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The Full Outsourcing Discussion
GileadGreene writes "Thomas Friedman of the New York Times recently did an interesting Op-Ed piece about the "silver lining of overseas outsourcing": the growth that it generates in the US job market as Indian companies outsource work that US workers are better at. Apparently total exports from US companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002 as well. So maybe this outsourcing thing isn't so bad after all." Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s.
I don't get liberals- they tell us that we are supposed to care about third-world countries, and stop being greedy a--holes, but when it comes to discussions of outsourcing, all prior arguements are revered 180 degrees.
So what is it, gentlemen?
I sig, therefore I was.
When we reach the point that none of the jobs are in the USA because its cheaper over seas will that be good for the USA worker?
As a guy who is conservative on economics and a believer in free trade that is a difficult question for me to ask.
I am currently unable to answer it myself,
but willing to admit its a possibility we may not always end up on the winning side of free trade.
Evil Man
With blue and white collar jobs fleeting, what's left? Pin-stripe lapels? The money gained from exportation primarily helps out those at the top, and most people can't be at the top. So while that's great for people with far too much money anyway, where does that leave the majority of people who need money to survive?
Also note how the fellow mentions that people want a good brand when buying water: The people don't care about the bottle, just who bottles it.
A good book on branding BS and the marketting that goes with it is No Logo (Naomi Klein). A decent read.
Trolling is a art,
Oh really?
I'd wager that the person who submitted that article is probably about 25 years old, and not a student of history. Let me explain.
We were pushed out of the consumer electronics industry by the Japanese before the end of the 80's. 10's of thousands of white collar jobs were lost. Likewise, we were pushed out of textiles, steel, and many many other goods.
In the early 70's all the way up till now we've seen a steady decline of the auto industry, and the ONE THIRD of the country's economy that the auto industry directly or indirectly touches.
There are many other examples. Read your history and learn about it. Or you'll be certain to repeat it.
Good for Indian people: more jobs.
Good for companies: cheaper labor. According to some of my Indian friends, the rupee is undervalued, so it's (currently) a win-win situation for the Indian people and the companies.
>All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent.
Sure, that's good... until they outsource those jobs, too. What we should watch out for is that companies don't start a race towards the bottom, where everyone is fighting for scraps and the jobs go to the lowest bidder.
The European Union says it has started imposing trade sanctions against the
United States in retaliation for tax breaks given to US exporters.
full stories
I can bet they were talking bad about early car manufacturers. Adapt and overcome. Learn new skills. Go to work for those giant megacorps, or don't. Start one yourself. They all started small. But just talking bad about outsourcing is not going to stop it. I think it's a natural business response, companies are only here to make a profit, if you can help them make a profit, they will need you. It's neither good nor evil, it just is
But the information I have flatly contradicts your concerns.
Yup, I was quick to Submit, most people do have some form of investments however the people tending the funds are the ones that make the big investment decisions, not Joe Lunchbucket with 20 or 30K in mutual funds.
Trolling is a art,
It's going to those who are already rich. The past few years (er, decades?) has been a really good time to be a Rich American.
"Most of the shares are owned by individuals through: 1. pension funds, 2. 401k plans, 3. mutual funds."
Think about it. If the entire employment of the US is outsourced (other than politicians, lawyers, doctors, nurses, hair dressers, and food preparation workers), there isn't going to be much of a market for stocks among the peons. Not only that, but the lawyers will sue the doctors, the doctors will malpractice the lawyers, and the politicians will have no constituents, only a rebellion.
And don't bother accusing me of parroting "democrat liberal mantra bs lines" because it won't wash. I bucked the trend by backing Barry Goldwater in high school in 1964, and have always favored conservatives.
UNTIL NOW. Until this issue opened my eyes.
Face it, this isn't a liberal/conservative issue anyway. The US is staring at its onrushing demise just like the USSR was a few years ago. In both cases it will be due to corruption and selfishness.
In the USSR, the State owned industry, and corrupted its house to death.
In the US, industry owns the State, and is corrupting its house to death.
When you travel 180 degrees on a circle either to the Right or the Left, you end up in the same place.
Sure, let's all just pretend Free Trade Works No Matter What. Once upon time, people used to emphasize Communism Works No Matter What, and the results were excellent. Such is how idealogy works, except in America we don't look at "Free Trade" as an ideology because all its proponents have convinced of the wonderful brainwashing trick called TINA--"There Is No Alternative."
