Slashdot Mirror
Intel Chief: Don't Call Us Benedict Arnold CEOs
theodp writes "In a USA Today interview, Intel CEO Craig Barrett pooh-poohs arguments against outsourcing, explaining 'We do not send our basketball teams to compete against the rest of the world, saying the other teams have to play slower because our folks aren't fit enough to run as fast.' He is also fed up with being called a Benedict Arnold CEO (perhaps he'd prefer Unemployed Computer Scientist). Barrett pegs K-12 math and science education as the biggest threat to U.S. employment, but when pressed about U.S. kids who do well in both, attend excellent universities, but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate, Barrett remarks 'I don't have a solution to that one.'"
I'm reading this as I train my China replacements...
Benedict Arnold
I still don't get it.
When CEOs say "good for the economy" they don't mean "good for the average Joe" they mean "good for our shareholders"
It's easy for these CEOs to sit in their ivory towers and tell the people that various things are good for the economy, they aren't the ones facing unemployment or living cheque to cheque. What matters to these people is making the shareholders happy, the workers are expendable cogs in their money-machine.
Imagine, for just a moment, that Craig Barrett were to say "Intel investors, I have a great plan. We'll stop outsourcing and start hiring domestically. Yeah, it'll cost more money and there will be a profit hit for a while but it will keep our people working and spending their paycheques domestically." Something like that is truly good for the economy as a whole, but how long would be be CEO for? The security guards would be showing him to the door in minutes.
Trolling is a art,
Unfortunately for the fat & happy Americans (I'm one of them), we're entering an age of a truly global economy, where there are very few barriers as far as communication and travel. There's a huge standard of living between first world and thrid world countries. Basic economics (hell, and nature) say that what's going to happen is that there's going to have to be an equilibrium that say, the US and India will reach, eventually in terms of standard of living pay rates, etc. At least for the next generation or so, the US is going to see a dramatic drop in standard of living, while other parts of the world increase (we're seeing that already in SE Asia). There's no way around it. The Net and telephones and cheap air travel have done this, and there's really no way to stop it. The genie is out of the bottle. CEO's do what they always do: maximize the bottom line. workers do what they always do: work for as much money as is possible. It's really inevitable, and it's time the IT industry sucks it up and realizes this. It's already happened with other US industries (autos, steel, textiles), and will continue for the forseeable future.
Time to tighten up those belts boys! The days of a big house in the suburbs with a giant SUV are pretty much over. If you expect to be able to continue living as well as you have been previously, you're kidding yourself.
"Barrett pegs K-12 math and science education as the biggest threat to U.S. employment, but when pressed about U.S. kids who do well in both, attend excellent universities, but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate, Barrett remarks 'I don't have a solution to that one.'""
How about being honest with us, and admitting it isn't about education, but all about the money?
That whole interview really did collapse at the end. He spouts off about having to compete, and discusses at length how kids need to be taught math and science, and how many teachers aren't educated in the subjects that they teach. But then he has to admit that even if the kids were taught to excel, it wouldn't change anything.
We are not competing on basis of skill here, we're competing on the basic cost of living. Today's CEO's are pocketing the savings from outsourcing, and will be retired when the house of cards crashes down because no one here has any more money to spend.
...
Barrett pegs K-12 math and science education as the biggest threat to U.S. employment, but when pressed about U.S. kids who do well in both, attend excellent universities, but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate, Barrett remarks 'I don't have a solution to that one.'
That seems like a somewhat pointless addition to your news submission, theodp. I wonder why it's in there...
The first thing he "pegs" has nothing to do with the "remark" he makes. It is a threat to employment because if there aren't enough kids interested in math and science, we're screwed.
To turn a small profit, they have outsourced over seas and cut the people that brought them to their current size. If turning on the people who made you what you are isnt treason, then what is?
Kids with Down's Syndrome can graduate from US public schools. I suppose it is good for the ego of the disabled kid, but it seems to indicate that standards are pretty low here.
word.
http://volokh.com/2004_03_14_volokh_archive.html#1 07922202284050918
[Eugene Volokh, 3/15/2004 07:53:35 AM]
Calling people traitors: As readers of this blog know, I've been quite critical of people calling others "traitors" simply because they disagree with them about the war or about foreign policy. There should be plenty of room in civil debate for good-faith disagreement about what's good for the country. Moreover, decent Americans can still sometimes consider the legitimate interests beyond the American national interest -- for instance, they might oppose an attack on some country because of a concern about the country's innocent citizens, whether or not the attack is in the interests of America's citizens. It's neither fair nor productive to reduce legitimate policy disagreements to accusations of lack of patriotism, or, worse still, treason?
But if this is true, then what's with all this that we've been hearing about "Benedict Arnold CEOs"? There are lots of hard and interesting questions about how American businessmen should deal with international competition. Some think that outsourcing is on balance bad for America, others think it's good. Some think that businessmen should focus first and foremost on the interests of America generally, others that businessmen should primarily serve the interests of their shareholders (within, of course, the boundaries of the law) -- or that outsourcing helps both shareholders and, ultimately, America generally, since without it we'd lose our competitive edge and thus have to lay off even more people. Reasonable minds can differ on this. But there's no justification for waging this battle through slurs and insults, and allusions (even if clearly hyperbolic) to a man whose name has become a snonym for "traitor."
But if I'm mistaken, and "Benedict Arnold" is permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose economic policies you think undermine the American national interest, then why isn't "traitor" permissible political hyperbole to be used against people whose foreign policy you think undermines the American national interest?
" It's easy for these CEOs to sit in their ivory towers and tell the people that various things are good for the economy, they aren't the ones facing unemployment or living cheque to cheque. What matters to these people is making the shareholders happy, the workers are expendable cogs in their money-machine."
Your aim is slightly off. here let me correct. "It's all about the new BMW I'm going to buy with my golden parachute". If it was JUST about the shareholders, then CEO's would be outsourcing their jobs.
Phase 1: Blame K-12 schooling here in the States, thus taking the blame off me and instead saying, "Hey, the educational system and all those 'teachers' are at fault, not little old Intel!!!"
Phase 2: When confronted with the possibility that some kids have "slipped through the cracks" of the US education system and actually become quite smart, smart enough even to possibly hold a job at Intel and do it quite well, COMPLETELY DENY PHASE 1'S EXISTENCE.
Globalisation is not going away. Outsourcing is not going away. IT jobs in the US are going away.
Go see Grapes of Wrath, and get a good understanding of what real hardship is like. Nasty fact of life: Things change. And no amount of political posturing, wishing, whining, begging, or threatening is going to change that.
If you really want to be a coder - that is - if you chose IT because you genuinely love it (I do), then emigrate.
You cannot change the attractiveness of outsourcing through fiat. However you can change your situation until you are more attractive than Ravi's House of Outsourcing and Tandoori[1] and you will not have trouble finding work.
