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Offshoring Trends Net Biotech Firms
Makarand writes "According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BioTech, once considered to be
the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring, is
showing
signs of riding an
offshoring wave of its own. Foreign governments with a national
priority to attract biotech businesses with highly trained research workers and new
research centers are the new forces to reckon with in preventing the
exodus of biotech
jobs. Drug developers are looking at ways to cut costs of drug development as Americans and their employers are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs. The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring."
Is anyone else not surprised at all?
Businesses outsource, even tech ones, even biotech ones now.
Shocking.
Oh, and f1r57 p057!
But do they ever stop to think that these people may be the best suited to the job?
The point is they do the work for cheaper than most would, and you'll find the majority do it just as well as a local. I guess we wouldn't have this problem though if our culture wasn't so based around the evil that is money.
Nobody cares if your drugs kills a couple Chinese people, but here in the U.S. you get sued.
"Much work is lost, for the lack of a little more." -Edward H. Harriman
Well, there have been alot of accusations of that sort of thing, and i wouldn't be surprised.
Frankly, i think people ought to always just ask if theres a generic version, and force the doc to give them alternatives.
yup. It's all about the dollars. It's about as ethical as bull fighting using a nun as the red cape.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't outsourcing a shining example of capitalism working exactly as it should? People always get so bent out of shape about it, but fundamentally it's rewarding the people/countries who are willing and able to do the same work for less. If you look at the unequal distribution of wealth as a problem (which I do), then the good news is that poor countries will get richer, as will the uber-rich that now have to pay their workforce less. The bad news is for the middle class. American left-wingers would do well to remember that the people receiving out-sourced jobs probably need them more than Americans. And American right-wingers would do well to remember that unless they're very rich, they're likely getting shafted.
This story just highlights that fact. Americans, do something about your government; it is no longer working for you.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Sometimes there are subtle differences between the label and generic drug(s) that can justify the label drug.
One particular case is thyroid hormone replacement therapy, where it is generally accepted practice to not switch product, whether it be generic->label (synthroid) or label->generic. Doing so requires recalibrating your thyroid hormone levels...
Many times, patients want the label drug...
Doctors tend to leave the decision of what drug to actually fulfill the prescription with to the pharmacist...
Some health insurance plans have acceptable formularies that only include generics where possible or policies that pharmacists must provide generic instead of label, where possible.
I, for one, welcome our new bio-engineered East Indian overlords.
This has always happened. Any industry will have cheap bits that can be outsourced. It would be a negative for the US to try to hang on to the cheap bits. Tht doesn't mean more well paid high tech jobs for US citizens - it means more low paid production line jobe which will be filled, if at all, by immigrants.
Be elitist. The US can do R&D like no other. Yes, other coutries will try, and set up science parks which look just as pretty as US science parks. But it is not pretty science parks that make inventions, it is grade A researchers in an environment which stimulates innovation. Which crucuilly includes, in the US more than anywhere else, the freedom to be wrong.
Of course, yesterdays leading edge is todays mainstream. And therefore that which only the US could do yesterday, others can do today - and will, for less money. If you stop a US company outsourcing he things that can be done cheaply overseas, you will actually have a negative effect: a wholly overseas compay will outcompete them and put them nout of business.
But the US has a 100 year record of finding new things to do. In the old things, all the overseas contries are competing with each other: in the new, the US has the field to itself
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
I see one of the big reasons for offshoring as the current medical system. The ridiculous costs of attempting healthcare for workers is one of the costs of employing people.
Offshoring doesn't carry that burden. Health care should be 100% unrelated to employer packages
Ironic
RST
Explain to me why drug costs are cheaper in Canada if they get their drugs from the same sources as Americans. Why do American pharmaceutical firms need to send their development offshore?
The lower costs of clinical trials and the ease with which human subjects can be recruited for drug tests in other countries are making biotech jobs susceptible to offshoring.
Does anybody else finds this... well... horrible and sinister? So, just because consumers want a modicum of security -- and security means more expenses -- big pharma is outsourcing human testing?
As in, testing potentially dangerous new products on poor (non caucasian, perhaps?) people is sooooo much cheaper in [insert favourite country here]?
So, on one hand these big companies are making tons of dough off their rich consumers. Then, they refuse to sell certain drugs *cough cough* AIDS *cough cough* in poor countries (no enough profits to be made in Africa, mate!). Then, they put pressure on third-world countries (Brazil, India, etc) who decide to copy these products anyway.
Then , they simply outsource human testing, because "we big corporations have a God-given right to make even more profit ". Even if it means less security and more unemployed.
Is this sick or what?
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Drug developers are looking at ways to cut costs of drug development as Americans and their employers are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs.
Countries like Brazil have taken to producing drugs like tri-therapy drugs for AIDS without paying the license, to make them affordable for their population, as a matter of national emergency. Others, like India, have made an entire industry out of producing generic drugs.
These medicines are cheap, yes, but the cost is offset onto the newer meds, those that are still produced exclusively, or under license, that aren't in the public domain yet. That's why, when countries hurt the bottom line of pharmaceutical companies, said companies jack up the price of the top line.
Combine that with the cost of doing any sort of medical-related business in the US, due mainly to insurance costs, due in turn to ligitation-happy Americans, and you know why certain silly little pills can cost hundreds of dollars.
I'm not saying pharmaceutical labs aren't also part of their own problem (it's in great part their very greediness that made the generic knockoffs industry the huge success it is in the first place), but with their margins reduced all the time, it's not wonder they try to cut cost and practice off-shoring. And time has shown that it's not their sense of morals that will compel them to hire local workers...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Depends on the type of work and how much IP is generated. Outsourcing in general is not popular in a field which is basically IP generation. This might be the reason why Biotech companies are feeling the squeeze, quite a few companies are doing their work in-house.
another issue is that the true cutting edge (like some of the omics) is not developed enough to allow outsourcing on a product basis. It cannot be 'sold' as results and is only offered as research.
"According to this article in the San Francisco Chronicle, BioTech, once considered to be the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring
I know this is sometimes hard for Americans to understand, but the US is not the only nation with advanced research and development. And just because the US likes to think of biotech and computers as "American" technologies industries, they have always been, and continue to be, international efforts.
Note, also, that European and Asian companies have been "off-shoring" to the US for decades: a lot of their R&D, marketing, and financial services have been located in the US.
Foreign governments with a national priority to attract biotech businesses with highly trained research workers and new research centers are the new forces to reckon with in preventing the exodus of biotech jobs.
After decades during which the US has siphoned off the best and brightest from all around the globe ("brain drain"), with high-paying jobs and a good standard of living, it is only natural that other nations are finally trying to do something about it. The real question is why this hasn't happened earlier. Maybe nations like Britain will finally pay their researchers a decent salary, and maybe nations like Japan will finally pay respect to their researchers.
Of course, the implications for the US are not so good: US R&D is based on highly-skilled immigrants. If that flow stops, it may temporarily create a little more demand for US workers, but it will primarily make the US overall far less competitive.
Compared to the rest of the world. In the global market it's that simple.
China and India have very well educated, very intelligent engineers, scientists, developers and they can do as good a job, cheaper.
We keep hearing the argument, "When all the jobs have been offshored, who will buy the products?". Well, duh. The Chinese and Indians will. This means BTW that they are going to be large markets.
We're going to have to start competing on price and that basically means devaluation of the currency.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
I've long been disappointed that biotech is so damn conservative about trying to just go for it and take some chances. We're all dying after all. It's like the absurdity of cancer therapies that can't be tried on terminally patients because they might have side effects. Jesus Christ on a crutch, that's like some kind of absurd joke.
Indeed, I'm testing the waters of bionformatics myself lately so I can stop compaining and do something about it. But that's another story.
What caught my eye was the thing about being able to use stem cells. The whole stem cell story is so amazing and yet it seems that there's this amazing potential and nobody wants to try anything amazing with it. The attitude is like, yes this is amazing but we can't use it in amazing ways because it's experimental and we don't know what might happen.
If I had a research budget and I was in this competition, my idea would be to create embryonic stem cells of my mouse and just inject them into the thing like it was a pin cushion. Damn the torpedos.
So what's the worse things that's going to happen? A dead lab rat? What if the thing stays young forever? Let's pick up the pace people!
Of course another industry wants to offshore... Corporations are not out to make make a good product, or even make customers happy, they exist to promote the wealth of it's stockholders, and nothing promotes wealth like cutting production costs... The key to curbing the trend of offshoring rests in innovation by us for us, if your pissed you got laid off so someone in India can have your job for a fraction of the costs, make your own company and employ others like you and prove you can do better. The key to good business is a matter of survival, do what you need to to survive, fair doesn't exist in business, if you don't like the rules change them, but don't get pissed because someone is doing that so they can survive... IMHO I agree it's unfortunate that offshoring is becoming a trend, but lets stop whining and do something about it....
Offshoring:
This is a highly charged political issue now. So who is behind this issue on the side of the middle-class worker?
Who are the politicians who are against this get-richer-quicker crap that corporate america is selling us out with?