Capital is free to move, but laborers are not. If a corporation sees a market that has cheaper labor, it is free to move its capital into that market (read: country) and start up factories there, reaping the benefits. Meanwhile, if I, as a poor suffering laborer, want to move into another market, things are not quite so easy.
"Free Trade" is a misnomer. It's "Free" for corporations and concentrations of wealth to do what they want, while it's chains and shackles for the rest of us, the laborers. We're stuck exactly where we are, stuck with whatever hand the prevailing corporations of the day deal to us.
I want to remind everyone that the reason corporations exist is because at some point we granted corporate charters (that's We, The People, granted corporate charters) which could be revoked if the corporations did not serve our economic interests. During many years of judicial distortion, corporations gained rights of personhood, and, through further distortion, became not just people, but people who get the rights of being a person but do not have any of the responsibilities (if a corporation steals, it is not prosecuted as a person who steals, but as an entity with thieves within).
What a distortion it is to think that we, the people, want corporations whose leaders can enjoy the benefits of the US but not give anythink back the country that allowed it to exist. What do I mean by this? They don't give us taxes, because they base their corporation in the Caymans, or whatever. They don't give us jobs, because the outsource. But the upper crust of the corporation benefits from the American lifestyle, and the corporation itself benefits from the captive American market.
If this were a different day, any corporation that could be described in this way would not be allowed to exist. But nowadays, we have schmucks like Friedman telling us it's just the matter of course, that Free Trade will prevail. That people accept this as anything other than a heavy pile of bullshit blows my mind.
This is not about us American laborers being able to compete with those cheap Indians. It's about us not jumping headlong into a world where we allow corporations the rights to do whatever they want, include exploit our market and our laws, without serving the public's economic interest in the slightest.
I hope this becomes and STAYS a national issue. If we have politicians worth a damn, they'll understand that this may be the single most important issue in the coming years. We cannot be manipulated into buying into an idealogy that does serve us. And this is an idealogy, like any other.
I was listening to a debate on this issue on NPR recently (with keen interest, as you might imagine), and one of the economists in the discussion put the issue much better than I could have. Every text on international trade says that free trade works because differing factors of production (technology, labor, capital) create comparative advantages among nations. Each country focuses on exploiting its comparative advantage and trades to obtain goods and services it's at a comparative disadvantage for producing.
But the present situation violates the key condition for the mutual beneficience of free trade -- low mobility of factors of production. Capital and technology have been able to cross borders for decades, but only now, with increasing virtualization via ultra-high bandwidth communications, is labor able to "virtually" cross borders at will. Indian engineers striving to take my job away, from the point of the hiring corporation, might as well be in the U.S for the most part. (The obvious difference being that they can work for 1/10 my salary, in part because of the lax environmental, health, and other regulations there, and any form of social contract.) The same is true for any occupation which does not require a physical presence at the point of sale or production. To say, "This is just like when manufacturing jobs went overseas and the American worker will just have to bootstrap and retrain" is ridiculous. What kind of knowledge work can we retrain for that isn't just as likely to get shipped overseas? The pro-outsourcing ideologues are short on examples.
Clearly, we're experiencing a paradigm shift and will be forced to re-evaluate the dogmatic appraisals of free trade. In my opinion, the answer is to tax outsourcing companies in proportion to the difference between the costs of compliance with publicly beneficial regulations in the U.S, for example the aforementioned health, environmental, and social laws. India can afford to undercut U.S. labor because the majority of its populations lives "like animals", in the words of a family member of mine who's just been there.
I'm not afraid of competition, but I want a level playing field.
As a liberal who believes in free trade, I take offense at your remark. While there are "protectionist liberals" (eg Gephardt), there are plenty of "free trade liberals" (eg Clinton), and on the other side, there exist "protectionist conservatives" (eg Bush).
The ways in which I (as a free-trade liberal) might differ from a free-trade conservative is that I believe in more unemployment protection, lower taxes on the middle class, figuring out how to deal with the Cayman Island issue, and ensuring that environmental and worker protection occurs worldwide.
However, all of these issues are complex: there may be reasons to delay certain elements of free-trade to ensure that it is done properly (the same way that implementing capitalism in post-USSR Eastern Europe worked best when they waited for the appropriate institutions to be developed rather than just saying "free market! go!"). Read Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents, to see how a free-trade believing economist can see major problems with how free trade is being implemented...