Just as the dot-com bubble was collapsing, I took my meager savings and moved to a place where the cost of living is low, but infrastructure is well developed. There were surely tradeoffs - learning a new (human) language is substantially more difficult than learning a new programming language, but to be frank, that was a big part of the adventure: Throw myself into a foreign culture and see how well I could adapt.
Now, I have a comfortable, but not lavish lifestyle - two junior programmers and one artist working on projects I manage (who make about 150% of what local companies pay for the same work) - and without hesitation I can say: I have a much better quality of life than I ever had working in the dot-bomb universe. And with personal freedom increasingly a joke in my homeland, I have a strong feeling I will never repatriate.
If you chose IT because you thought it would lead to riches and a comfortable lifestyle: Well - you should have paid more attention to your carreer counselor in high school. It is not too late to learn to be a plumber, or a car mechanic.
1: The one thing I cannot get in Mexico that I really loved when I was in the Silly-con Valley: Indian food
How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
This guys in charge of a really big company. Now last time I checked he is only responsibility is to people that own stock in Intel. Now last time I checked those stock holders wanted the people running the company to widen the discrepancy between costs and profit as far as possible. So, cost go down (Craig Barrett decides to outsource stuff) and sales go up (crazy market share) then the only people that matter are happy. Don't waste your time looking at a company to create anything else but possible outcome for itself. Companies are totalitarian organizations by virtue.
*.02c
Your aim is slightly off. here let me correct. "It's all about the new BMW I'm going to buy with my golden parachute"
heheheh, well done. I have no problem with people getting rich if they've earned in a way that's equitable to all but getting multi-million dollar bonuses for taking away peoples' livelyhoods? That's just disgusting blood money.
Trolling is a art,
Since when is it the government's job to secure your own employment?
If you did well in school, have a good education, but can't find a job, why not start your own business and follow the advice: Compete!
I want to fight the nanny-state mentality that the government
1) Should
2) Can, even if it wanted to,
control the economy and my economic well being.
As for failing K-12 schools, clearly more volunteerism by parents and intelligent people, along with more incentive for competition among schools, is the solution.
Again, if you are unemployed, maybe you should fix that situation. Try inventing something in your garage while working at McDonalds. They are always hiring.
Robo-Blogs of the world: UNITE!
Searching around for the best deal and leveraging it to make big profits is what our great country was built on. Why should Intel be forced to pay higher wages to less skilled employees here?
Thats called COMMUNISM!!
Amusing anecdotes aside, the fact of the matter is that Americans simply don't value education as much as other nationalities. I'm sure I'm not the only one who came here from Europe, Asia or India as a kid and realized he was three grades ahead of his peers in math and science. It goes without saying, if a child is unaware of basic physics and chemistry, he'll never wonder, marvel at and be curious about just how we went from light bulbs to transistors to microchips. While not everyone needs to be like that, at least we should provide the knowledge required to roughly understand how technology works, to spur those individuals who really want to know just how a processor decides what "transistor" of the millions it has on board is switched.
I'm a little segfault, short and stout.
Read this:
LINK
The Outsourcing Bogeyman By Daniel W. Drezner
From Foreign Affairs, May/June 2004
Summary: According to the election-year bluster of politicians and pundits, the outsourcing of American jobs to other countries has become a problem of epic proportion. Fortunately, this alarmism is misguided. Outsourcing actually brings far more benefits than costs, both now and in the long run. If its critics succeed in provoking a new wave of American protectionism, the consequences will be disastrous -- for the U.S. economy and for the American workers they claim to defend.
Daniel W. Drezner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago and the author of "The Sanctions Paradox." He keeps a weblog at www.danieldrezner.com/blog; full references and data sources for this article can be found here.
THE TRUTH IS OFFSHORE
When a presidential election year coincides with an uncertain economy, campaigning politicians invariably invoke an international economic issue as a dire threat to the well-being of Americans. Speechwriters denounce the chosen scapegoat, the media provides blanket coverage of the alleged threat, and legislators scurry to introduce supposed remedies.
The cause of this year's commotion is offshore outsourcing -- the alleged migration of American jobs overseas. The depth of alarm was strikingly illustrated by the firestorm of reaction to recent testimony by N. Gregory Mankiw, the head of President George W. Bush's Council of Economic Advisers. No economist really disputed Mankiw's observation that "outsourcing is just a new way of doing international trade," which makes it "a good thing." But in the political arena, Mankiw's comments sparked a furor on both sides of the aisle. Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry accused the Bush administration of wanting "to export more of our jobs overseas," and Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle quipped, "If this is the administration's position, I think they owe an apology to every worker in America." Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, meanwhile, warned that "outsourcing can be a problem for American workers and the American economy."
Critics charge that the information revolution (especially the Internet) has accelerated the decimation of U.S. manufacturing and facilitated the outsourcing of service-sector jobs once considered safe, from backroom call centers to high-level software programming. (This concern feeds into the suspicion that U.S. corporations are exploiting globalization to fatten profits at the expense of workers.) They are right that offshore outsourcing deserves attention and that some measures to assist affected workers are called for. But if their exaggerated alarmism succeeds in provoking protectionist responses from lawmakers, it will do far more harm than good, to the U.S. economy and to American workers.
Should Americans be concerned about the economic effects of outsourcing? Not particularly. Most of the numbers thrown around are vague, overhyped estimates. What hard data exist suggest that gross job losses due to offshore outsourcing have been minimal when compared to the size of the entire U.S. economy. The outsourcing phenomenon has shown that globalization can affect white-collar professions, heretofore immune to foreign competition, in the same way that it has affected manufacturing jobs for years. But Mankiw's statements on outsourcing are absolutely correct; the law of comparative advantage does not stop working just because 401(k) plans are involved. The creation of new jobs overseas will eventually lead to more jobs and higher incomes in the United States. Because the economy -- and especially job growth -- is sluggish at the moment, commentators are attempting to draw a connection between offshore outsourcing and high unemployment. B
Or, if you're literate, read the book!
I think we have a double standard here. Yeah we can outsource production jobs to Mexico and Asia in order to get cheap shoes and clothes. Nobody bitches about that. But all of a sudden when higher education jobs are taken away, we consider it a national crisis. The farming and manufacturing sectors have shrunk drastically over the past 50 years, thats not a national crisis. This is simply a result of change, something the United States tech workers are having a hard time dealing with. So either stop bitching, or do something about policy. These people have business's to run, they aren't philanthropists. Would you rather have a couple jobs at you're local tech firm, or no jobs because they went out of business.
If the dollar is an "I owe you nothing", then the Euro is a "Who owes you nothing." - Doug Casey
...the problem I have is that, thanks to widespread abuses in the H-1B visa program, foreign programmers are brought into the U.S. and paid very little compared to U.S. programmers.
Businesses say they do this because U.S. programmers don't have the skills they need, but with the widespread unemployment of computer programmers, this can't possibly be true.
H-1B made sense during the tech boom, but now that we're in a tech bust, there's no legitimate excuse for it.