I worked for a bank for a few years (in a country far away, where they have numbered accounts and you're actually looking at jail time for revealing customer data) and something like this was just unheard of.
The absolute main security issue was customer data. Not that they would have fancied embezzlement or theft but this was looked upon far less serious then compromising customer data, period.
In the data centers (which you had to physically access in order to query real customer data, safe for the front office and also there it was very restricted what you could look at) you had to go through multiple layers of security and where not permitted to even remove a printout.
Computers where dismanteled and disks shredded, they where never for resale. This was applicable for every last computer from every last branch and office
Now, I agree shit happens. Probably in their case it started with outsourcing such a critical tasks to "ACMEs chep disk blanking operation" in order to save a few bucks. This is not really excusable, but it happens.
But what really gets my blood boiling are statements like the one from that PR bimbo, which are just utter bullshit.
Maybe she should apply for a job at Microsoft to sell "trustworthy computing".
The U.S. Medical System is designed to sell drugs. End of story. It doesn't matter if they're 'generic' or 'label', it is the pharmaceutical companies and their lobbyists who provide the cancerous policies that have cripped American Health for the last 50 years.
...
The people 'in power' are not working in anyones best interest. The American masses still have yet to prove they are capable of doing something about that, however, which is why you get Eli Lilly setting American healthcare policy
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
It's called capitalism. It works. Get used to it. If offshoring makes sense, companies will do it. If it does not make sense, they will not do it. That's how it works. Engineers don't know anything about finance. That's why most successful companies don't have engineers talking about finance. I'm just posting this pre-emptively before a bunch of engineers start talking about the finances of offshoring. And, yes I'm an engineer too.
But you're already paying for it, in the form of higher premiums, because the one person who hurts themselves constantly means the company needs to put out more money for them, which comes from your payments as well as everyone elses. Its not as though they only use the money you paid when you hurt yourself. Thats the way health care works.
Or do you just pay cash for whenever you need medical assistance?
At least if the health care is state run, everyone gets an equal piece(in theory, at least).
Does Islam still allow you to have 4 wives? If so, they may need some after all...
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Interesting discussion: http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html
How does the US prescription system work? Are doctors prescribing branded drugs over cheaper, generic drugs in order to receive funding from drug companies?
Actually, it's more the case that doctors, faced with a bewildering choice of new drugs to keep up with every single year, end up prescribing the drug that they're most familiar with. This ends up usually being the drug that they're given the most free samples of.
As far as HMOs are concerned, they have a list of drugs and their generic equivalents, and if you use the brand name, you'd better have a damn good reason for doing so.
The only people getting funding from drug companies are researchers, and clinical test sites. For regular folks (ie, doctors, interns, etc.) they get a lot of swag and free drug samples (as well as seminars, etc.), but they're not supposed to get cash.
Frankly, high drug costs (at the counter, not high development costs) leading to offshoring is a red herring. The trend toward offshoring has to do more with escaping regulatory hurdles which prevent certain types of research (stem cells, anyone?), the lousy payoff in domestic drug research, and the rise of very competitive research and testing labs overseas.
Check an interesting discussion on offshoring. Read the the comments after the article and the first comment. Things are not as cheap as they made out to be. There is no space between 'o' and 'u.' http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html
i guess the question it spawns is how much longer the west, and principally the US, can continue to maintain such a differential in standard of living vis-a-vis places like india. all other things being equal, and in the absence of no new earth-shatttering productivity gains, i don't think it will be long.
...vividly encapsulates that post-Watergate/pre-punk/coked-up moment when you could trust no one, least of all yourself.
the really sinister bit, is where you touched upon the test subjects being 'non-caucasian'. I'm no medical expert, but I was given to understand that medicines and drugs work differently on genetically different people.
For example - a drug which works fine on caucasians may cause many unpleasant side-effects when oriental people use it.
If you only test a drug on, say, Indian subjects, how can you determine that it won't cause nasty things like vomitting, rashes, dizziness, diarrhea, plagues of locusts, etc, etc?
Or does this pale in comparison to the expected profits?
"Hi, Doc, I seem to have lost the use of the left hand side of my face and body"
"Oh, yeah sorry about that. We're still tweaking the pills for the US market, at least the migraines have stopped, eh?"
But for those who haven't, here is a thought-provoking article on some of the basic issues posed by outsourcing. The article focuses on IT offshoring, but it may be a useful appetizer for /.ers delving into the biotech offshoring discussion.
Way to go.
that once Lawyers jobs start getting outsourced, we will see changes in government priorities.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But considering I work for a startup pharmaceutical company, I feel I gotta say something. Lots of people here seem to think that the HIGH costs of drugs are related to pure profit. Working as a techie in the field myself, I'm really surprised people don't know that the high costs has more to do with spending $10-20 MILLION dollars to get a drug through the FDA then it does with trying to make a profit on it.
It's no wonder people go overseas...drugs are a LOT easier to produce there..
And yes, $10 million is usually the minimum amount of money needed to get APPROVAL to get a single drug into the marketplace in the US. Anyone else knows of a better way to sell a product that costs $10 million + production costs to produce BEFORE they see a profit?
Honestly, you have better luck with a Krispy Kreme donut.....
Yes it is. Therefore free market capitalism sucks.
Given that some of the best minds are overseas, isn't it a tad arrogant to view it all as 'outsourcing'? In some cases, the US is probably buying overseas expertise, which is not available in the US? Consequently, the US is benefiting and learning from India (and others), not the other way around.
But then a company making business elsewhere based on the US should not be allowed to bring capital gains back to the country of origin.
Or are you the kind of person that wants to have his cake and eat it, resell it, outsource it, etc...?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Have u ever heard of MODERATION, you fuckhead. Set it to 5, and then u won't be getting the junk. You must be a linux user: "I'm too smart to RTFM or WTFM"
The problem for the Empire was that it gradually outsourced everything to the provinces - the grain supply (Egypt), mining, other agriculture. Like the US it imported the most able provincials and gave them citizenship to encourage them to support the system. But eventually the focus of power moved to the provinces, Rome itself became decadent (who needed to earn a proper living?) Even most of the army was recruited abroad. And the Empire collapsed. The remains of the Empire that survived - in Byzantium - was a statist civilisation in which capitalism was rigorously controlled, based around many small artisans and companies of very limited size, in which the Government interfered in production, distribution and exchange. Sound like anywhere?
Endless outsourcing may be capitalism, but what happens on the day when R&D is carried out abroad, manufacturing is all done abroad, the Internet, cheap broadcasting and cheaper film making has destroyed the US dominance in media, the US army is too small to control even a small dissident country (look at the problems posed by Iraq...we could kill everybody, but imagine the backlash), the rest of the world sees that the Emperor has no clothes, and the dollar collapses?
Live off intellectual property? Can you imagine the rest of the world agreeing to observe US patents which frequently would not get through the assessment stage in European countries?
At that point the super-rich will be sitting on piles of worthless dollars, and farming may look like the smart option again.
OK, it probably won't be that bad. But too much policy at the moment seems to be predicated on the idea that the US can control the rest of the world financially or militarily, and the example of Rome shows that unrestricted capitalism is likely to destroy the very factors that make that possible.
Panurge has posted for the last time. Thanks for the positive moderations.
In a move most considered inconceivable, McDonalds announced today that it would begin development of an offshore alternative for its employee base. "The move was really a 'no-brainer'," exclaimed Terence Haynes, head of offshoring development for the multibillion dollar corporation. "We simply had to consider offshoring in order to generate the returns our stockholders demand."
Haynes went on to describe the how offshoring would be used to save the company it's estimated millions per year. "A customer would simply walk up to a kiosk and where there was once an employee there to take your order you will now have a phone. Customers can simply pick up the phone, call the 1-800 number and place their order through one of our specially trained offshored employees." The order will then be processed through our new computer ordering system where it will be forwarded to one of several McDonald's franchises in the area for processing. Customers will then be notified where to go to pick up their order. "The process may inconvenience customers at first", admits Haynes, "but once they realize how wonderful the new technology is, they'll begin to come around."
The offshoring initiative for McDonalds is not without its critics. One customer, using the new system had this complaint. "I wanted a cheeseburger, fries and a Coke. That's it. Nothing else. But it turns out that these Indian folks have this thing about beef so they don't accept orders for any burgers. The person explained that if I wanted a burger I had to call a completely different number in China or some such place. I said to heck with it and just ordered the Nuggets."
Slashdot quality declines as the number of hot grits posts decreases. - Provolt's Law, Apr-09-2005
...Let's add a dash of twisted socialism, and the small percentage of us lucky enough to be "first world" can live fat and happy!
Have the government force corporations to use all the extra profit (yes, it's profit) that they're generating from outsourcing to provide such unbelievable unemployment benefits, tax breaks and health care to the American public that it doesn't matter if we work at all.
Then we can really get on with the scenario...1-3% of the population sitting around getting fat while the rest of them do all the work. Just like the ancient Egyptians, like serfdom, like Renaissance Europe...oh, come on, that's where all this is going anyway.