-Marcus
Check Out This Modern World for some more commentary on this...
Part of the issue hinges on whether the US jobs of the companies mentioned are being affected.
One person has family who work in one of the US Carrier plants. That plant is closing and the work is being transferred to three other US based Carrier plants, and one in Mexico. The one that is closing is a Union plant. The other ones... aren't.
So, the company is doing its best to screw the US workers for as much as it can. Carrier also have (who'd have thought) non US plants. just because the brand name is American, it doesn't mean that any of the workers who made/packed that product are in the US.
Z.
-- Under/Overrated is meta-moderation, and therefore is Redundant.
Here's a way to make true free trade between India and the US: Sure, let the US outsource jobs to India, in return, US citizens can buy land in India, buy food, etc. Guess what? The things that make life in India affordable on a pittance of an American's salary will dissappear in about 2 months...as the prices of everything equalizes in India and all of a sudden, a programmer making 10K/yr can't even afford rent on a cardboard box anywhere near where he can get to work. Of course, what's the likelihood of the Indian gov truly opening their markets?
The article points nothing out about how the average worker is going to benefit.
I read Thomas Friedman but this little snipet has nothing to do about a Silver lining.
WOW an indian anmimation company outsources to the US for animators and writers to put a Hollywood finishing touch on an Indian Folk tale.
I think Thomas Friedman is spot on about Arab/Israeli issues but he is way off in the America outsourcing jobs issue.
Probably the solution is for American workers to move to India and teach the Indians that they need to unionize and create medical insurance, workers Comp and stock benefits.
What this really comes down to is that US companies are finding it harder to find Slave labor to create mega profits for themselves.
The US was built on Slave Labor.
The RailRoads, Textiles, the industrial revolution.
Hell they put Henry Ford on trial because he wanted to pay his workers $5.00 a day!!!
It is a bad thing. Outsourcing tech support even to US companys is bad...
Why? Because it's all about time... the outsourcer gets X amount of money if they answer Y amount of calls.
The more calls they answer, the more money they get.
What usually tends to happen in this type of situation is the execs at the outsource-500-support company come up and figure "Hey, fuck helping dell's customers, more calls = more money, let's make sure every call is under 7 minutes weather the problems fixed or not"
Therefore it's no longer important to hire qualified people. You can take any common person off of the streets in india and put them in the cubicle, doesn't matter, they don't care if she fixes the problem or not... as long as they get rid of the caller in under 7 minutes.
Some qualified people end up in the tech support dept, because they want to help people... but they end up getting fired because they have a few calls that took 20 minutes to fix the callers problem..
Both US and any other outsource tech support company's use this trick... i mean hey, it brings the money in, doesn't it?
So, I'm against outsourcing tech support, as, the outsourced company never does care about the people they're handling.
Excuse my grammar,
Just my two cents,
"This whole thread is a bit off-topic"
Wrong, it's within the scope of the topic because the originting comment ot the thread specifically said that 90% of the investments in those offshoring ventures are from the U.S.
"Mutual fund managers, for example, typically receive a percentage of the fund value every year"
Half Truth Alert ! What you neglect to mention is that they not only get paid for performance ( oh that their BMW payment was DIRECTLY tied to the fund's performance !), but also how many unknowing saps they get to BUY in to the fund ( loaded or not ), because better funded funds generally "appear" to be performing, to the "public" en masse.
Frankly, I think the whole "funds" business should be completely contingency based, with a cap on the said "peformance percentage" that the manager is remunerated. Taking 30% of a 5% increased ( I'm being conservative, of course )100 million fund is still a ridiculously high contingency fee ratio. Especially since you usually find that most managers aren't in fact managers of just any given single fund.
That's awfully cynical. The US is not nearly corrupted enough where taxes go immediately into the politicians' pockets. Most of it does come back to the public, through social security, medicare, and national defense. Not to mention all the pork-barrel projects each politician does for its constituents.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
- The vast majority of job losses since the start of the decade are cyclical in nature, not structural
- Higher productivity is the only way to lower prices and increase wealth across the whole economy. Outsourcing helps companies to lower prices and improve the standard of living across the board. In any case, outsourcing's contribution to the overall jobless figures is overstated. Over 2 million jobs a month are in a state of flux in the US economy, with jobs being created as others disappear.