If we stopped the H-1B visa program, all those programmers went home, and then software jobs got outsourced to their countries, that'd be OK with me -- at least it'd be honest. Right now, U.S. programmers have the worst of both worlds.
And as for doing something besides programming for a living...you mean to tell me that I spent my teenage years actually studying, getting good grades, and keeping my nose clean, I went to college to get my B.S. in computer science, I worked my tail off for 12 years...and now I'm unemployed and poor? Damn, I could have been doing drugs and partying all that time, and I'd have exactly the same to show for it! I deeply resent that losers, slackers, and lowlifes are better off than I am. Doesn't anyone understand that???
And how the heck am I supposed to afford another college degree, when I'm facing losing everything I own?
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
Since when does the US Constitution state that all people who go through public education are guaranteed to get a good, high paying job, straight out of school? I must have missed that part....
Two basic classes, the very powerful and the serfs.
Now, look at the US economy. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer while the middle-class shrinks.
You have an overly optimistic view of the future.
Rather than hoping that everyone will, somehow, achieve a more equal economic level, why don't we start working now to preserve and strengthen the middle-class?
Honestly I don't how the US educational system is but blaming it for moving jobs oversees is ridiculous. Are they saying the Indian(which i can speak for) educational system is better? India has a poor educational system. And they are finding fault with US education system? Before the flames start let me tell you something I am Indian and have survived the Indian Educational system. We have really few "good teachers" and a lot of good-for-nothing ones. The text books are outdated and so are the teaching tools. The education system is more about memorizing stuff than understanding it. Most of the exams results are like gambling. Nothing but luck.
They are paid 1/10th of what a worker here is paid so they can only buy 1/10th of the finished goods produced here.
What you're seeing is a small transfer of capital from the US to other countries which raises the standard of living of a few people in those countries -and- the conglomoration of wealth in the hands of a few in the US.
... and can't get it to work. So he blames the American educational system.
The most obvious change involves the loss of IT jobs. Many have gone abroad, and they aren't coming back. Offshore outsourcing as a percentage of IT budgets went from 12% in 2000 to 28% in 2003, according to Forrester Research. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that there are now 212,000 unemployed computer and mathematics professionals. No doubt the number would be even higher but for the IT workers who have given up and moved on to different careers.
Fewer students are opting for computer science degrees as more corporate recruiters skip college campuses.
So? This guy blames Americans first. Some small competitor, AMD, upstages this guy with a better 64-bit architecture and he's whining about American college kids.
Sounds like a "management vision" problem to me. The problem is in Craig Barrett's mirror, if he'd just look. Maybe Intel shareholders should outsource him.
Dey tuk er jebs!
When the boards of directors discover that Indian MBA's are as good as any this guy's ass is grass. They'll sell the fancy building, rent a PO box in a prestigious town, bump profits to an all-time high. Outsource everything except ownership of the brand. Investors happy.
The problems are real -- and are far far worse than anyone is willing to admit. "Outsourcing" is merely a symptom. Like the first purple patch appearing on the skin of an airline attendant who frequents gay bath-houses in the early 1980s, the worst is yet to come.
Western civilization is destined to become a museum piece. The fundamental problem is with the way Western Civilization has decided to monetize clan structures, raising the floor on the cost of living, while it takes the deracinated clans and moves them into a pseudo-clan identity via national defense and police protection of monetized assets. Western civilization is now addicted to this con-game and can't allow people to reconstitute their clan structures lest they realize how horrendous the crime has been committed against them, and through them in their dracinated state, others around the world. So the only hope Western civilization has is to go all the way to a single tax on net assets or something similar. Of course, the con of the present situation is that wealthy people claim that they're creating the wealth when in fact they're sucking the lives out of young families from which they draw their soldiers and policemen to protect their assets. Charming charming folks... so charming many if not most have charmed themselves into a state where they actually believe their own material. If so, there is no hope for Western civilization. However, if they merely would stop sapping the life from the planet and live among others -- keeping the wealth they've ill-gotten but paying the costs of its maintanence -- they might be able to stave off hell-on-earth for themselves and their posterity (not to mention the rest of us life forms around them since our "bodies are in vain" according to their beliefs -- we don't count).
A few K5 diary entries that discuss the general situation follow:
A
dozen
K5
diary
entries
that
discuss
the
general
situation
are
linked
.
Seastead this.
but have no guarantees of good jobs when they graduate, Barrett remarks 'I don't have a solution to that one.'"
"Guarantees" of a good job? Give me a break! Nobody is guaranteed anything in life, nor should they be.
Look, I got laid off by the dot com crash three years ago and it took me nearly a year to find new work. Did I whine and moan about how I should've been "guaranteed" a good job? No! I made the choice to leave a larger, slower company to join a smaller, faster one with an eye towards more money and rapid advancement. When it came to a halt, I had no one to blame but myself. Nobody put a gun to my head and said "hey, leave this stable job for a riskier one!"
For that matter, these college grads who are complaining about poor job prospects should think for a moment (something college, of course, consistently discourages in graduates). Um, who put a gun to their heads and forced them to become Computer Science majors? Answer: NOBODY. It might have seemed a good choice four years ago when things were still kinda booming, but thems the breaks. Sometimes you do everything right and you still fail. That is not a lack of a guarantee, that is life. I know that's a radically uncomfortable concept for a twentysomething college grad, but they'd better get used to it.
As for outsourcing, I'm all for it if it makes financial sense for the company. We as consumers benefit from outsourcing in the form of lower prices. If price savings aren't carried over to consumers, we can still benefit from increased corporate profit margins by becoming stockholders in that company. Regardless, companies have no law preventing them from outsourcing, and any such law would very likely be unconstitutional in the first place.
Quit whining about outsourcing and start looking for ways you can benefit from it. It will require effort, intelligence, judgement skills, and hard work, so it's likely college grads will be totally out of their element. But it's better to get started early on understanding how life works instead of living in the fantasy world of college for an extended period of time. If you fail a course in life, rarely is there a makeup test.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
What I do have a problem with is that consumers are not allowed to take advantage of the same competitive edges that these large companies are. Nike can hire Chinese workers because they're cheaper, OK, I can live with that. Why can't I buy a Chinese DVD (legitimate, not a knockoff) or an Indian pharmaceutical product if I want to? Instead I've got to pay American prices (highly inflated) even though these people have products to sell, advanced communication can get me in touch with them, and transportation can get it to me cheaply.
Miguel de Icaza, Bruce Perens, Eric Raymond, and Linus Torvalds all got rich off the Open Source Movement. What do you have to look forward to?
Outsourcing isn't the fault of the CEOs and to blame them smacks to me of a witch-hunt. It's a nice way to mis-direct attention to the REAL problem: Globalization. In particular, Globalization where we don't insist foreign workers fall under the same EPA, OSHA, minimum wage, workman's comp, etc standards that we force on the employeers of our OWN workers.