To practice law, you have to be a member of the bar of the state in which you want to practice. To be a member of the bar, you have to pass the bar exam and graduate from an accredited law school. To graduate from an accredited law school, you have to have spent a minimum of two full years attending law school (with few, minor, and expensive exceptions). Attending a law school means being in residence, regularly attending classes. In other words, you can't take correspondence courses.
Bottom Line: To practice law in America, you must have an American legal education.
Doctors won't get money from the Pharma-boys, but you can organise a free medical conference in northern London, or you can do it on Crete. Alow for the wife to tag along... Interesting development is when the government allows / orders the pharmacist to replace 'label's by a generic equivalents.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
There are only 2 things we Americans can call "secure" industries: farming and bullshitting.
Farming doesn't need much explanation. But like George Carlin says, the USA will always be the world leader in manufacture and export of Bullshit. Be it Hollywood bullshit, musical bullshit, or Madison Avenue bullshit, we are the supreme overlords.
All other industries are merely waiting in line to be outsourced.
The USA is hemorrhaging its own wealth.
Slashdot: Liberal News for Nerds. Liberal Stuff that Matters.
A more fair tax system would help drive down the cost of doing business in the USA so that there would be less incentive to outsource overseas. I admit to not having run the numbers, but I wouldn't be surprised if that tax advantage worked out to more than the wage difference. In biotech, it would also help if government would stop playing its senseless morality games for votes (stem cells, cloning).
--A is A.
http://www.marxist.com/
I am fairly certain that India has WMD. We better go over there and "secure" them.
AC
No, the right question is: what jobs can't be offshored? And the answer is damned few of them -- only those that truly require a physical presence.
And guess what? Technology reduces the number of jobs that require a physical presence. You think the fact that offshoring is happening right now is an accident? No, it's because we now have the communications technology to make it practical.
So the only question left is what all the extra competition is going to do. I think it's going to destroy the global economy, as corporations take the extra profit and distribute it to those who already have the most money: executive staff, board members, and investors.
In short, I think this will destroy what little middle class the world has left, and put us squarely back in the middle ages when people were either insanely rich or dirt poor.
In fact, because offshoring forces entire economies to compete with each other with the price of labor, and thus the standard of living, being the only variable, I think we'll start to see some countries start to use prison labor to compete. That'll definitely take us back to the dark ages.
Use 'slashdot stuff' in the subject line in any email you send me if you want to get past the spam filter.
I'm surprised the article didn't touch on the fact that a significant amount of cutting-edge biotech research may move to Asia simply because of the fact that governments in Europe and the US choose to hobble their biotech industries with counter-productive regulations to please Greens and/or religious conservatives.
Newsweek International recently ran a cover story on the subject, entitled The God Effect
May not be true. Read the discussion from the second comment onwards at : http://gigaom.com/archives/2004/04/dark_side_of_ou tsourcing.html
You're the fuckhead if you still don't undestand what I'm talking. Fucking cowardly fucking fuckhead
...than just having cheap goods. while everyone likes things to be cheap (myself included) it is merely a shorterm benefit, while the long term perspective may be somewhat more grim.
consider this same topic as debated between thomas jefferson and alexander hamilton. hamilton was all about building our own industry and manufacturing; jefferson thought the current export of agriculture and import of everything else was just fine since, hey, everything is cheaper.
its a good thing for the USA however, that jefferson changed his tune. the british at the time had a great scam going: they would import raw materials from all of their colonies (and some non-colonies who were stupid enough to go along), and use those raw materials to produce goods, which went out for export at 100 times their cost.
it is thanks to hamilton arguing strongly against "outsourcing" that we have a manufacturing industry, transportation systems, technologies and universities...otherwise we would all still be dumb farmers.
just remember: for every pair of pants and shoes you buy at walmart for cheap (made in china), the proceeds go toward building another nuke that is being pointed at us. same goes for filling your car with gasoline.
Offshoring has been going on for ages; offshoring in the tech industry went on throughout the bubble. It's only now, when the industry is in a slump, that people have started complaining. Which, in my eyes, makes offshoring look very much like a scapegoat for the economic downturn. That, too, is nothing new: foreigners and foreign powers are almost invariably when the fit hits the economic shan.
Sure, from the safety of the upper class, and with most of your income being from investments, outsourcing looks great - all that cheap stuff available at Target, eh? But if you're 50, have two kids and a mortgage, and happen to, say, be an engineer for a telcom, hearing that your getting laid off "will be good for the American economy in the long run" isn't much solace.
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?
BioTech, once considered to be the next innovative sector to help offset the jobs losses from IT offshoring, is showing signs of riding an offshoring wave of its own
YOU'RE KIDDING!!
Why, that's UNBELIEVABLE!! Nobody EVER would have GUESSED!!
+1 obvious
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
This brings me back to my old question:
- Why are there no drugs that cure AIDS?
Sure, there's several different treatments to hold the advance of the disease - "take this the rest of your life or die" drugs - but no "take this a couple of times and you're cured" drugs.
From a purelly economical perspective, the gains to be had in selling a drug to someone for the rest of his/her life are much greater than the ones to be had from selling a drug for a limited period.
I cannot avoid thinking that in commercial laboratories, promising research paths to drugs that might cure AIDS have probably been put on hold for the sake of "survival" drugs.
For many years, US research and advanced technologies relied heavily on imports of foreign brain. Einstein, Von Brown (space missions), Sikorsky (helicopters) to name just a few. Sure, most Nobel prizes are won by Americans, but they are mostly managers of teams of developers, teams in which most of researchers are foriegners.
The only field in which Americans are the best and do not need foreign brain to survive is business.
So what is wrong in that American business discovered that is cheaper to pay the foreign researchers in their own countries like India, Eastern Europe or Russia instead to bring them in US and pay them on US level?
What is your problem as biotech or programmers or whatever if there are other peoples in the world, who are as skilled as you (or better) and available to work for less?
Take programming for example. Buggy programs were written all the time, before and during offshoring. Buggy programms is not a matter of offshoring, is a matter of management, HR, etc.
Wasn't US who promoted so heavily "free markets" and "democracy" into the world? Wasn't US who pushed for opening markets, dismiss trade barriers, free flows of capitals and supported the globalization? Don't tell me that US did that from altruism, US did that for a single reason: take the larger part of the pie. But like in any open market, small players might gain parts of it as well.
So I really don't see why this offshoring issue must be seen as something dramatic. Slashdot is read not only by Americans, but by many other peoples worldwide and many of them benefit from offshoring! They can build a decent life in their countries, they do not have to emigrate and be foreigners for all their life, they can be always near their parents and friends. Their countries can improve the general level of life and become larger, more attractive markets. Take the example of the former socialist countries that will become part of EU in two weeks. Or China. Or India. Why this cliche, that only in US the standard of life should be high and some developing countries should always developing and developing and developing?
So stop complaining about offshoring! There are only two things granted in life: death and paying taxes. For all the others each of us have to compete!
I'm sick of being called lazy for only working 50 to 60 hours per week. I'm sick of being called stupid because I'm not Indian, Chinese or Russian. I'm sick of being called overpaid because I have have to survive to buy food, pay rent, pay off education, etc in a country whose cost of living is higher than in an Indian village. I'm sick of being called racist simply for wanting a job for myself and my friends in my own country. And I'm sick of the constant fear that I'll be layed-off while the high level managers levels of compensation keeps growing. I'm so sick of the fact that they leveredge this fear to make us work longer and longer hours. I'm so sick of it all.
The problem is the viciouse cycle that it is entering in.
SYSTEM FATAL ERROR - PEOPLE HAS NO MORE MONEY TO BUY OR JOBS
The US's traditional position on R&D is not as special as you might think - in the pharmaceutical industry, R&D competition from India is nothing new - think of Ranbaxy, Dr Reddy's Labs to name a few. Yanks probably haven't heard of them but they are happily producing generic copies of Western blockbuster drugs
...you just offered a counterexample to your own proposition. Copying US scientists isn't really a great example of R&D.
There are FDA regulations that apply to computer systems used at Biotechs. Will the FDA auditors trust the work done off shore? Are they willing to hire the QA staff that must go all with this? The QA people are regulatory enforcer types - not testers. Travel, language, etc is going to be a major issue as electronic submissions become the norm.
For many years, US research and advanced technologies relied heavily on imports of foreign brain. Einstein, Von Brown (space missions), Sikorsky (helicopters) to name just a few. Sure, most Nobel prizes are won by Americans, but they are mostly managers of teams of developers, teams in which most of researchers are foriegners.
The only field in which Americans are the best and do not need foreign brain to survive is business.
So what is wrong in that American business discovered that is cheaper to pay the foreign researchers in their own countries like India, Eastern Europe or Russia instead to bring them in US and pay them on US level?
What is your problem as biotech or programmers or whatever if there are other peoples in the world, who are as skilled as you (or better) and available to work for less?
Take programming for example. Buggy programs were written all the time, before and during offshoring. Buggy programms is not a matter of offshoring, is a matter of management, HR, etc.
Wasn't US who promoted so heavily "free markets" and "democracy" into the world? Wasn't US who pushed for opening markets, dismiss trade barriers, free flows of capitals and supported the globalization? Don't tell me that US did that from altruism, US did that for a single reason: take the larger part of the pie. But like in any open market, small players might gain parts of it as well.