- Although IT jobs are currently undergoing what manufacturing went through in the 1990s, many more jobs will be created in the US as a result of the lower costs associated with outsourcing IT work. The jobs created at home will be higher paid too.
I think of this in the same way as the metaphor of the digger. Two men are walking past a building site where a house is being constructed and see a man working with a mechanical digger. One says to the other, "If it weren't for that machine you could have ten men out with shovels doing that work." The other says, "If it weren't for your shovels, you could have a hundred men out there with teaspoons doing it." What would be the point? All that would result would be the house being too expensive for anyone to buy.Bottom line: If you make stuff cheaper, society as a whole benefits. Yes there are painful individual cases where people lose their jobs, but because the house is so much cheaper, they don't have to work huge hours to buy a house when they do get a new job.
One final point of my own. I'm a bit worried by the rising tide of protectionism in the US. It was protectionism and xenophobia that ultimately set up the economic conditions for two world wars.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
No, they're not. At least not with a good job. They're at your mercy. You or they may not realize it yet, but soon they will. And as an American, the idea that THAT is something we shouldn't fight is anathema, ludicrous and ignorant.
The reason Indian labor is so cheap and yet still able to do such highly skilled work is that your government and economy have made education extremely inexpensive by comparison to other countries. That's great for you, but it doesn't mean that we Americans should fail to use the same tactics to compete with you in turn.
It makes me sick to think that people in other countries are being handed great educations when millions of people in American cities are starving and being ignored - they're a wasted national asset that instead of benefiting my country are dragging it down. And it's certainly not their fault - it's the fault of our short-sighted, temporarily well-employed citizenship.
I have no objection to your people competing. But I object strongly to the idea that we can't compete using the same methods.
There is no reason that we should not be organizing and training OUR impoverished citizens. I would feel a LOT better about losing my job to someone living down the street than to someone living on the other side of the planet.
The family down the street is much more likely to give me a roof over my head temporarily if I need it. They're more likely to give me temporary work mowing the lawn of their new house, selling them a menial service that makes the difference between living and starving. They're more likely to help me because they're in my sphere of existance - to you, I don't exist.
This is competition. This is what America was built on. But our present reaction - "It's good for us because we get the service more cheaply" - is just the cry of consumers who want to justify FAILING TO COMPETE.
If you are an american company outsourcing to India, you are doing something horrible, investing in a short-term solution to a long-term problem.
Our cost of living in America is very high because our expectations of "living in America" are unrealisticly high. We're spoiled. We don't want to accept that we need to live on less, that we need to compete, and that competition means becoming both leaner and meaner.
Once more: AMERICA MUST COMPETE. Outsourcing is NOT competing. The idea that the jobs being outsourced are those no one wants is absolute idiocy. There are people here *starving*. There are people here who would *love* an education. There are people here who would be very thankful to take the menial jobs our lying president claims should go to illegal immigrants too.
We must compete. We must organize ourselves to do that. We CAN compete. I look forward to the first American company that learns from the Indians and Chinese and organizes domestic labor cheaply - I just hope it doesn't take much longer to show up.
The company I work for is in the process of outsourcing a substantial part of its workforce to India. Since the transition to India started, the company has conducted a series of information sharing sessions with its employees, during which they have been releasing and revising their justifications for outsourcing. Here is the latest (paraphrased):
Have any other companies tried using this Baby Boomer excuse? In a sense, I suppose it gives some hope to those who have been laid off (just live off of your *savings* until 2010 when there will be more work than you could handle), but I doubt it.
...neglected to mention is that we have a $8 BILLION TRADE DEFICIT with India. Now, how could (or why would) the talented Mr. Friedman make such a mistake?!
t ml
Reference:
http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0402/26/ldt.00.h
Actually, I believe that Germany just passed the U.S., mostly because of the massive devalation the of the Dollar relative to the Euro.
So it looks stellar! Let's think about that. The difference between $4.1 billion and $2.5 billion is $1.6 billion. In 1990 our trade deficit with India was about $700 million. In 2004, our trade deficit ballooned to $8,066 million. (That's $8.1 billion, folks!)
Plug those numbers into your trusty calculator free-trade advocate, and you will find that our exports are up a whopping 64 percent. However, our trade deficit has shot up 1,152 percent. And, what you say, you didn't think percentages could go above 100?!?