If you want to REALLY solve the problem, either force outside workforces to comply with OUR standards, or lower OUR standards of employment to meet theirs. CEOs and corporations are not "boogie men". We've set up a system that basically lays money at their feet and we complain when the bend over to pick it up.
If it was JUST about the shareholders, then CEO's would be outsourcing their jobs.
The CEOs are outsourcing their jobs, or, more accurately, they're outsourcing their successors' jobs, and I think most of them realize it.
How are they outsourcing their jobs? They're training a new crop of managers and workers overseas. How long will it take before those people realize that they have everything they need to start their own company and compete with their former employers?
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
If America has such a poor education system, then how come the people who complain about it are products of it? Both Craig and Carly are American educated. Seriously if these guys are right then their top priority should be outsourcing them selves as they are products of an inferior education system, and cost 100 times more than an well educated outsourced counterpart. When outsourcing gets to the executive suite, we'll see how fast this "education rant" changes.
The reason companies outsource to China, India, etc. is because they can get away with paying these people next to nothing. They literally wouldn't be able to legally pay these people those wages in the US because they are below minimum wage. It's not about quality or anything like that. It's because these people live in such poor countries they can be paid next to nothing. If they legally could, I'm sure these companies would have slaves. If they want to pay these people the SAME US wages I have no problem with that.
"This rich vs, poor thing has never proven to actually happen throughout history."
Then you need to read more history.
As I stated, it happened in Medieval Europe.
It is happening in the US right now. A higher percentage of people are falling below the poverty line and a higher percentage of wealth is accumulating in the top 5%.
"History (and nature) both show an equilibrium happening."
Incorrect. If that were so, then we would not be seeing so much money accumulating in the top 5%.
We'd be seeing LESS money.
"The US may have less of a middle class, but that doesn't mean it's going away."
Correct, but you'd have to show that less wealth is accumulating in the top 5%.
"The middle class now lives in New Delhi."
No, what has happened is that some people in a poorer nation have had their income raised. They are now "middle class" for that nation.
-but-
The total percentage of wealth held by the top 5% continues to grow.
You are under the impression that because someone, somewhere is doing better than s/he did before, then no damage is occuring. You are wrong.
Here are some simple numbers. And before anyone gets stupid, these are just used as examples.
Suppose the entire middle class in the US held about $1 Billion.
You could wipe them out and raise an equal number of Indians to "middle class" making only 1/10th of that (about $100 million).
So, $900 million have been moved from the "middle class" to the top 5%, but you don't see a problem with that.
But we could do the same in China for only $10 million. The top 5% would gain $990 million while the middle class only made $10 million.
And that is the problem. The money is NOT being spread evenly. It is NOT going to those in poverty. It is accumulating at the top.
Therefore, the end result will NOT be what you want to believe (equal standard throughout).
The end result will be a few very rich and a LOT of very poor.
It seems we need an economics lesson here. Just because an American worker loses his/her job doesn't mean the CEO has simply taken away his/her livelihood. The money has been *redistributed*. If the company does not stay profitable, many more people do lose thier jobs. Also remember, there are more people depending on a company than just the ones who happen to work there. What about grandma and gradpa whose retirement is dependant on the success or failure of the company?
I'm no big fan of offshoring, and it does hurt (at least temporarily) people here at home. But it is small minded to forget that the money from those salaries gets divided between the new offshore worker and the share holders (and the corp execs, yes).
Also, how can someone get rich in a way that is equitable? Wealth is inherently unequal. What you seem to be saying would equate to asking Bill Gates to send some of his personal income to India to pay programmers to do nothing so the jobs stay at home and his personal wealth can diminish. (Gates is a bad example being so reviled here, but work with the analogy)
As a I side note, the company I work for was purchased by a company that does a lot off shoreing. They did let a bunch of programmers go a few years ago, but a lot of people became business analysts and project or resource managers. And they still need programmers to do architecture and design work, and review the code that comes back. If you're worried about being offshored, make sure that grunt coding isn't the only thing you can do. US companies generally recognize smart, hard working people and want to leverage thier skills.
Sorry for ranting.
"None of us are as dumb as all of us." - meeting mantra
Its very clever, because since everyone knows that schools are in poor shape, it tricks some people!
It bends the arguement so just a FEW MORE people think "Why, Americans are just too stupid!" or "They have to go overseas because we just can't produce the people!"
When really, we're laying off WELL EDUCATED, HARD WORKING people to put jobs overseas. Whether or not you think outsourcing is a good or bad thing, please don't swallow the latest sound of bullshit from our nation's elite.
Ireland is part of the Euro-zone. It is a little cheaper than America to employ people. But in terms of education and infrastructure, these are the same people, often holding British or American degrees (btw, if you've ever been to the Republic you can see why some would choose to foresake cash for scenery etc).
And you don't mind this apparently. No-one ever carps and moans about the Irish. You could certainly stop all outsourcing to Ireland by taking a reaonable pay cut. But no-one wants to discuss that option. Is it because Americans (amusingly) think they are Irish? WTF is going on? Would someone like to explain please? It looks like the outsourcing hoo-haa has more than a little to do with thinly veiled racism given the difference in attitudes to the Indians and the Irish.
And that's good for them, bad for us(especially in the short term), but the people who are benefitting the most are the American CEOs.
In fact, American isn't quite right, but right now it's mostly American CEOs. It will spread throughout the world, as "free trade" expands.
The wealthy have been getting their fingers deeper and deeper into the governments around the world, and they will eventually have total control. They will be our lords, and we their subjects.
And then of course, we will have new revolutions. A lot of blood will be shed. Periodically, the poor masses will acheive brief periods of comfort, influence, even partial control. But as always, new kings, emperors, lords, deities, whatever... will gain control and force the masses to do their bidding, again. History repeats itself.
Of course, I could be wrong. Maybe we truly are "civilized" now, and will remain free of such extreme tyranny forever. Heh, yeah right...
<whisper>wow, this new armchair is comfy</whisper>
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
Unfortunately, they're way outnumbered by the hordes of people with CS and EE degrees who are neither excellent nor well-educated.
One of my colleagues had to hire some people a while back. Our work is research-oriented, meaning we want people for the long haul, with a good foundation of knowledge rather than the IT skill du jour. He described the crop of applicants sent to him by HR as "mostly worthless" because it seems they learned almost nothing in their 4 years except Java. Most of them couldn't tell the difference between an O(n^2) algorithm and an O(n log n) one. In fact, most didn't even understand the concept.
When I worked at a university, I saw where a lot of this came from. There was competition for warm bodies between the departments, so there was pressure to lower requirements in order to keep students from transferring to the easier departments. EE lost lots of students to CS because CS required almost no math, and EE took the heat for its "low retention rate."