So I really don't see why this offshoring issue must be seen as something dramatic. Slashdot is read not only by Americans, but by many other peoples worldwide and many of them benefit from offshoring! They can build a decent life in their countries, they do not have to emigrate and be foreigners for all their life, they can be always near their parents and friends. Their countries can improve the general level of life and become larger, more attractive markets. Take the example of the former socialist countries that will become part of EU in two weeks. Or China. Or India. Why this cliche, that only in US the standard of life should be high and some developing countries should always developing and developing and developing?
So stop complaining about offshoring! There are only two things granted in life: death and paying taxes. For all the others each of us have to compete!
Of course, the next trend will be moving those people's jobs overseas: Executive Offshoring. Yeah that site is (still) satire, but pointing it out to higher management might make them think again about offshoring ...
You say it's the uber rich who have to pay their workers less. But... Most multinational companies (the ones who can offshore) are publicly traded and the single largest investors in publicly traded companies, by far, are the pension funds.
So it's really your pension fund which is driving the offshoring. Or as I like to put it since men die of earlier, little grey haired old grannies.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
the posters who note that moving clinical trials offshore will not help (you still have to get thru fda, and they will have problems with third world data, at least for a couple of years) however, pharma and biotech do a lot of basic research I am a 45 year old PH.D., with training at MIT.. there is nothing I can do that could not be done by a young chinese scientist at 1/10 my salary. There are probably 10 - 30 thousand such jobs that could go over seas, and this will give them the money and infrastructure to start moving up the food chain to drug trials In a way it is kinda funny, all the middle/upper middle class professionals did nothing while the rust belt was decimated, now they are whining
In order to compete, there has to be a job here that you can compete with. I think we're confusing who or what is competing. It's not worker vs. worker, or company vs. company even. It seems to be just cost of living is the basis of competition.
You're one of those quaint little folks who believes the amount of wealth in the world is a fixed amount and that whoever has it has to protect what they've got or someone else will steal it right?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
The idea that all people are just as suited for testing drugs is very incorrect. For a drug trial to truly translate to an American population, it would have to be performed on a population with roughly the same ethnic mix and environment. It is not at all unusual for drugs and poisons to effect various populations differently.
An example of this is PCBs. The original tests on PCBs back in the 50s and 60s were performed on an Indian (as in from India) population. They found a fairly high risk of cancer and that is why we started working to reduce and eventually nearly eliminate PCB usage in America. Interestingly, later tests on other ethnic groups found that ethnic groups of European and African descendency demonstrated virtually no cancer response to PCBs. Indians were the worst with other Oriental groups showing decreased, but still present cancer responses. The cancer response amongst the Japanese was the least of the Oriental groups, though still present. This in no way says that we shouldn't have reduced our usage of PCBs since there are people of Oriental descendency in our society, but it does demonstrate that medical tests do not always translate even at a gross level from one group to another. If we had never tested PCBs on people of Oriental origin, we wouldn't have banned them.
In many ways, there is a more disconcerting flip side to this that has been largely ignored by the so-called "medical science" (I put that in quotes because they ignore so many factors, it is hard to say that they are a legitimate science). The flip side is that because we ignore ethnic origin and many "how they live their life" type factors of the people involved in tests and we don't work hard to identify the factors that cause failure in a drug for the typically small percentage that do have adverse effects with many otherwise beneficial drugs, we are very likely missing out on many drugs that might be very beneficial. Biology is not blind to these factors and we shouldn't be either if we truly want to call it or make it a science.
The genetic sciences are probably the answer. Eventually, we should see a process evolve of prescribing drugs according to genetic tests that determine precisely how a particular individual will respond. At that point in time, they can hide the ethnic factor by talking about the gene that interferes with the test instead of the ethnic groups that typically have that gene.
... unless you guys put a full stop to right wing teocratic politicians.
Lemme explain: where was the first human clonning achieved? US? UK? Germany? Nope, South Korea
In a recent survey by the BBC, South Korea was found to be one of the countries less concerned with religion.
In the meantime in the US there are people trying to ban steem cell research, granting legal rights to fetuses as human beings and doing all what they can to ban teaching evolutionary theory (cornerstone to work in any biological related discipline. Spare me the creationist bullshit, scientists use evolutionary theory as a matter of fact in fields as diverse as microbiology and genetically engineered crops.).
China and India just have to catch up to the level of sophistication of South Korean scientists and research instirutions, but if the US does not do anything to get rid of its ayatollahs from the political map, lack of action will have a direct effect in US people level of life.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
"...are starting to constantly worry about the high price of prescription drugs."
C'mon. Don't complain. That is the free market without government regulation.
I'd rather have education and health to be available, of good quality and affordable for everybody.
But hey money and ethics hardly ever go together.
Privacy is terrorism.
.... the cost of basic educations once that people work for US companies in the US.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
My friend Neal made the observation: wouldn't it be cheaper and just as effective to offshore the CEOs, leaving the jobs here?
"No prints can come from fingers / If machines become our hands." -- Jack Johnson
There really aren't too many jobs left that haven't to some degree been offshored. Even the "consumer" position is well on its way with many companies trying hard to penetrate what will soon be the ultimate consumer market, China. They are up to 70 million low middle-class type consumers already and are projected to pass the US in consumption around 15 years from now.
Essentially, I think we've lost the game. It is time to figure out why we lost and see if we can't rebuild. Personally, I believe it is because we commoditized education. By turning our education system into a mass production system aimed mostly toward rote learning of technical skills and largely suppressing the thinking and critical problem solving side of education, we created something that isn't special and is easy to copy. Just send your people over and have at least some of them come back with the knowledge and the textbooks and in a few decades, you can steal almost everything we have. In essence, we have destroyed the diversity and concentrated the methods used within the system. Thus, what was a wonderfully diverse thing that couldn't be copied, became a defined system that can.
My answer will never happen without some major upheaval. I would want the system to be transformed back to one that focuses on the individual and targets the studies towards expanding that individual's potential in whatever fashion is appropriate to their inate capabilities and desires in life. Instead of imposing a template of what each and every person should learn and become, encourage and develop individuality not in social beliefs, but in knowledge and skills. Build craftsmen, not robots.
....rate of gambling addiction.
China.
They are legendary for the above....
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I would think that if the unemployment rates increase in the United States, that the amount of people willing to subject themselves to clinical trials in exchange for $ would consequently increase (reducing the compensation for such trials). Leading to the return of the Biotech industries anyways, if not for entirely the same purpose.
:-)
So see, nothing to worry about here people! We'll all be test subjects soon
...in bed
I've read several posts across several threads on slashdot on this topic defending outsourcing.
Many of the posters are self assured to the point of smuggness, arrogance, and condescension.
I haven't seen any facts from them or other people who support offshoring.
Anyone who has had a decent education knows that what academia knows is not always as solid as academia would like everyone to think.
Add to that Economics is not a hard science and that there is disagreement among economists as to the value of outsourcing.
Where are the jobs?
How will outsourcing create jobs for Americans?
Will enough jobs be created for Americans?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs come before a large number of people experience economic ruin?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs be quality jobs that people can support famlies on and enjoy doing?
Will the assumed forthcoming jobs stimulate students to study subjects that will keep America competitive?
How....will outsourcing generate these jobs?
So far I haven't even seen attempts at these answers from anyone. At the most you some smugness with a statement that pretty much boils down to
"Don't, worry it will work out".
Most people would not accept that answer from a mechanic when they hear loud clanking noises from their car without a detailed explanation.
Yet, many people are willing to accept that answer for their careers and the future of their country.
I don't get a sense that these people are stupid.
Maybe the whole thing stresses people out so much they just assume what rich people tell us and what other people parrot is the truth to free themselves from having to worry about it.
Maybe it is just the high school football rivalarly mentality of party loyalty in American politics that leads to people parroting all of this stuff without finding answers to those questions.
Where's the beef?
If you are not working through no fault of your own you should consider whether or not the president should be working after this January.
Steve
I am not American and generally I agree with the statement that a lot of the complaining about outsourcing is rather hypocritical and self-serving. However I sense a bad confluence of circumstances in America.
1. Outsourcing. Technological know-how, knowledge and IP going overseas. Even worse, even new "emerging" fields that would traditionally create new jobs seem to be getting into the outsourcing game early.
2. New harsher security measures are making US firms, universities and labs much less attractive to foreign researchers. This is quite a big topic in major science journals like Science. Right now enough research money is in the US that it can still attract talent, but people are believing that the balance is tipping (esp. if the US government makes things even harsher, which is fairly likely).
3. IP laws strangling innovation in the US. This is a pretty contentious assertion. But the US patent system is very obviously broken. The worse case scenario are large companies using their defensive patent portfolios to stop smaller companies enter their field (is that already happening?) But already the legal burdern amongst small companies are quite high.