So, maybe this experience with India is anomalous. Lets take a look at China, the other major player in outsourcing. In 1990 our exports to China were $4.8 billion, while our trade deficit was a measly $10 billion. After years of outsourcing, by 2004, our exports have shot up to $28.4 billion. However, the trade deficit has enlarged to $124 billion. These respective percentages are 591 percent for exports, but 1240 percent for the trade deficit.
The truly bad part about all this, as has been pointed out earlier, is that our "exports" really may not be anything but paper goods. Apparently, these exports largely are value that American companies derive from selling products to India and China, whether the products are actually made in the U.S. or not!
Does any of this mean that outsourcing works? I think clearly not. The countries that have gotten all the American jobs are clearly benefitting in gross disproportion to the benefits we receive from sending them all our jobs.
This is not a strategy for success free-trade advocate, but it is a stellar strategy for FAILURE!
Transnational corporations will destroy their own markets. Perhaps this seems apocalyptic but allow me to clarify.
There is the historical "fordist" model of development. No when Ford started out - very few people could afford to purchase his products - so he paid a very good wage to his employees which granted them sufficient buying power to purchase his product. The spinoff benefits from this increase in buying power spread through the economy and the buying power of many increased. (This is of course over simplified)
Many people believe that:
"Ultimately, free trade works out well; I think one of the issues is that white collar jobs are just beginning to feel the pinch, and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s."
The real problem is this. Transnational corporations (this term is interchangable with multinational corporations but it is a more effective term in that it accurately demonstrates that such corporations exist among many nations and also supersede the boundaries and perhaps legal jurisdiction of nation states) are moving jobs out of the country to areas where workers have the necessary skills but not the same level of income requirements as workers within developed nations. Therefore Company X may move its software development efforts to India. Great, these people are now receiving a wage they might not otherwise have had - BUT they do not have the same purchasing power as the now fired employee in the developed nation had.
This is key. Transnational corporations WILL NOT lower their prices because their costs of production are lower - simply because their costs of production are lower (such a move would be dictated by external competition or another initiative) so the prices of these products remain relatively constant. But the buying power of the United States, Canada, and Europe etc. is decreased. They will be producing a product at a price their traditional markets cannot afford - and they won't pay their new markets enough to improve their buying power to the point where they can consume the produced goods.
This is how transnational corporations are slowly destroying their own market. A revisitation of the Fordist perspective or an understanding of the importance of the strength of key domestic markets would be helpful.
Susan Strange has written two books that would be an excellent primer regarding many of these issues and other issues surrounding globalization and financial capital. Mad Money - and Casino Capitalism are very much worth the read.
Sorry to disappont you but what you are saying is current Conservative drizzle. When someone retires they need the money now and for a few years. If we look at the Stock market crash in the 30' and more recently the crash in the .com market and the more recent blick due to Enron, World Com and the World trade center, you can see that in the short term the market, not just individual stocks can be strongly effected. Lets look at the recent Mutual Funds problems. A safe haven for your stock, you would think so until some idiot starts wanting to be richer.
So CEO robery can effect the entire market and for a long time. The privatization typically gives peoplc choices to play the stock lottery with their retirements. How informed is you great Aunt at making choices. Who in the market can make good long term choices. There are none.
You probably know what an S&P index fund is. Most people don't. Should they have to understand that there are some times you should shift your money to bond funds out of stock funds. If you do that wrong you loose both ways. If its your retirement money to live on, you have no way of recooping that loss. Lets just send everyone to Los Vegas for retirement and if they loose Soylent Green.
Smart consumers and smart bosses never by on cost alone; what they buy on is value, which is benefit divided by cost. American workers may cost more, but they're also very productive compared to many countries.
...Extreme Programming...
Too bad the vast majority of bosses and consumers are complete idiots.
If you're worried about your job being outsourced, put your energies into making sure you're giving your boss the best value he can get, and make sure he knows it. Continuing professional education is one good way, and I'm sure people here can suggest others.
I've seen countless workers work themselves to death only to lose their jobs. Sadly, whether or not a job is cut has more to do with how much that person makes and where they are politically in the company. When a boss is told he has to lay off 5 of his 10 people, who will he choose? I say, right or wrong, that boss will keep the people he likes. So much for value.