Probably the most telling anecdote I remember from my work there was when an EE professor, who was talking with some juniors, stopped me and said he wanted to ask me a physics question. I told him I took physics 23 years before and was probably rusty. He asked anyway. It was very elementary, and I hesitated, suspecting a trick question. But finally I gave the right answer, and he triumphantly thanked me. It turns out he had used this as part of a larger problem on an exam, and the students had complained that he hadn't covered this material. He said it was covered in the prerequisite course, which most had taken the previous year, and they argued that they couldn't be expected to retain that for a whole year! (And these were A and B students, not the bottom of the barrel.)
If you understand economics, you understand that a country pays for its imports with its exports.
/programmers/ fall into the cliche of not enjoying working in a cubicle because humans weren't meant to (Office space, anyone?) but yet they roar up a storm when they lose said job.
When jobs are outsourced to other countries, the average level of income and standard of living in 'receiving' countries raises, the average level of income and standard of living in 'exporting' countries stays roughly the same. It the country of origin, the average level of income and standard of living raises as people stop whining about losing their "American Jobs" (ignorant of the fact that "American jobs" is a myth) and get out and find a new productive job.
When you lose your job to someone overseas, it's the market telling you that your skills are worth something better. Well, at least if you got off your lazy ass and actually continously educate yourself and expand your skills in various fields.
When the economy of a foreign country becomes stronger, they then have more money to spend on imports into their country. Very few countries (well, none really) can have everything they want as cheap as they want as fast and efficient as they want.
Be creative. Be useful. Don't be afraid of a little change. It's funny how so many
A monopoly refers to lack of competition. Please, no more nonsense about WalMart's evil outsourcing, either. American made goods are of higher quality. American programmers produce better qualitiy code (possible reason for the slowing down of job outsourcing for the more highly skilled positions?)
Let's recap:
-One pays for imports with exports. As with the individual, so is with a nation.
-Stronger foreign economies means more money to be spent important American goods into said country. (The world loves American goods, so why are we afraid of them having enough money to buy them?)
-Losing your job due to finding someone who can do a sufficient job cheaper means that you can earn more money and are capable of more difficult work.
It's really disheartening when faux-intellectuals run off about evil corporations and blood money, and then propose that more government (laws, regulation, agencies, and officials) be put into play in order to prevent evil business.
Right, because we know if a monopoly forms naturally, it is by definition a good thing and that no "monopoly" in U.S. history formed without the helping hand of big government. Also, Microsoft is not a monopoly, and the reason it acts as it does it because of government "regulation" permitting it. Microsoft has plenty of competition. I'm writing this off of a Redhat box.
Book Recommendations:
Hazlitt - Economics In One Lesson
Hayek - The Road to Serfdom
von Mises - Human Actions
Folsom - Myth of the Robber Barons
Pretty much read anything by Milton Friedman, Frederic Bastiat, von Mises, Hyek, Rothbard, Szasz, Hazlitt, and Sowell.
And let's not forget Chodorov's Income Tax: The Power To Destroy (or was it, Root of All Evil? Look it up yourselves).
about it... for now?
Speckpot?
Is for countries worldwide to work towards eliminating "dollar dependence" The trade we have today isn't trade in any sense of the word, basically the US gives other countries little pieces of paper in exchange for manufactured goods, programming, call centers etc. If you ask me this isn't trade in any sense of the word. Because the US economy is the biggest economy in the world, the dollar is considered the most desirable and "safest" currency(Though if Britain joined the EU, the Euro will probably take it's place, but for the time being the UK isn't in a rush to join because of it's oil supplies, but I digress). This has introduced a world-wide "dollar dependency" ie every country in the world wants the most dollars possible(versus other currencies) to help it's economy grow. This worked out really well during Japan's economic miracle, because the Japanese could take their dollars and exchange it for anything(Canadian wood, Saudi oil), but look at Japan now. They are buying tons of dollars just to keep the yen as weak as possible(more yen to the dollar means Japanese products are cheaper). Now, Japan is just one country, a relatively small country at that. What happens when 3 billion others try this same thing? We are already seeing it, the value of the dollar is starting to fall. As the supply of dollars outside the US continues to skyrocket, each dollar is going to be worth less(supply and demand! Even the IMF said that America's huge trade and budget deficits are a threat to the world economy) So what happens when India, who bases a lot of their growth on exports to the US finds out that the dollar is worthless? Some argue that they could just transition to exporting to Japan, Europe(which they do now, but on a very small scale) But these countries will also be dealing with the falling dollar. Also, transitions do not happen overnight. Not to mention that OPEC prices it's oil in dollars too.
My opinion is that if the US opens it's market to the rest of the world, the rest of the world should reciprocate. This is most definately not the case. So all you people scream free trade, but to me, the trade is anything but free. The US should use it's considerable infuence to pressure these countries to open up their markets and move towards a more balanced approach to trade, ie trade goods for goods, services for services, instead of trading little pieces of paper.
This author is using a series of flawed assumptions/myths that I'd like to debunk:
1) Outsourcing is only happening to menial jobs. The author first states that "the activities that will migrate offshore are predominantly those that can be viewed as requiring low skill since process and repeatability are key underpinnings of the work"
Software Development is not "low-skill". Repeatability for complex processes is a complex achievement. Nearly all of technology/science is concerned with repeatability.
2) What is better for the global economy is better for the American economy.
Let's say that China becomes even more of an economic powerhouse, the world economy becomes more efficent, and America gets beat out of many major corporate and employment deals to EU companies. America will go into decline. This is neither good for American business nor is it good for American workers.
3) What is good for American corporations is good for American citizens.
These two ideas are increasingly at odds. Let's say Joe CEO, an American citizen, starts a car-building company and outsources everything but the CEO spot. Let's then say that he beats out every major American car manufacturer and takes their marketshare. THIS WOULD BE A DISASTER FOR EVERY AMERICAN WORKER BUT JOE. Joe might get rich, he might make a bunch of foreign outsources rich, but he has helped suck both money and jobs out of the country.
4) Protectionism would hurt our economy because it makes the world economy less efficient.
WRONG! This would only be true if America was an equal consumer of goods world-wide. America is, by far, largest world consumer of most goods. Channeling that purchasing-power back towards American goods and services would be a huge boon.
5) Protecting globalization at the expense of American jobs will help american citizens by creating more jobs.
The author's whole argument about outsourcing of jobs towards America is completely false. His numbers are made up, as well.
6) It is the U.S. government's job to protect the global economy.
WRONG! It is the U.S. government's job to protect US citizens in both the short-term and the long-term.
7) It is patriotic to support free-market economies.
WRONG! It is patriotic to support the well-being of your fellow countrymen and women. Supporting slave-labor in China that forces inequitable economies of scale in labor is tantamount to economic treason.
People need to stop thinking in blindered terms of "free-markets are good" and need to start thinking at a more sophisticated level about these problems. I'm ashamed at the trite cliches and hackneyed arguments put forth in this poorly-written article.
From your post:
"Most jobs will remain unaffected altogether: close to 90 percent of jobs in the United States require geographic proximity. Such jobs include everything from retail and restaurants to marketing and personal care -- services that have to be produced and consumed locally, so outsourcing them overseas is not an option."