4. Microsoft. Once again a very contentious assertion. But as a recent slashdot article put it, a lot of investment money is growing wary of software business because of the "Netscape effect" ie. if you are successful in carving out a new niche, if MS wants in too (and given their "We want to own everything" nature there is a good chance that they will), you are in big trouble. None of the law suits have done anything to check the MS juggernaut.
5. This should be up above - but from lectures from scientists from countries like China, it seems that a lot of countries, esp. in Asia are taking a huge interest in research. The Chinese scientist (who was the head of some university or committee) was boasting about all the incentives they offer to Chinese scientists to stay in China to work instead of going overseas. Emerging countries like China *really* want their scientists to stay exactly where they are, and are willing to pay to keep them there (as opposed to in the Cultural Revolution where they used to arrest them and send them to work in the fields). Combined with harsh security measures to get into the US and an increasing number of US companies outsourcing research to places like China anyway (ie. research money is going increasingly out of the US), why bother going to the US? Asian countries also want to start producing "world-class" journals (in English) to challenge the dominant US and British ones.
All in all, it seems that innovation in technical fields in America is seeming to be either outsourced out of existence, not allowed in because of overly harsh security (or not wanting to go at all after experiencing said harsh security), litigated out of existence or stiffled by huge economic oligarchs. Also foreign governments like China seem to take much more personal interest in futhering science in their countries, than the US government. To them the very future and prosperity of their country depends on it (not to mention national pride) and so they really put a lot of personal effort, time and money into encouraging research.
India also doesn't have a medical cabal, which decides who and who can't be a doctor. It's just like any other job (you have to be competent, but that's it). So, for example, instead of paying $20,000 for an operation, your can have it done for an order of magnitude less.
If, like doctors, the number of US programmers was artificially restricted, many of us would be making $300,000 a year!
That's one of the reasons health care is so damn fucking expensive in the US. That and the patent thing.
The bio-tech firms don't want to have the FedGov looking over their shoulder. Third-World = fewer restriction and cheaper bribes.
Starting a business takes time and money. Lots of time and money. If you don't have either (because, say, you got laid off and have to spend time looking for a new job -- possibly in another new field that will require lots of time retraining yourself), then your chances of success are so low that you might as well not even try.
Besides, not everyone has the kind of personality to run a successful business anyway. Ideally you want to be a super-extroverted type A personality. Essentially the opposite of the typical computer nerd.
Did anyone else misread this as "National leaders priority to attract foreign campaign contributions"?
Ah. Guess I'm a cynic. The US used to pay off individuals to sabotage their own governments... now that the wealth is being siphoned off from the US, I guess I shoudln't be surprised to hear this administration oversee the same done to us.
It's not really treason, if you say you did it for global capitalism (and not admit that destroying the middle class is the shortest path to engorged corporate profits)
"Don't think, it's too hard for you." That's basically what you're saying...
With all the concern about bio-terrorism, shouldn't the government be a little concerned about offshoring biotech? They'll be increasing the capability of foreigners in that area. Granted, security through obscurity is not really secure. But in these situations, access to information is different than having full blown (cheap) capability.
US agriculture consumes vast amounts of petroleum directly for tractors/transport and indirectly as fertilizer feedstock. Without petroleum yields would plummet. The imports import 60% of its petroleum needs currently, jumping to 95% by 2020.
Well, according to Y2K financials compiled in:
Off the Charts: Pay, Profits and Spending by Drug Companies [Act Up]
net income for the industry ran an average of ~20%, which is a great profit margin for any manufactured product.
Marketing, advertising, administration costs ran between 15% to 39% of expenses.
Research and development ran an average of ~15%.
Chart which illustrates this. [Act Up]
The profit breakdown has been extensively reported elsewhere, as this is derived from SEC filings, and the margins continue to this day, this is just the first source I goggled. NOVA on PBS had a great documentary on this issue last month which had similar stats.
The pharma industry enjoys record profits, pays its corporate officers extravagantly well, and charges the American public more for the same products than any other market in the world.
At the same time, we allow the pharma companies to deduct the expenses of R&D costs, clinical trials, marketing, et al, and give them patent protection so that they enjoy a protected revenue stream for many many years.
This industry then takes its profits and buys congress, ensuring that the government does not use its buying power (MediCare) to negotiate better pricing, and pass legislation which keeps americans, states and health providers from purchasing the very same drugs from Canada (Bush's recent drug bill).
Drug bill a well-financed victory for industry [USA Today]
For many, they have no choice: buy drugs or die. I do not believe the patent system was intended as a means to extort money from vulnerable citizens. In my opinion it's high time that our government bullies the pharma industry to arrange its affairs, so that pharmaceuticals are again priced fairly.
They can start by restricting advertising for pharma products just like they have done for cigarettes and alcohol. That should shave 20% right there.
For all the apologists out there who will claim "it's capitalism; they have no responsibility except to their shareholders", let me remind you that the government grants corporate charters and allows businesses to exist to benefit the public good, not just to extort money from the sick and vulnerable.
"You have liberated me from thought."
Nice to see all those zillions of dollars spent on mind-games by the Bush and Israeli governments haven't gone to waste.
Damned Hobbits. Burn down their own shire if they're told to. .
-FL
but do they have Fry's or Trader Joe's in these places? Plus I don't think I'd be allowed to bring most of my "stuff" along without paying import duty on it.
How many televison ads do you see promoting perscription only drugs..... Yeah, its the gov't regulation.
Would you take a drug that hadn't been approved by the FDA ?
-->Your wonderful country is ][ this close to bankcrupcy, my friend
One senses an almost gleeful tone in your message. If you think for a moment beyond your reflexive anti-Americanism you would realize how utterly misplaced that glee is.
The failing of relatively small economies can cause major dislocations - think Thailand in the late '90s and the subsequent "Asian contagion". If Thailand, whose GNP is no larger than a rounding error for the US GNP, can cause such problems you don't even want to imagine what a US bankruptcy would do to the world. Let's just simplify it and say that no one will be left standing and world-wide human suffering would be incalculable.
Leave the gun, take the cannolis.
It is very difficult for a US citizen to get permission to work in India.
"It makes zero sense, it's having immediate negative impact, and the government I voted for is all in favor. What the hell. . ?"
And so, rather than worry that there is a psychopath in charge of the ship, all the little conservatives scamper to find logic in the mess, straighten their ties, wipe away their sweat, and walk out the front door to make a good presentation to the world. These are the same dorks who got gold stars and smelly stickers on their school tests. That their teachers are imbeciles is too dark a fear to face.
Please.
The world has ALWAYS had different levels of labor cost and living standard. The world has had trade vessels capable of advantaging from this reality for the last century. But only recently has the upper management in America decided that the ship is going down, and so is scrabbling to snatch up as much quick profit as possible before she does. --And even that might be too generous. It could be just blind selfishness for no reason at all.
During the car production wars between Japan and the U.S., there were these things call "Trade Negotiations, and Tariffs". --Essentially, "We'll let you export to us ten million walkmans if you buy our iron ore. Doesn't matter, so long as the balance of trade is maintained."
The politicians you voted for worked hard to make sure that trade barriers existed, that "Buy American" was a promoted saying. And why did they do this? I'll tell you why. .
Because if we follow the current crop of popular idiotic Darwinian Economics arguments, then yes, the strong will rise to the top. But guess what? The 'Strong' are measured by population size, not just smarts. The Chinese and the workers of India have both massive numerical advantage AND smarts. --AND most of them live in poverty where nobody has refrigerators.
Hmm. . . Massive wealth on the one side. .
Picture a fish tank with a piece of glass dividing two halves. One half is full to the top with poverty, misery and mud huts. The other side has only an inch or so lapping at the bottom. Think of the piece of glass as the trade barrier. Now think of conservative idealogues pulling up the glass while shaking their heads, "Well, that's just how it is. Darwinian Economics, you know. Completely Unmanaged Market Forces are a GOOD thing!"
Market Forces = Market Power.
And as we all know, with great Power there comes ZERO responsibility! Right? I mean, why control power? Why not just let it explode everywhere? Why would anybody do anything so stupid as install things like fire bricks. Or pipes.
Directing power is Evil!
Ahhh. The conservative mind set.
What these assholes and/or twits, don't tell you is that the guys pulling up the glass are making a gazillion personal dollars from the resulting chaos. They'll be okay. You won't. They're doing two things; they're trying to rationalize their own brand of "Cut Throat Competition", (they're getting rich by screwing YOUR life, after all), and they're trying to trick all the mid-level idealogue conservatives into following yet another one of those world-shaping, doomed to fail in fifty years social experiments.
Here's the hard truth behind this trade policy; Unless you OWN the company which is doing the outsourcing and are making a million dollar salary, you are toast.
-FL
In the old days, cheap (slave) labor was brought
to where the jobs were. A few exceptions to this
day in the Middle East (Saudi Arabia) and Sudan
still exist. In this modern era of quick and
easy capital flight across borders and oceans,
it is cheaper to move the jobs to where the
cheap (nearly slave) labor exists.
If uniform environmental standards and reasonable
working conditions were a prerequisite for the
migration of jobs, and enforced through the
various government's restrictions on the flight
of capital, this trend would not be prevalent
(and accelerating). Unfortunately, many
western democracies have forsaken their citizens
in favor of the multinational special interest
groups.
