is entirely possible to live on 11k/yr. (I actually earn a little closer to 13 to 15k/yr) I deal with people every day who earn in the 10 to 20k range, some even are raising children on these incomes. As far as Starbucks goes, forget the 11k figure. That is grossly inflated. A miniwage employee loses 1/3 of their income to taxes, social security, and medicare. Add in company insurance and other "benifits" and that goes to about 1/2. The goal in F&B is to earn more on less. We never get OT with management approval unless you agree to a "salary" in which case your looking at being at work from open to close every day the store is open, they call this "management training". Paid vacations are usually a sham, you might get it, you might not. Now if you go to another state (like NY or WA) they have higher miniwage for F&B, mostly so those workers can survive in the big cities, get outside that and they introduce tip share. Basically they pay the staff well below minimum, they split the tips from service to raise their wages to the federal minimum, not the state's minimum.
My point to all this is, you have no idea how bad it could be for you. Stop and look at everything in your home, or in your car that runs about $10-15, now eliminate all that and you get a very clear idea of how to live on less.
TANSTAAFL
Your number includes stay at home parents as well.
No one gives a damn about employment of the working age population.
We only care about those are are actually SEEKING employment. Thus, REAL unemployment is only 5.7%, a comparably low number with regards to historical trends.
Saying that there "aint no more good jobs" just further solidifies the evidence that you are completely ignorant of economies, economic growth, and the labor market.
Indians probably think of us Americans as speaking English with a very heavy accent. Almost everybody that speaks English speaks it with an accent typical to the country of their origin. What is the "accent benchmark"? So stop giving them hell about their accent. There are quite a few accents in America that are terribly hard to understand.
Think about what is lacking out there that you can develop and sell.
Couldn't find the message cubicledrone was quoting on this, but I was amazed to read it. The only person who would say something like that is someone who hasn't been unemployed for long, and who thinks they haven't been because they're such a wonderful asset.
Let me caution you to be modest and wise. Develop your network, keep skills current. There are lots of smart, creative people who have been out of work for months and years. It's not a reflection on their abilities. Getting work can be hard, and being out of work drags you down in just about every way.
No- the fact is that only half need or are looking for permanent full-time jobs. The numbers you are quoting HAVE NO MEANING.
The Bureau of Labor releases a meaningful number that represents the number of people that actually want/need a job, but are unable to find one. That number just dropped to 5.6%.
New industry, same old arguments. Steelworkers said it, Detroit Auto said it, and now Techies are saying it.
Fact of the matter is, America isn't very good at keeping whats home-grown at home. It is good at pioneering new industries, however. The only difference is that IT has moved so fast that there hasn't been the generational drop like there was in past transitions; young qualified professionals are out of work, and they get airtime. No one wants to hear from old steel millers.
The solution isn't to be protectionist. The solution is to create something new. That's what America does.
They are taking ALL of our jobs... we were so Naive to assume they were just doing what you call "monkey coding", but they (Indians) are highly educated, because their government gives them a far greater opportunity to go to college (something that just don't exist here).
With over 1000 tradeschools, supplimenting very good colleges (free for most Indians), we haven't got a chance until our government steps in and does something to save our jobs.
Hats off to CNN and their "exporting America" for bringing this issue out in the open. Now people are starting to realize this and here's hoping we can somehow salvage our jobs, but we can't fight corporate greed. it's good that Lou Dobbs is "exposing" these greedy corporations. We need more ot fhis...
I have no love for CNN and their biased coverage, but they ARE mainstream and lots of John Q's watch it.
While there is a degree of truth in your argument, let's not forget, for instance, that HTML/HTTP was invented in Europe, as was Linux.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Most "foreigners" -- whatever that means given the global nature of a message board like slashdot -- probably write better English than most Americans
Speaking from personal experience, this is due mostly to self-consciousness. Our english tends to be the one we learn at school, at work and thru works of literature and Hollywood. So we usually take extra care when writing in a foreign language as not to commit a gaffe when doing so.
If it was in our native language, we'd simply write what comes naturally to us, complete with grammar and spelling errors. The levels of literacy vary, just like everywhere else in the world.
No sig
Do you really believe that there will be no fallout from these decisions down the road?
IMO the only way that outsourcing (as it currently is done) can be profitable is to ignore the long term effects of decreased QOS, the deleterious effects of eliminating those salaries from our economies and the inevitable decrease in GDP, not to mention the fact that these decisions make people HATE the decision makers and that hurts sales.