Do you want fries with that?
So, instead of working and actually PRODUCING something, we will become a nation of burger flippers.
"There is also no evidence that jobs in the high-value-added sector are migrating overseas."
Which jobs would that be? Any specifics? Please do not say "prostitute".
"The parts of production that are more complex, interactive, or innovative -- including, but not limited to, marketing, research, and development -- are much more difficult to shift abroad."
Incorrect, R & D is moving overseas.
"As an International Data Corporation analysis on trends in IT services concluded, "the activities that will migrate offshore are predominantly those that can be viewed as requiring low skill since process and repeatability are key underpinnings of the work."
Yet I keep seeing complaints about how many PROGRAMMING jobs are moving to India.
But I don't know of anyone who claims that programming is "low skill".
"As for the jobs that can be sent offshore, even if the most dire-sounding forecasts come true, the impact on the economy will be negligible."
Then there are a few paragraphs devoted to debating whether the predictions are good or bad. Whatever. Facts are easier to deal with.
"There is no denying that the number of manufacturing jobs has fallen dramatically in recent years, but this has very little do with outsourcing and almost everything to do with technological innovation."
So, the FACT is that there are FEWER manufacturing jobs. Well DUH!!!!!
Now they are arguing that the FEWER jobs are NOT the result of offshoring.
So, we don't have a "rust belt" because we still crank out the same PRODUCTS in the same QUANTITY but we do it with FEWER PEOPLE?
I don't believe that the FACTS will support that.
We've lost the jobs. They are now being performed overseas.
"If outsourcing were in fact the chief cause of manufacturing losses, one would expect corresponding increases in manufacturing employment in developing countries."
Incorrect. It is possible to lose 100 manufacturing jobs in the US and only gain 10 robot-assisted manufacturing jobs in other countries.
So, the same number of PRODUCTS are being produced, but fewer people are doing it and those people are NOT US citizens.
"The fact that global manufacturing output increased by 30 percent in that same period confirms that technology, not trade, is the primary cause for the decrease in factory jobs."
But the technology is NOT in the US. The jobs are NOT in the US. Rather than pay to upgrade the US factories, the jobs are going overseas.
"What about the service sector?"
Service sector: burger flippers, prostitution, butlers and such.
"For example, a Datamonitor study found that global call-center operations are being outsourced at a slower rate than previously thought -- only five percent are expected to be located offshore by 2007."
Dude, "global call-center" being outsourced would have to go to MARS. We're looking at US jobs here.
"Delta Airlines outsourced 1,000 call-center jobs to India in 2003, but the $25 million in savings allowed the firm to add 1,200 reservation and sales positions in the United States."
Here's a link to show how good Delta is doing.
http://www.newschannel9.com/vnews/1081980359/
And I quote: "The nation's third-largest airline said it lost $387 million dollars."
So, they "save" $25 million by outsourcing, but then they LOSE $387 million?
"An Institute for International Economics analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics employment data revealed th
Because they own and run the companies. Don't like it? Form your own company. It IS legal to do so in America. I just hope you can find ways to make your product affordable (for your targeted consumer) without outsourcing yourself. It's kind of a very difficult, if not impossible, thing to do in most cases. Or you can sit here and whine like all of the other psuedo-intellectual socialists who don't understand economics and believe that everyone was born equal and should be equal. (The truth is, if you're mentally and physically healthy, you have the equal opportunity to make yourself a good life. You deserve nothing but the chance to do so, and you're given that at birth (or the age of 16, depending :-p)
Speckpot?
Convince shareholders to outsource CEOs from (Santa Clara) California wiith a high cost of living to somewhere in Kansas, just to show them that the real way to increase company profits is to pay CEOs a reasonable amount of money. Maybe then those CEOs would be nicer to their employees here in America (I'm sure companies in Europe could do the same thing) not to mention fewer CEOs with ridiculous amounts of money.
Someone from Intel Labs came and gave a talk here a few weeks ago, and dropped an interesting fact -- they've learned how to distribute a processor team within a single time zone or two pretty well (say, Oregon, Santa Clara, and Folsom), but the amount of daily interaction needed for a custom chip makes distributing a single design between, say, India, Oregon, and Israel not easy at all. So, processor design jobs are stickier to a region, for the same reason full-custom VLSI is so hard in general (and avoided whenever possible) -- breaking the design apart horizontally (architecture, logic, circuit, layout) and vertically (ALU, register files, caches) leaves everyone with a schedule full of meetings each week to make sure details aren't falling through the cracks. The only practical way to outsource is to create the whole team in a region, and finding 200 specialists to fill all the roles a processor needs takes a generation of preparation (successful example: Intel Israel).
For those who haven't bought into the "outsourcing is great for America" BS, check out this discussion about IEEE-USA's stance against outsourcing. The IEEE has also released a position paper on the topic.
Looking at the economic side of the argument, there is also a short article about a finance professor arguing against placing blind faith in outsourcing and the "externality" that companies are exploiting given the current labor and tax laws.
Want to do something about it? Try using your vote. Bush and Kerry have established their position on outsourcing (Bush is for, Kerry is against). Being unemployed does not mean you lose your right to vote, so make it count.
So the poor little CEO is crying because someone called him Benedict? I say companies that outsource just to raise the bottom line should LOSE ALL TAX BREAKS!
I'll do it!
TRAITOR!!
-- I am. Therefore, I think!
yopu must be around 23-18 years old with no kids. as that would explain your lack of knowlege into the real world.
Say I have a family, wife is not working and 2 kids at home... if I lose my job, then we are screwed royally. Not from the loss of income, mostly from the loss of health insurance. only a single young kid with no kids would fail to understand the terror of having a family without health insurance. Housing can be gained, food can be gained... that $400.00 a month perscription for your wife's health or the special needs of a chil you have? you CANT get those wnywhere.. you cant replace those med's with a $0.29 cent box of Kraft Dinner. without the med's you are Boned... royally boned. what happens if a child get's sick? I guess let em die? a single woman with children get's aid from the state... a family is told to go to hell.
"I haven't seen any overlords with whips beating the backs of workers to get them to perform."
really? you are obviousally new to the world of work... as they do find those and make sure to let that employee know that "we are going to have to cut health benefits if you dont work double overtime for free so we can ship this product on time." and management knows for a fact that family workers are prime for abuse as they will not leave without having something else lined up no matter how crappy they make it for that employee.
Me? I'm enough of an asshole to tell my boss to F**K himself loudly and instantly go over his head and tell that asshole to F**K himself.. I've let my bosses know this from day one that I will NOT go above and beyond for them unless they do so for me. Basically I learned really early to NEVER EVER trust your employer, I don't care how nice they are, they will NEVER go out on a limb for you.
CEO's are not boogeymen. but they are generally useless to every corperation. they typically offer ZERO leadership, ZERO ability to actually change the course of the company. Ther are a few good ones, but they are getting as rare as the DoDo bird.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
At what stage in US history was it ever the case that anyone had a guarantee of a good job???