These same multinational corporations will come
begging (hat in hand) to the government when
geopolitical conditions change, and they cannot
move their invested capital (or earnings) back
out of the lower priced markets. The PRC (for
example) has severe restrictions on the removal
of capital from their markets -- once the money
is invested there, it stays there. The investing
multinational corporations are dependent upon
(1) growth of the new market, and (2) tax
benefits in their country of origin. If either
requirement does not hold true, then they will
have failed in their huge gamble.
Want to guess who will pick up the tab for their
miscalculations?
...but I wasn't a factory worker and I had a Libertarian outlook, so I said, "Fine, they were overpaid anyway!"
Then they sent the IT jobs overseas, but I wasn't an IT worker, so I said, "No problem, my job is safe."
Now they're sending my BioTech job over to India and nobody's left to complain.
You are going to a law school.
They know how to make money on nothing; Oh, profits are not good enough? Well, we will just extend the # of students.
For every $10 an hour job you replace with a $0.10 an hour job, you destroy $9.90 worth of demand. This is OK if the person previously earning $10 an hour is able to re-employ because if he gets another job for $10 an hour then overall world product has risen by the amount of the outsourced job, $0.10, and this is a net gain for everyone. If the person retrains and re-employs at a higher wage, then America benefits as well for the small price of retraining. The problem starts when re-employment occurs at a lower wage and the shit really hits the fan when no re-employment occurs.
In the past, when low skill jobs were being outsourced and Americans retrained, this actually worked in their favor because for the cost of retraining, world product rose as low skilled employment went abroad but low skilled employment in the US was replaced by higher skilled employment for the one time cost of retraining. This is pretty simplified but can under other conditions generate economic growth on both sides.
The problem now is that jobs of all skill and educational levels can be outsourced. This means that a factory worker earning $20 an hour can be replaced for $0.50 an hour and any potential job that this person could have retrained to can also be replaced for a lower cost job overseas. This is not a growth engine. It is simple job substitution. Companies profit as long as the price difference between US jobs and overseas jobs allows for a greater profit margin, but profits return to normal once outsourcing has been tapped and prices have been deflated. At that point however American consumer purchasing power has collapsed and world demand for all those outsourced products has been decimated since populations in nations participating in outsourcing don't earn anywhere near what American consumers who are now jobless earned. There's no force that could adjust this back to normal because no company is going to be willing to be the first to start hiring Americans back to get demand started again. This can only happen after Americans have suffered enough hardship to legislate against such practices.
In the meantime, the rich have gotten richer and the poor have gotten poorer (statistics mislead here because the average income doesn't need to change at all for this to happen because it is median income that does the shifting, but most people don't understand mean and median the difference between these two) and Americas infrastructure has taken a huge hit as federal and state tax revenues fall in line with wages, since US tax revenue is predominantly wage based. The huge trade deficits America has continued with outsourced nations will have tanked the dollar and energy costs will skyrocket. It will now be nearly impossible to bring industry back to the US and since military might follows economic might, US power will be marginalized across the globe. Somewhere along this journey, the dollar will be replaced by the Euro as the currency of choice for oil and the impotent American military will be powerless to stop it. America will suffer a major economic heart attack as dollar reserves are dumped by banks across the world to facilitate trading in Euros. It will then be left dealing with an Ultra-Great Depression without any means of financing its way out because of the huge national debt. This may very well lead to the collapse of the federal government resembling the Soviet downfall.
Politicus
the more advanced these other countries get, the more markets we'll have.
Correct me if I am wrong, but don't you mean "the more advanced these other countries get, the more markets they'll have?
Protectionism is a dangerous slippery slope, but that's no reason to SWITCH SIDES and root for the OTHER TEAM.
We can't ALL be faulted for not being adept at our THIRD career change in 20 years. We can't ALL be callous investors.
My theory is America is being lulled by its enemies -- without and within -- into transferring our jobs overseas. It's like some stranger one asking you to trust them holding your wallet.
Oh sure, we'll just patent everything and sit on our asses to make money. No, better yet, we'll become coast-to-coast headquarters for CEO's; surely when these un-American companies reap higher profits from overseas manufacturing, they wouldn't DARE relocate headqquarters to Bermuda?
Are you listening? Oh I get it, when the shit hits the fan you assholes will leave the country and take your parasitical wealth with you.
THIS, folks, is how America will die... not from any bombs or terrorism, but from Wall Street motherfuckers marginalizing the middle class. Welcome back to fiefdom.
a) AIDS is hard to cure because HIV mutates a lot. It's hard to target because there are so many variants. They've recently discovered that HIV+ people can even become infected with multiple different mutations of HIV.
b) HIV infects the immune system. It's incredibly difficult to target the HIV virus without destroying the immune system in the crossfire, and once you destroy the immune system the person is pretty much dead in the long term. In fact, that's what makes AIDS deadly--the immune system is destroyed, the body can't fight off the dozens of illnesses we're exposed to every day, and the victim has a long slow lingering death from multiple diseases.
The combination of the two problems makes AIDS particularly tough to fight. You need incredibly specific drugs to target a constantly mutating virus.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
I've been reading up on this outsourcing for awhile and I've come to the conclusion that it is really only a symptom of a greater problem. Our system has sabotaged itself. From what I have read, there are three reasons why we should not support off outsourcing and why it is a problem.
1. It is a market externality. Lou Dobbs had someone write about this. Basically, it is when a company can get all the benefit with only partial cost from a decision. Take a chemical company that drops waste into the local river. It causes cancer downstream. However, in a purely capatilistic market this is a good thing for the company. Why? Becuase they can get the drop in cost without having to pay for the treatment of the people downstream who get cancer. They get all the benefits of lowered costs without any of the bad side-effects of the decision. That is why we have legislation: to deal with such situations.
2. Education - The free marketers have made one invalid assumption. They assume that since these lower paying and less demanding jobs are going overseas, we'll be able to train for higher level ones. But one look at our schools compared to those of other countries and it becomes obvious that will not be the case. Our school system is horrid. How will it train these new knowledge workers with a education system like ours? It won't. It will go to countries that have better education systems. So we'll reduce the number of low paying jobs, thereby reducing the number of people who can afford to better educate their children, while investing in the education of people elsewhere. Smart move. Make everyone else's population smarter than yours and then expect good jobs to come here.
3. Monopolies, the buying out of america, etc - Under this stands healthcare and standard of living. We are paying far more than the services we pay for are worth. Now, we'll get a bunch of capitalist showing up and saying that: the market determines worth. Not anymore. What determines worth is how effeciently a company can abuse the market and its regulations to its own benefit. You have monopolies in health care. An intellectual policy that is completely out of control. Tax shelters and greed that corrupts. Our government is no longer owned by the people, it is owned by political parties that live off of us like parasites and are in the pockets of industry. The government has grown to a size that is ridiculous. The ancient romans payed about 7% taxes total. When you figure in indirect taxes, we pay about 50% taxes. We take out what are effectively loans to pay for tax cuts so that we can buy chinese imports - stimulating the chinese economy but not helping ours out much at all. We have gone from wanting to live well to wanting to live like gluttons. Corporate accountability has disappeared.
So biotech going overseas is really inevitable. We are losing our innovative advantage by the day. Our education gets worse. Our bueracray gets larger and more ineffective. We are being betrayed by our industry and our leaders. So let's continue to complain. It won't help. Our congressman who understand don't listen and those are few compared to those who simply don't understand what is going on. Biotech and every industry will continue to go elsewhere as long as there is somewhere where else where they can more easily take advantage of the system. Money has become a goal rather than a means. We no longer have any grasp of what personal security once was. We are apprehensive for good reason. Can anyone see how this leads to a better future? I can't. I can see how a few people will be a lot richer but I don't see how we'll be better off.
We need to think about what we want and how we'll get it. We can't afford to blindly trust captialism anymore. Especially when capitalism is full of ppl who will cheat every chance they get. We need to find out what we want and how to work for it rather than to mindlessly try to uphold the status quo cause all things must change.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
Perhaps now he can't send his kids to college.
You've just glossed over one of the key reasons that other countries have been successful at winning US jobs: affordable education.
Industries are not heridetary. If you "threaten" kids with $40,000 in college debt then a good many smart-but-poor kids will be dissuaded from it.
This ultimately leads to less competition for higher paying jobs -- which for the "less government" crowd that is "fine with them"...
How this same crowd of politically-active people can hurt their country so much, yet wrap themselves in the flag, is beyond comprehension.
You have to look at 5 Billion poor in china and realize that all the resources in the world cannot raise the standard of living by all that much - and so anyone who starts to suggest that a rising tide lifts all boats with respect to china has embarked on an endless mission.
If every chinese family drove two SUVs - the planet would sufficate in a continental traffic jam.
The problem is that the chinese have made a Darwinian bet that population size is the key to future success. In American we have made an opposite bet that education is more important than 16 kids. (you can't educate more than about 2 kids - if you do the math).