And, if you're going to play the old "hard scrapple" line, then one could argue that any one naive enough to think the IT boom could last forever and clamoured into an overcrowded yet overpaid field that had every reason to be outsourced, made some "serious errors in vocational choice."
The truth is, in a way, that you don't think of minimum wage and unskilled labor types as "real people."
My experience is that the main use of the term "code monkey" is by programmers in situations where the boss is not giving them enough respect. A statement might be: "????? is a bad manager, he treats people like code monkeys." Or, a rebuttal "I am not a code monkey." The truth of the matter is that programmers are often good at breaking institutionalized oppression.
My experience with unionization so far is that unionization itself is institutionalized oppression. The first goal of a union would be to shut down independent shops and lock out consultants. Just as the union has successfully done in thousands of industries. The first goal of the union would be to stop the process of social mobility between workers and management. Historically, unionization has been the final seal in the institutionalization of workers.
One of the biggest worries of outsourcing overseas is that it might create a mechanism that stops social mobility. Before the major outsourcing, it was actually shaping up as an alternative means for skilled workers to move into management. The day there is a Union, the social mobility that IT workers currently enjoy will come to a dead stop as it has with most union activities in the past.
That wasn't my point. I was trying to compare and contrast two so called "evils." Christians STRONGLY feel that Muslim suicide bombers are evil incarnate (not only are they commiting the worse sin in Christianity AFAIK (suicide), they are killing numerous innocents in the process). Saying that trying to voluntarily convert people is evil compared to this seems extremely hollow and hypocritical to me.
I just noticed that there are a few questions that have kept repeating themselves in this post and previous ones.So i thought i should attempt to answer a few of them being an Indian who works in the outsourcing industry in bombay.
;)
:-) Jokes apart, the whole outsourcing thing is more an internal issue of America than anything else.If you can convince the big American firms to stop Outsourcing theres nothing India or any other country in the world can do about it.They'd outsource blah-kistan if India got erased from the list. $$ is the key issue.
1. Most questions asked here are cultural differences and definitely do NOT belong to LinuxAsia!
2. Are those benefitting from these jobs in India consuming American goods?
Yes they are.Like elsewhere Coke and pepsi is part of the staple diet of most indians above the poverty line.(though i prefer beer).We wear a lot of Nike/Reebok/Levis,even though they are all made in China or thailand etc.Theres a Mcdonalds in most major cities.
3. How does it work with the time difference between the US and India?
We work at nights instead of day.My day typically starts at 1am and ends at 11am.That way we are working during americen working hours.
4. Microsoft Vs Linux
Don't you know everyone the world over hates Microsoft? or you're supposed to?!? In terms of other OS'es Linux is much more popular than any other non-MS OS ie Mac OS,BSD,Solaris etc.
5. Why India?
Why not?
6. Americans in India.
Yes, its a whole LOT easier for an american to get a job in India than it is for an Indian in USA.If its a small firm they won' even look at your passport as long as you can get the work done.Btw we have no minimum wage system,at least not that i know of.
Geeks here n geeks everywhere are the same, we thrive on beer,Quake,010101's and slashdot.Over n out.
Lord of the Binges.
I think that your timeline is off. The first wave of outsourcing is well past for the leading companies and early adopters. And this common wisdom that offshore developers could not possibly provide a quality product is just absurd.
I have first hand experience with offshore development. That was 5 years ago and the teams I used in India were very capable. They developed components for our main project. Not everything went smoothly, but alot of that was because we had to invent the management style neccessary to make it work. We did protect our IP, we did accomodate for the cultural differences (differences across pacific and atlantic oceans). We didn't save money, but we did break even and that was quite a success for our first attempts at a globally distributed development organization. The most difficult issue was, as you mentioned, xenophobia. The biggest problems were caused by onshore developers who were not superstars within the organization yet felt entitled simply because they had a master's degree.
You may not recall that in the sixties most people in the U.S. laughed at the Japaneese and their crappy little "rice burners". Well within 20 years the Japaneese were delivering products that completely blew away the unmitigated crap manufactured by the union labor shops of Detriot. Anyone who thinks that India isn't on the same arc towards mastery of IT is going to get blindsided. Programming is a commodity job already - it has been for at least 8 years. Design will follow as the sophistication of the offshore developers grows.