Geeze, we Americans have gotten as bad a Europeans, we demand that someone has to take care of us, or else we whine about how unfair everything is!
Hellfire, if my parents had had that attitude during the Depression, they wouldn't have ever married and raised a family, since there definitely were no "guaranteed jobs!" My Dad was a coal miner, but when the mines shut down, he packed everyone up and headed to Detroit to find work, and if he couldn't work at a car plant, he worked odd jobs, worked at tool and die plants, worked wherever he could. Mom would work checkouts, or wherever she could, even if it was shit work (washing the diapers for kids she babysat surely counts).
There are times I really despair about the future of the US, if the generations to come are expecting endless "guarantees" and special treatment. What the hell will happen when we do have another Great Depression? From the attitudes being shown by the current crop of whiners, I predict mass suicide by people too shocked to cope.
By the taping of my glasses, something geeky this way passes
It's really troublesome how much money is squandered on expensive executives... but it looks like there's a grand solution out there:
OffshoreExecutive
Let's then say that he beats out every major American car manufacturer and takes their marketshare. THIS WOULD BE A DISASTER FOR EVERY AMERICAN WORKER BUT JOE.
Well, except for the workers who buy cars. Which would be what, all of them?
Joe might get rich, he might make a bunch of foreign outsources rich, but he has helped suck both money and jobs out of the country.
It's impossible to suck money out of the country. If US dollars get exchanged for foreign goods, then either those dollars are eventually used to repurchase US goods (in which case money wasn't sucked out of the country) or they are never eventually used to repurchase US goods (in which unlikely case we can safely print replacement dollars without contributing to inflation, the country has just as much money as before, and we've simply received free foreign goods).
6) It is the U.S. government's job to protect the global economy.
WRONG! It is the U.S. government's job to protect US citizens in both the short-term and the long-term.
Yes, but for at more than the last century this has implied protecting the global economy. It was less than a century ago when the US realized this, though. Attempting to recover from a stock market crash by record protectionist tariffs, then suffering through a global depression for the next decade, really brought the lesson home.
"No single drop of water thinks it is responsible for the flood"
This is the problem with capitolism in America... Each company will do what will net it the most money in the short term, while screwing themselves over in the long-term... It was self-regulating when companies were small, but now they can destroy the economy in one city and not be affected, because they service such a large area, that an economic disaster in one city doesn't seriously affect their sales anymore.
Outsourcing is only one example. I'd say it's comparable to companies settling frivilous lawsuits... It might cost them more to fight a case, rather than settle, but if they fought a few, people would get the message, and wouldn't file frivilous lawsuits anymore. On a case-by-case basis, settling is better, but pretty soon, there are millions of frivilous lawsuits, and the company would go bankrupt if they settle them all.
Outsourcing is the same thing... You can rationalize it by saying that it will drop prices and increase sales, but that doesn't happen because, *gasp* the economy is doing poorly. They will continue to complain about the terrible economy, while they are outsourcing more jobs.
It's time to increase tarriffs people. They were actually invented just to prevent countries with more competitive economic conditions from completely taking over, like China and India are now.
And before I hear from you free-trade advocates, you need to take a look at what's happened because of NAFTA. Things have not gotten better, they've gotten worse. There are a few people making a tiny bit more money, but the majority of Mexicans are making less, mainly because their former jobs are gone... Corn farmers in Mexico are out of work because of the industrialized corn farmers in the US. Yet the farmers in the US still aren't making enough money to support themselves. It's been lose-lose almost exclusively, and dropping tarriffs across the board would be catastrophic.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
This is not a troll, but im sure those most affected by the problem will miss the point ... anywho ...
... you simply wouldnt have those toys.
Just be like Bush
Ignore any trade agreements / laws.
Put a huge tariff on any work done overseas for US companies regardless of how reasonable or fair it is for the work to be done in the manner it is in those other countries. (you are afterall the only important people anywhere, screw all others, they don't deserve what you can have)
Let your own companies die a slow painful death, killing your economy because all other companies around the world are able to compete better.
The programmers in India live a very good life there because the cost of living is much lower than it is here. I wonder how much of the high cost here is due to the ignorant protectionism that has nearly destroyed the US agriculture, sugar, lumber and other industries?
Don't like that someone else can live a good life doing what you do for less? Go live the good life in India instead of twiddling your thumbs here.
Why shouldn't programming / IT work be outsourced? manufacturing of everything you use every day has been outsourced (manufactured elsewhere) 30 or more years! Just imagine what you would have to pay for your favourite toys if you had to pay for them to be made in the US!
George Bush + Linux = "I will not let information get in the way of the fight against Windows"
- America is actually a net benificiary of outsourced jobs (i.e., more money comes in from foreign countries outsourcing jobs to the U.S. than are lost outsourcing jobs from the U.S. to foreign contries). "In 2002, U.S. companies exported $14.8 billion worth of computer, data-processing, research, development, construction, archicetural, engineering and other IT services. During that same year, America imported $3.9 billion of those same kinds of services. So for every dollar Americans sent abroad for outsourcing, the world sent more than three dollars to the US. for 'insourcing.'"
- According to a 2003 study by the McKinsey Global Institue, every $1 spent on foreign outspurcing creates $1.12 to $1.14 of additional economic activity in the U.S.
- The vast majority of job losses due to outsourcing have been for lower skill jobs. Between 1999 and 2002, IT jobs went from 6.24 million to 5.95 million. However, during the same period of time, those requiring a relatively high level of training (i.e., an associates degree or higher) actually increased, from 3.43 million to 3.51 million.
- If you use the saner baseline of 1998 rather than the peak of the dotcom bubble, things look better still. Current IT employment levels are equal to those of 1998.
- "Domestic software, computer, and communications services accounted for a combined 4621 billion in 2003, up from $510 billion in 1999."
- Far more people loose their jobs to technology or domestic competition than outsourcing.
- The total outsourcing between 2000 and 2015 is only projected (by Forrester Research) to be 3.3 million jobs, or about 220,000 a year. This is a fairly miniscule number for an economy that employees 137 million, where an average of 350,000 million people file for unemployment every week even in strong economies, and which creates and average of 32.8 million news jobs (while eliminating 31 million, for a net annual gain of 1.8 million jobs) every year.
- Outsourced jobs tend to go to countries that emulate the United States with low taxes and deregulated economies, and the foreign companies jobs are outsourced to tend to buy American equipment and services to do the job.
A lot of the reason you see so many complaints about outsourcing on Slashdot tends to be the reinforced tendencies of self-selected sets. The people who do lose their job to outsourcing are the ones that complain loudest and longest, and the ones whose sob stories get modded up. The people who haven't lost their job, or who work in a company that benefits from "insourcing," have no particular reason to speak up. The fact is, outsourcing is just one of the more painful parts of free trade, but free trade improves the lives of everyone. You have to be able to look at the big picture to see that.Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Rights are whatever people want them to be. That's the only reason people have rights to begin with, is because at some point everbody agreed that things like democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of unlawful entry, right to bear arms, would be a good thing to have in a free society. So, if enough people want it, then yes, it IS a right. It's worth thinking about.