Don't get me started.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
10% of chinese export is bought by Walmart.
The average american family saves $1400 a year buying foreign goods. Since the avg family makes 30k/year, the silver lining is purchasing power.
I remember these numbers from some woman from some US agency being interviewed by a chinese news station.. Sorry, no links.
The law is a weapon of the government, not a protection for the likes of you. Surely you understand that.
--> http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/india_pr
"and are acting like manufacturers did in the 1970s and 1980s"
Yes, and we all know how well that worked out for the manufacturing workers in the US. What a stupid comment by Hemos.
Of course, this is to be expected from Slashdot staff, whose parent corporation VALINUX produces software to assist in the offshoring of jobs. Don't believe me? Check out their press releases or my journal for more info.
The revised 10 "hottest jobs" list has recently been published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The top seven: waiters & waitresses, retail clerks, janitors, hospital orderlies, etc.
You get the picture?
That's the future - thanks to "free trade" - which the offshoring of American jobs (and now over one-third of the US economy) has given us - although taking American labor out of the picture in favor of cheaper foreign labor has nothing to do with "free trade" whatsoever - AND THAT'S THE POSITIVE NEWS!
Social Security DID NOT FAIL.
On paper, it is flush. This is because back in '78 or so, we passed a major Social Security tax hike, with the express purpose of funding the payouts for Baby Boomers retiring post 2010.
In 1985, with eyes wide shut, the Social Security trust fund was completely wiped out. How? It was "borrowed". The fund is full of IOU's, due whenever. The money was grabbed with the sole reason of masking the humongous national deficit created by the supply sider's tax cuts.
The fund did not "fail". The same neocons that passed the tax cut made up the idiot idea that Social Security was "failing" to cover their own deception, and to create a meme that the more gullible would swallow. They knew it wasn't "failing" -- they were stealing it to get yummy tax breaks. And they had a Randian hatred of public programs, SS in particular, so they not only got gobs of cash, they also killed their hated liberal program, AND got to blame the program for a liberal "failure". A momumental game of chicanery that most Americans have swallowed.
Now, the national debt, that seven TRILLION dollars, is comprised somewhat of the IOU's owed the Social Security trust fund. IF the money was paid back, Social Security would not "fail". And as a sidenote, if the money had been left in the fund to gather interest, rather than being stolen by "borrowing" to finance giveaways to the wealthy, it would have generated large amounts of interest on investment over the last 23 years. Enough interest to have lowered Social Security taxes today.
And, one more thing: the Social Security program is still taking in more than it needs, even today. BUT THE MONEY IS BEING "BORROWED" AGAIN, for the same reason as in '85 -- to hide deficit spending.
To recap: Social Security was a success. Neocon ideologues hated it. They wanted tax cuts in '81. They hid the fiscal disaster of the tax cuts somewhat by robbing the trust fund. They blamed the trust fund for being a "failure" for having no money after they themselves robbed it. We have a stack of IOU's 7 trillion dollars high. And they are back in power, and are robbing what dreggs are left in the fund -- and Greenspan, that consistent Randian, proclaimed that we should cut SS because of the budget shortfalls.
Circular blame-the-victim garbage that will impoverish tens of millions of elderly people someday.
Let's keep this real. The program worked, was well funded, and was sucked dry by greedy rich people who didn't want to pay taxes. We need to pay the IOU's off, and restore the fund. That means RAISING TAXES. Go ahead, cry.
Perhapes you should move to Denver, CO area. Vacantcy rates are so high that the rents are actually going down, with many apartments often giving away 2 months rent free with 1 year lease.
As for the the credit card issue, people are still buying because they like to live above their means and have self control. I used to be like that but I figured out that I really can wait to pay cash for the things I want.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
It's not that hard to research and find out of a bank is FDIC insured or not. In fact you can do it online in about 30 seconds if you so desire. It returns some rather interesting information about the institution too. FCUA has a similar tool on their website for credit unions too.
I'll grant you I haven't done all this much research before choosing my bank. If they have a brick and morter location with an FDIC sign that's enough for me. I don't bank online because I like to keep my business local. Likewise I don't bank with the national-chains that have offices here (HSBC, Bank of America, etc) -- I bank with my locally owned bank. If I was going to bank online you can bet your ass that I would take the time to actually research it. All the moreso since "research" in this day and age consists of a few mouse-clicks and about 15 minutes of my time.