Our bet only works if we preserve the benefits of having fewer kids - which we give away if we allow china to provide labor at their overpopulated and thus undervalued rates. In that market - we are forced into playing their bet which is an overpopulation bet.
Good-bye world in which the super-power is also the most diverse nation in history - hello planetchina - which will have _most_ of the world workers, _most_ of the world income taxes, and _most_ of the world's wealth - on top of having most of the world's people.
We are entitled to the benefits of our policy decisions which are that fewer children, more education - higher standard of living.
Any other country that wants to throttle its population explosion and educate its 2.1 kids is entitled to the same (after the period of investment and subject to prior bad bets - such as is overpopulation.)
AIK
If you look at drug development cost (in US or overseas) - the cost is just 5 to 10 percent of all the cost. The rest is spend on marketing the drug. Yes, as much as 80 percent of all drug cost goes into stuff like advertising (TV, newspaper, trade magazine, sports, etc), free samples to doctors.
and people will take their research off shore. Just to make things easier and less controversial.
It's hard to clasify this as outsourcing, when the largest pharmaceutical company in the word has been based in India for years: Merck. (Not sure on today's metrics of "largest", as Pfizer blew up [Viagra!] and merged with GlaxoSmithKline to become the world's largest "research-based" pharm.co. for a time.) This story is just a scare tactic. Not every industry is central to the US.
-bZj
.sig
"Americans are work aholics; it's not tacky to ask an American what he/she does for a living, and in many cases even how much he/she makes. Americans define themselves by their work."
Reading "Nickel and Dimed: On (not) getting by in America." The author made a good point; part of getting a good wage is being able to negotiate. However companies try to discourage this. Everything from rules saying you shouldn't discuss your pay with anyone else, to fast track hiring processes that leave little time for the subject to be broached to job ads that are conspicious for what they don't mention. I recommend reading the "evaluation" chapter for greater details. Being "poor" has always been hard, but these times make it even harder.
Earners in the top 10% (>US$95K) hold 80% of the stock, the top 1% (>US$350K) hold 60%. Half of American households hold no stock.
So yes, it is just the chosen few.
Luke, help me take this mask off
Please read the following article in Foreign Affairs. I think it outlines most of the relevant economic issues and points out some interesting political ones. Most importantly - the current alarmism about offshoring is political FUD.
~smell my mule~We're talking clinical trials, not R&D. So long as we hold onto the development we'll be just fine. Besides the trials are incredibly spendy and slow, and that makes U.S. Drug costs so out of control. Lower development costs, and quicker release dates are going to help us and them. If biotech is more profitable, it WILL mean more jobs for all of us. P.S. I'm cool with India doing it, but NOT CHINA. China doesn't give hoot about intellecutal property and would just take your discoveries and then sell knockoffs and your R&D expense.
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I didn't count that as 'a full year of attendance at a law school', because somebody from India trying to get an offshore job could claim that they spent a year at an Indian university "studying the methods used by Indian lawyers to circumvent American immigration laws", and pass that off as a year of independant study.
Just like japanese kamikaze pilots during WW2, we have been socialized by the corporate to be good little cogs in the consumerist-corporatist-GNP machine that is the neoliberal nightmare.
eat shiat and bark at the moon
So your underlying thesis is that US tax policies make it too expensive for Americans to do any work????
We have policies that have basically sold out the American worker. This isn't a trade war. A war is when one team fights the other. Globalization represents a complete surrender.
Why American's want to "compete" against 3rd world nations on their merits is idiotic. Lower wages, lower standards of living, poor infrastructure, extremely high stratifications in income and power, no rights for labor, low levels of democracy, no minimum wage.
Shit, progress is expensive. I have my own little theory. High levels of democracy and equality and education produces enlightened, properous societies. The more out of balance we become, the more like the 3rd world become, the poorer we become as a nation. Basically, all the conditions that led to the great depression. A system of mega-rich individuals who control EVERYTHING and a serf class that must beg at their door for the right to work for food.
Nope sorry, high taxes on rich fuckers is what helped to bring us back from the brink. The war helped us pry open those fuckers wallets even more. 90% taxation rates on the wealthy created the "miracle" period of the 50s that conservatives are so fond of alluding to.
Indians and Chinese will never be as prosporous as the US until their systems create more equality and more democracy. Seriously, the Indian class system (outlawed but still in existence) would make a Jim Crowe Klansman blush. China has cast off any pretention to the helping the "proletariate". They have gone capitalist. Actually, China is really more of a facist nation now.
The wealth of America was produced almost 100% from the resources ingenuity, freedom and democracy of the United States. I'd agree that US companies have steam-rolled foreign nations at times. But those benefits only went to the super-rich, not the middle class.
I am not helped by cheaper goods if they produce lower wages. It does not help my neighbor and he is my customer. The super-rich are currently ringing the middle class as they did in the 20s. With each twist, they consume the wealth of those who previously though they were immune from such economic displacement.
Yes, Democrats have indeed lost their way. They gave in to the pressure of corporate monies that were funding their Republican opponents. In doing so, they lost their biggest tie to their constituencies. The disenfranchised who cannot afford the big campaign contributions that keep politicians in office.
The ultimate irony is that Americans REALLY hate outsourcing and globalization in the big way. Unfortunately, both parties have their hands in it. The opposition is bipartisan. If the Democrats would rally against WTO and NAFTA, they would win the 2004 elections in landslides.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
The reason health care has gotten expensive all of a sudden is that investments suck right now. Since an insurance company can guarantee (with lovely actuarial precision) how much money they make by setting rates, they do. Only competition keeps them in check, and that only badly.
The government, of course, won't be politically able to make money on float (notwithstanding that with negative income they would lose money on it :-).
To compensate, Americans seem to feel it's their patriotic duty to screw the government out of a few bucks, which is why the bureaucracy and regulations are so draconian. Unless that changes (which I don't see happening any time soon), government will always (have to) have worse service and more bureaucracy.
Only if they're stupid, and I don't believe thay are.
In the outsourcing of core business processes, the US corporate sector has in effect transferred it's knowledge of how to operate major corporations, how to provide customer service for US customers, how to build products and services for US customers and get them to America. And they paid for upgrading infrastructures to make these processes possible.
What's to stop Indian outsourcers from pulling the plug on their offshoring customers before these customers have cheaper replacements in place and going into business for themselves selling to the same US end users, only changing the mailbox to which checks need to be sent?
What else do they need? A US marketing company (localized expertise is needed in marketing) and there are many which will be happy to do the job.
Courts and contracts? Remember the comments about IP law and Indian drug companies copying US drugs with US corporations having no effective recourse? Indians have the "home turf" advantage against US corporations, the judges are likely as not to be related to the people running the companies US corporations will be suing, and while Indian politicians are just as likely to be 0wn3d as US politicians, their owners are likely to be exactly the people US corporations are demanding actions against.
IMHO, best case is that the Indian corporations are required to return copies of the IP to the US corporations. Hopefully, as tons of hard copy. This won't help much, as the US corporations won't have a labor force or machinery or equipment to do anything with it.
This makes the assumption that the US corporations are going to be in any position to sue. What happens to stock prices of any corporation the media announces "Unfriendly Indian Takeover" about? That company will be in Chapter 11 or Chapter 7 within days.
I see a large part of the Fortune 500 in effect, relocating to India, leaving US stockholders holding the bag in a transfer of wealth that will make the S&L debacle of the 90s look benign, because this transfer of wealth will be overseas.
Don't be concerned for the current generation of CEOs. They will have cashed out and if this turns the US to shit as a place to live, there are other countries. Perhaps they'll be able to repeat the cycle there.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Enriching the slavemaster does not enrich the slave. Enriching the slavemaster reinforces and supports the institution.
Nope, outsourcing is exploitation of two parties. Number one is the American worker who both loses his job and no longer helps his neighbor with his purchases. Plus, it exploits the foreign worker whos standard of living isn't really increased that much. All the profit goes to the outsourcers.
Economic development should be driven INTERNALLY rather than externally. Yep, it's the good old prime directive. We should engage in NATURAL trade. That is, trade for things we cannot get. And we should make sure workers are well compensated for our labor.
We should help those in the 3rd world develop DOMESTIC industries for DOMESTIC consumption. If no such domestic consumers are available, it's a sign that the country does not have sufficient political structures to allow for the creation of a middle class.
Once these nations evolve internally with a properous and numerous middle class, than we can engage in trade equally with them. The middle class in the 3rd world should drive development of industries in those nations. The rich must pay to develop these classes.
Otherwise, we only impoverish ourselves AND poor foreigners while enriching those in the upper classes in both worlds. Those of you who are still for world trade haven't lost your chair yet. Don't worry, your turn is coming. Even those turn coats who have become "outsourcing consultants" will eventually lose their seats by bigger providers and multi-nationals who no longer need their services.
The result of globablization, NAFTA, GATT, WTO is a system of world feudalism. A system of multi-national corporations who are above and beyond ANY jurisdiction. Democracy will be irrelevant because the multi-nationals will be capable of crushing ANY nation that opposes them by cutting off supplies of vital goods and services.