Sure there are many obscure failures that may not show up explicitly in the prospectus. But there are 10 times more obscure successes. If offshoring was a total failure, jobs would not be leaving. OK, so call centers may be a poor choice to send offshore. But that is the why I believe that we are well into the second wave of outsourcing. The more conservative companies are trying things and everyone else is learning from their failures and successes. Offshore development may not bbe perfect, but it is mainstream.
disclaimer: my opinion. i am sure other indians will have a different view.
Do you have a comparable quality of life to those in the US and UK
yes
Does it bother you at all that you may be taking a job from a person in another country because you are working for what that other country considers a 'lesser' wage, but you consider a very good wage?
Yes. but i console myself by saying it is just the effect of globalization. one day it evens out. if u want us to drink your coke, wear nike, buy your weapons, you may as well have to "bear our support" when you call our 24 hr call center.
Do you have any worries that this boom in outsourcing from the rest of the world may abruptly end, much like the dot.com boom ended, and if it does, what will you do then?
i personally do not worry. i will search for different carrer(teaching/farming etc).
How much training and knowledge of programming do you have
i am a developer with 3 yrs experience. i hold bachelors degree in mechanical engineering. most techworkers are BE graduates. some managers are MBAs. all call center workers are educated.
At worst with the Evangelical Christians is they'll nag you to death trying to get you to convert.
No, some of the missionary work is based on extortion. They only help you if you become a Christian. Other examples are refusing to help people in the face of a terrible threat, by not distributing condoms in Africa and speaking out against them. This is especially evil when they lie about condoms (that they help to spread AIDS for instance).
So you tell me which is more evil: Believing that others are going to hell and doing nothing to stop them; or believing that others are going to hell unless you do something to help them and actively doing something about it.
Strongly believing something without any proof does not excuse unethical behaviour.
There's a world of difference between the Kami Kaze suicide fighters of WW2 who gave their lives against military targets and ones who simply bomb anyone who is opposed to their beliefs (whether they be women, children or even bystanders who even share the beliefs of the bomber).
...suicide bombers clearly don't value life as much as others and even seem eager to blow themselves up.
That is highly debatable. When you have little chance of hurting your opponent and surviving it, you might as well choose a suicide attack. When even that doesn't work against the military, why not attack the civilian population? It makes perfect sense if you are desperately struggling against an oppressor. Japan simply never had that option since they could never target the US mainland (or at least not later in the war). We do know that Japan had extremely little respect for human lives at that time, they killed millions of forced laborers by working them to death*. I don't think they would have had any moral hesitations about killing US civilians.
*http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/SOD.CHAP3.HTM
Did any of those Kami Kaze pilots look forward to their own demise?
They did what they were told (for the most part). You mustn't forget that Japanese people do not tend to be individualists. Honor and the well-being of the group to whome they belong is very important. Schoolkids learn about the samurai who avenged their master's death and then committed (honorable) suicide. Furthermore, suicide is quite common in Japan. In the US, people are much more likely to strike at other when they feel at the end of their rope (Columbine & many other shootings by disgruntled people), in Japan people kill themselves in similar situations.
This also relates directly to your next point:
This is more of a cultural issue. The US Rangers have got the motto "leave no man behind". This means that they will risk their lives to get everyone, even dead bodies, back home. You can make the point that this also means that those soldiers don't value life. Why else would they risk the group for one individual, even worse, one who cannot be saved.
Do you understand that this is totally foreign to people from a culture in which the collective is very important?
As for history, it is commonly held that the Muslim religion is still in its "dark age" period while it is concurrently recognized that Christianity has long since emerged from its dark ages.
The allies attacked 'almost completely random civilian targets' when they believed that air raids on military targets were unsuccessful. Is that enlightened? And how civilized was the use of the atomic bomb to attack two cities filled with civilians? Then I haven't started yet on crimes committed by the nazi's.
It's hard to argue that Christians are any more civilized from a military perspective.
Your last paragraph refers to my original question of whether it would be better to believe that others are going to hell and doing nothing about it or having that same belief and doing something about it. Just because a person doesn't tell you that you're going to burn in hell doesn't mean they don't believe it. How on earth is that nicer than trying to save you?
I'm afraid that people will try to save me/civilization/the world/whatever by hurting other people. It has happened so many times in the past that beliefs and ideologies have led people to commit the most horrendous crimes. I'd rather have those people appreciate that others might differ in opinion and do not want to be forcibly 'saved' (or sacrificed).
Behaving unethically based on your belief/ideology is very dangerous. One can easily slide into extremism this way.
-- The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
It's primarily a problem of confidence and protection. With the U.S. protecting the Philippines (both economically and militarily), U.S. companies (not to mention foreign intrests) would take a much greater interest in the region.