Anyone who sends a deposit off to a Paypal address deserves what they get. I don't think there are all that many stupid people out there -- though I'll grant you there are probably enough of them to make these scams worthwhile.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
And if every programming degree left, you might be right. But they're not. In fact, I would wager that those left *permanantly* unemployed in their field because of outsourcing are NOT the people spending $30,000 for education. It's more like the ITT crowd.
Part of the problem with programmers (in fact, a lot of the problem) was overhiring in the 90's followed by dot bomb. Without all the people who majored in CS then, we'd have no problem now.
In fact, I'd say that a small fraction of 4-year-college-level jobs will leave anytime soon. I'm hearing a lot of chicken little and little evidence.
I'm personally disturbed by the outsourcing trend currently occuring since I am an employee in the US IT field. However, I have to respond to the whining that I see going on with regards to this subject.
It seems naive when an employee is upset that someone else won't take responsibility for maintaining their standard of living.
It's been a very very long time since businesses felt responsible for the financial security of their workers. Legally, companies are only required to pay their employees the minimum wage for work delivered. Anything outside of this has been offered strictly because companies want to acquire and retain those workers that provide better services than the norm.
People that work for a living are deluding themselves into thinking that they are more secure than if they started their own business. If you really want to beat downsizing, outsourcing and whatever the next big business buzzword is, stop working 80 hour weeks for someone that has no interest in your financial future and spend that time building your own software package, service or product.
I know that's what I'll be doing.
>I've read many many /. posts complaining about being put out of work because their company outsourced to XYZ country. How can you say this is a bad thing at all?
When you are laid off they stop sending paychecks. That tends to be a bad thing.
I am just as qualified ( probably more so ) than an Indian when you tally up the cultural and communication skills with the technical skills, but that doesn't matter. I'll lose out because the Indian is cheaper. If a company can send the work out then they will. Mostly because the costs are lower. Just because India can do the job for less does not mean they do it better. The cost of living in India is much lower than in the States. If an Indian wants to compete in America with me, fine. If he/she wants to work for less and still deal with America's cost of living, then at least the playing field is level. I'd rather give my job up to an Indian-American who calls himself an American than see the job leave the country. I understand how the economics of this topic work. That doesn't mean I will lose my job with a smile on my face. There will come a time when the number of jobs being outsourced will approach a flat line. But until such time I am worried about having to switch careers.
I want to know when the free trade benefits will come back to the US. Who will be sending jobs to our country? I don't see that happening until it becomes cheaper to send jobs to America from another country. That means either they become "richer" or we become "poorer." Until the Global market is truly global, the US will always be the exporter of the jobs and the lowly US employee will have to be the one carrying the weight.
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This is how you wind up with major corporations supplying rugs and apparel produced in sweat shops by children.
I saw a new show one time (48 hours or something like that) that went to a Nike "sweatshop" in a 3rd world country. The people working there weren't paid very much, but it was more than they could get anywhere else in the area. The program went back later after protests here forced Nike to close the plant and found that most of the people who did work there were back on the street starving or in prostitution. I agree that places of work should have minimum standards, but thinking that people who work there should get paid similar wages to the US doesn't make any sense.
Look what happened to the Levis clothing company. Jacob Davis first approached Levi Strauss back in 1872 with a new way of making stronger pants. Levi had the capital and decided to go into business with Jacob after they file the patent for making the pants. So the company made a fortune and let's fast forward to today. I believe that Levis has shutdown their last clothing manufacturing plant in the United States last year. All their clothing is being 'outsourced' to non-American factories. It's disgusting seeing a company like Levis sellout like that. Now they get to have their clothing made dirt cheap and they expect us to buy their stuff? No way.
Why is it that outsourcing is only thought of in terms of India?
If indians do such a crappy job, why are all the biggest firms outsourcing their businesses there, maybe to lose a few million dollars for the heck of it?
Im not defending India or outsourcing here but there must be something worthwhile that all companies are outsourcing to developing countries.Maybe India IS better than most other countries in this field.
We again come down to what America wans or the way the economy of he world works.Businness goes the way its most profitable.If outsourcing is profitable , companies WILL outsource irrespective of anything.Companies sponsor politicians so theres no way its going anywhere.
Lord of the Binges.