Our nation is slowly losing it's autonomy. We are losing our ability to sustain ourselves with manufacturing, especially in the military sector. All of the "smart" technologies are now manufactured near China. If we keep outsourcing are key technologies to these regions, we can expect that China may eventually be able to put the US under it's thumb.
Stop outsourcing, H-1B, L-Z1, NAFTA and WTO ASAP!!!!!!
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Boy your really funny aren't you.
You drank the communist kool-ade and believed it. Communism was NEVER about equality except in rhetoric. It's simply another system of aristocracy. It's sole merit is that it did away with the royal concept of bloodlines.
The idea that EVERYBODY in either system was equal is hogwash. Ask these questions to the poor peasents in Siberea and the grunt in the military. They might have different answers. Those with high political appointments enjoy lots of luxury.
The same thing goes for China. the idea that everyone is equal in stature was a joke in the days of Mao and a joke now. The "equalization" merely served the purpose of tearing down some and elevating others. One set of tyrants was exchanged for the other under a pretext of "equality".
The old Soviet Union were command economies with command political systems. They rule with might, the people have no real say in the affairs of state. All the persons who can make decisions are appointed by the "strong man" who keeps the whole thing together.
The new China has abandoned the command economy and replaced it with lazzei-fair capitalism. As in Russia, the state industries are being looted by the politically connected (aristocracy). But in China, there is still no Democracy (as Tienamenn Square demonstrated). China has effectively become a facist state. Those who control the government also control industry.
Do high taxes create a government elite aristocracy????? You'll forgive me if I'm jaded by the term "elite" lately. It's been bandied about by conservatives attacking poor hippy liberals as being "elitist".
Those in US government are elected by the people. They aren't selected by the "Central Commitee" or the monarch in older systems of government. The notion of the people vs the government in democracy is nonsense. The government IS the people. Though the government does often stray from it's purpose (with every Republican vote).
When tax money is spent of chronies, it creates an elite of the politically connected. When it's spent on "average folk" its good government. Pardon Democrats if they buy votes by providing services. Some people consider this the role of a socially responsible, progressive government.
As far as the US not being a democracy
I certainly support more representation in the United States. I believe we need at least twice as many Congressman. This will subdivide media markets and make advertising less effective. The candidates will be "closer" to their constituents. We need more campaign finance reform. We need pluralistic voting (especially when it comes to presidential electors).
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
That's why I recommend this book. There's a lot more to this whole outsourcing than people suspect. I also recommend this book as well for a better idea of the future we all will end up with.
Ah well. push comes to shove I give up the apartment, move back in with my parents, and default on my loans (look at how much bankruptcies have gone up). I'll survive, but it will not be pretty, but then again when the shit hits the fan. Who will have time to bother with little ol' me?
We should discuss the rise of the Inidian software industry some more.
Where did it come from?
1) Indians realized that to improve their lot in the world, they needed to get educated. Good for them.
2) In the US, writing software was a cool thing for about 30 seconds at the peak of the dot com era. Until then, we went through a period were hiring immigrants/H1-B was pretty much needed to fill the seats with quality people. Yes, we may have got a couple more than we needed, but I think with zero H1-Bs, the software expansion of the late 80s and 90s wouldn't have had the bodies it needed to happen.
3) US programmers fucked up. Remember the Y2K bug? Suddenly, lots of boring programming needed to get done that nobody wanted to do. There already weren't enough programmers on the market to make employers happy. So they looked around, and bam, Indians set up some software companies to do this task. They earned credibility for doing that job well as well as funding to build themselves up.
4) The next time a project came up that a company didn't have the staff for, they knew they could depend on thier Indian partners. The rest is history.
So I guess Indian software companies grew out of natural trade. After a pinch where demand rises and we're forced to import. Is it your stand that we should cut off imports from abroad and decimate the fledgling industries we created overseas in order to keep them from competing with us? Yikes! I thought Republicans were cruel.
Trade in people IS NOT TRADE. It's migration. In many cases, it's indentured servitude.
The solution was for America to create more scholarships for re-training manufacturing workers and training new IT workers. Instead, the ITAA rigged the game. They went around posting fake job ads and create an artificial scarcity that justified Congress adding WAY more H-1Bs than we actually needed.
I got news for you. Corporate America really doesn't give a fuck about the relative quality of an Indian programmer vs an American programmer. They realize that H-1Bs and LZ-1s can be exploited and have far less options for leaving the country and relocating. In some cases, they even get tax breaks (including the ZERO TAXES they pay for L-Z1s (Tata is the DEVIL!!!!)).
The whole notion of "competition" in globalization is a stupid buzzword. We are not "competing" as a nation. We are selling out.
Remember the cold war. THAT was economic competition. We didn't trade with the communists. We were showing the world that a Democratic way was better.
The hammer and sickle are now gone. The same evil assholes who underwrote Stalin and Hitler (the Bush family (Prescot Bush (Dubyas Connecticut Grandpappy (Skull & Bones)) financed both Hitler and Lenin, look it up)) are underwriting globablization.
What I expect is the same type of economic policies that drove the US into civil war. A fundamental disagreemant as to the rights of labor to bargain, negotiate and ultimately dictate their fair share of economic spoils. WTO, GATT, and NAFTA ignores both labor and environmental concerns.
The civil war was fought over these priciples. It was a fundamental battle of an economy based on subjugated labor vs free farmers and laborers with rights. The slaves were not the enemy, the slavemasters were.
To force a free laborer to compete with a subjugated laborer is fundamentally unfair. It demeans both parties. Enriching the slavemaster does not enrich the slave. He does not share in the spoils of his labors.
America has drifted far from the heyday of labor in the 40s, 50s and 60s. The prosperity of liberal America has been eroded by the raveshes of Republicans bent upon returning America to outrageous schism of wealth in the 1930s that almost doomed are Democracy (thanks FDR for saving us all).
A REAL robust middle class the size of America's will NEVER develop in India or Mexico under current conditions. By middle, I mean a country where the VAST MAJORITY of people are middle class.
Don't give me any bullshit about the industrial development of the US. The US was settled largely as a MIDDLE CLASS affairs. We were a country of land-owning farmers and shop keepers. The middle class and world democracy were born in the farmlands of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Nebraska, Missouri, etc... Those lands developed a people whose economic fortunes were dictated by self-determination.
This is the real origin of the dominant middle class. Yes I'm sure the middle class is growing in India and Mexico. But do they dominate??? The US middle class is being decimated. Once we've run out of money (and political power) their analogues in India, Mexico and China will collapse.
I'm sorry, but I'm not willing to finance the creation of temporary pools of prosperity overseas by sacrificing the gift of our forbears who sweated toiled and died for the notions of liberty, prosperity and self determination.
Millions died on battlefields to pass on this legacy. It does not belong to this generation. It belongs to our children. To give up our prosperity to overseas tyrants dishoners the martyrs of freedom and democracy. I dare say that even Ghandi would dissaprove to see his country developing in a way that depended on preying on the poor in foreign countries rather than demanding that the aristocracy of India share the wealth of the nation.
If the poor of India, China and Mexico want to help themselves, they should manufature rifles in
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!
Excuse me mother fucker. Exactly WHAT is America bad at besides working for slave wages (or being slaves outright).
Sorry, but virtually ALL of the relative advantages of overseas production is 100% LABOR COST related.
No I'm sorry, but it is fundamentally debasing to force a liberated, empowered worker to "compete" on a wage basis with the politically destitute overseas. Our wages going overseas won't help ONE BIT in improving the political wealth of any nation unless we DEMAND political reform as part of trade.
We did this before. We called it the COLD WAR. Forget all the ICBMs. They only served to prevent a general military conflagration. The cold war was about two POLITICAL systems duking it out. One system had a voting popolous, the other a population of slaves. The liberated workers one.
Now we are no longer "competing". Thats right, what you call "competition" is really just SELLING OUT.
We've sold out on the notion that American's should not have to compete on a wage basis against indentured, politically subjugated pulls of labor.
You people blow your theories around but it's all a bunch of slick, well-funded bunk.
The plain truth is that their is NOTHING that we cannot do in the United States. We have the MOST TALENT, the BEST NATURAL RESOURCES and the most heritage in innovation and creativity. We are also willing to lay our lives down for freedom.
Sorry Mr Benedict Arnold, you aren't advocating competition, you're advocating giving in to the notion that serf-hood is an inevitable conclusion that we must "go with". Americans aren't going to just "go with it".
For the umpteenth time
Call center workers in Bangalore are working on borrowed time. There are even MORE desparate people around the world who will work for EVEN LESS. There work isn't being funded by their fellow Indians. Once the foreign capital withdraws, he'll be out in the rice lines. India's economy is NOT self-sustaing. It depends on a lifeline of sucking wealth from the American middle class. It has not developed on it's own feet. Once the American crutch is removed, it will collapse.
You know what. Why don't all you free traders just skip all the bullshit nonsense and just cut to the chase. Just start putting everybody in shakles and beating them with whips. House them in shacks and feed them left over pig parts from their corporate masters' tables. I'm fucking sick of all the flirting.
-------- -------- Support Wesley Clark for president!!!