Since the track is to make the Philippines into a state, the idea is to shift relationships and labor usage from unaffilated third-world countries into the Philippines. A larger workforce creates a larger economy and vastly increases the overall wealth and prosperity of the whole if done correctly. The amount of money that would be spent in the Philippines building infrastructure (mostly contracted out to U.S. firms) would more then compensate for the shift of cheap labor to the Philippines. But the economics is more complex than just that. The key is simbiosis and intention to merger. Doing the same thing with a foreign country without that intention would be devestating economically.
It is not necessary for politicians to think 20 years ahead. Today, U.S. politicians have very serious problems on their hands because of outsourcing of U.S. jobs (a trend that will grow larger) to third-world countries. if they could re-route that effort to the Philippines while laying claim to be doing it to help establish an economy for the 51st state somewhere down the road, it provides them with a political shield against the masses while simultaneously appeasing big business.
It certainly would be necessary to plan somewhat, but the think-tanks that build diplomatic agreements will do that regardless. The important point is that there are advantages TODAY, TOMORROW and in the distant future to going down this path.
They would not yet be part of the U.S. and it would not be discrimination. It would be a gradual increase in standard of living, synchronized to the upgrades to industry and infrastructure. As I mentioned before, the federal assistance would be staged in such a way that by the time they are ready to be a state, the required assistance would not be a burden. Never would we worsen their conditions, we would always be improving them. We just couldn't do it all at once because, as you correctly pointed out, it would be devestating economically for the U.S. to do that.
The U.S. : Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10% (1989)
Primarily Christian - yes, there are twice as many Protestant as Catholic. But in the U.S., this is not an issue like it is in Brittain. We have even had a Catholic president (Kennedy).
You could even say this works to the advantage of the Philipp
The reason that it can be true that 1+1 > 2 is that very peculiar nonzero value of the + operator
I did not make myself clear. Despite massive investments into China and India, the very poor are not seeing the money trickle down to them, so all the attention from capitalists isn't benefiting the poor. This makes perfect sense, because capitalists are not terribly concerned about poverty.
If you look at Iraq as an example, you'll note that private companies are not rushing into Iraq to help build roads and bridges. They are contracted by the US government to build roads and bridges, using US taxpayer money.
This investment in infrastructure may eventually lead to real private investments, and may eventually lead to an improvement of overall living standards. For the most part, however, what we're seeing all over the world is a relatively small class of direct beneficiaries (i.e., the Indian software engineer), rather than improvements across the board. The process you are hoping for is neither cheap nor simple!
More importantly, we're talking about a significant up-front public investment before the country would be more interesting (than it is today) to private investments. That up-front money is almost certainly going to be tax money.
The U.S. : Protestant 56%, Roman Catholic 28%, Jewish 2%, other 4%, none 10% (1989) [...] But in the U.S., this is not an issue like it is in Brittain.
I think you are naive to discount the political resistance that a large homogenous infusion of additional voters will invite. The Christian Right may not mind a whole lot, but consider what a pro-choice organization would have to think. Remember, this is a country that bans divorce, so it's entirely likely that controversial issues will be decisively put to rest by this new voting bloc. I simply don't think you've considered the impact of a third more eligible voters to the political establishment, with the power to put an entire political party out of business for decades at least.
They no longer have our bases in operation there and they are most certainly not under our economic protection.
The Philippines is under essentially the same umbrella that other NATO countries are. It has no real external security concerns, and Americans are already helping the Philippines deal with a chronic Muslim insurgency.
Now, I'm not saying what you propose isn't possible. The US is a large and rich country, and is technically able to absorb a smaller poor country the way West Germany absorbed East Germany. However, I am saying that this isn't viable, because of the size of the problems confronting the Philippines, and because there's no real US political will to push through with this. The Filipino elite, contrary to your suggestions, would not be losers in this proposition. Their land will not be taken away and given to the poor.
Finally, assuming your dream scenario does occur, and the Philippines is built up and the rest of the US takes advantage of its cheaper labor for a couple of decades. You will then face the same problem again: the cost of doing business in the Philippines will become comparable to elsewhere in the US. The jobs will be outsourced again. What country will you merge with then?
Furthermore, as with all major decisions, you also need to consider the cases when things don't go your way. What if you fail to raise the living standards in the Philippines? You now have 80 million more mouths to feed, with a government already in deficit spending and a social security system on the brink of collapse.