You can not ask for even more R&D spending funded by the taxpayer and tell them that you will outsource the results of that offshore in order to commercialize it. People like Intel should be well aware of the fact that their business was created by the taxpayer during the cold war for the national interest. There has to be some middle ground. They essentially want to have it both ways and this cannot happen. It is just a form a serfdom to force research funding out of the taxpayers' wallets and then farm it out overseas to make a profit. Better that the intels of the world undertake their own long term R & D. This particular argument is not just disingenuous, it is fundamental crooked. They are merely avoiding investment at the taxpayers expense and investing in competing economies at the same time - it is just screwing the taxpayer twice. They will quickly see through this. Curiously, it is reminiscent of the early rational for farm subsidies.
I really do not believe the education argument at this point in time - it is just about cheaper wages. That is not to say that it will not be a problem in the future. I think this is just a dodge, and it is supported by his contention the the university system is "healthy." If this is so then there must be enough graduates with the right skills - they just want first world wages. This is a rhetorical pose meant to deflect and scare - It does not make economic sense. Again, it is the price differential, not the skill, that motivates the outsourcing. Again, the offshorers expose themselves as possessing a singular tendency toward dishonesty and obfuscation in their defenses. The public will soon weary of this constant resort to rhetoric at tjhe expense of rational argument.
In addition, if companies like intel use offshoring to "compress" wages then there will be fewer people entering the fields. Nothing could be more obvious. What is required is a middle ground - yes obstacle to business, infrastructure and educational issues need to be addressed but there needs to be some sort of guarantee to support the nation. The question will be put before them: are you a loyal a corporate citizen of our society? If just the left can force such extreme measures in environmentalism and and "diversity in the work force" just imagine what an entire engraged populus can do. Push will come to shove, and the Intels of the nation need to have some less self-serving answers then these when it does.
The attitude one sees in this article is particularly vexing in that the Feds went in and supported the semiconductor manufactures both in term of trade agree ments and informal quotas when the Japanese and the Taiwanese we threatening them in the 70's and the 80's, they were not preaching competition back then. This is how the current "international division of labor" in IC manufacturing came about. I would not be surprised to hear them start whining about unfair trade practices when the Chinese home grown semiconductor business takes off in a few years. They may find that their own words are thrown back at them.
We must address this issue seriously and find the right compromise. Firms like intel will find that they have to come half way. It would seem perfect time for a true compromise that might work
It is truly disturbing how self serving their arguments are and the fact that they do not seem to see this fact themselves. The nation will soon weary of high tech firms that do not contribute to the advance of the nations work force. I am amazed that they do not see this; this was an axiom is technology management throughout the cold war.
"Right", no I suppose not, but unions worked hard to make the 40 hour week a standard in this country. The problem is, there is no threat to these companies anymore: no one cares where the crap they buy is made. No one will pay extra to buy American. Hell, in a few industries (auto in particular) some will pay more to avoid it! We have had it real easy in this country for a long time, and it looks like its time to pay the bill.
The best thing we can do as members of the work force is try to be the BEST at our jobs. Make it worth the extra money! Trust me, it can work. In my industry (Boilermaker), there are many non-union companies that will do the work MUCH cheaper than we will, but the eventual result is that we are hired to fix what they fucked up and it winds up costing more in the long run!
Send whiskey and fresh horses!
Believe me, I'm way ahead of you on that one.
Your situation and my situation are very different. When you moved to the U.S., you got paid way more than you would have back home, and could return home very well off. If I went to another country to work, I would get paid less than I can make here shoveling $h1t in Hell, and if I could one day afford to return to my country, would have nothing to show for it.
Do you see now how your solution is not viable?
I guess I can't fault you; after all, I can't come up with any viable solutions...
"Once we've identified and embraced our sickness, we'll have strength...and that's when we get dangerous." - John Waters
...oh, wait a second... I'm sort of Indian. Do I get to be an overlord to?
IMO, outsourcing is merely a symptom of a much larger problem that has psychological and sociological roots.
I submit:
* There's a fundamental paradigm shift in the mindset of the American work force. This is evident in all societies that become more capitalist and consumer-centric, and America being the leader of this trend, exhibits the pathology to a more extreme degree than other societies. America also has a less-substantive cultural background from which its sense of purpose has evolved when compared with Asian or European cultures and this also contributes.
* While there are numerous exceptions, I see a substantive trend towards the output of the American worker, on average, considered little more than a means to an end. Sense of pride in a job well done now takes a back seat to revenue generated and the collection of material posessions.
* The new, extreme consumer-centric American society revolves around selling neatly-packaged, instantaneous [seeming] solutions to solve all known problems.
We have new economies rapidly being built around business models driven by the idea that everything needs to be constantly updated, upgraded and replaced. Things aren't built to last "forever"; products are specifically engineered to be quickly obsoleted in order to maintain a constant scheme of consumption and revenue.
* So now we have a society where we have managed to easily provide ourselves of basic necessities, and are now "manufacturing desire" as a product unto itself. The process of creating this market has two really bad side-effects: First, we are conditioned to consider all products to be inadequate, even from the moment we produce or acquire them. The fact that nothing is ever good enough demoralizes our work force. So nobody really cares about the quality of their work. Second, the process of promoting this consumer-centric model manifests itself in an ever-increasing sensory bombardment of messages promoting inadequacy and simple solutions (however unrealistic) to complex problems. People become ADD and progressively less-capable of addressing issues from a proactive perspective.
* So in our great, advanced society, we are overrun by those seeking simple solutions to complex problems, and those promoting simple solutions to complex problems. Our work ethic has gone to shit. We're so constantly bombarded with messages of inadequacy and the idea that "upgrading" will make everything instantly better, that we're not motivated to take the long road, understand why things fail, and actually solve problems. We just keep putting band-aids on things and passing the buck.
* In many markets, this pathology isn't as critical, but when you talk of computer systems, their ability to be qualified as capable or non-capable are obvious. So when you need a complex system developed, outsourcing the project to a different cultural state, that isn't so tainted (yet), and still maintains more of a sense of pride in a job well done, makes sense.
I've always felt that outsourcing was less about money and more about quality. And the truth is, the tech industry in America has become overly politicized, and the American worker has a dramatically diminished work ethic that is the result of his ever-changing environment, which de-emphasizes the significance of a job well done in favor of upgrading to the next perfect solution.
Is education an issue here? Yes, but it's not as much dependent upon the knowledge people posess as it is the need to educate people on more abstract concepts involving a non-materialistic search for satisfaction, pride and productivity.
1) It doesn't matter if the company is going under today or not. CEOs get paid a lot to try to predict the future and figure out what the economy and business climate will be like in 3 - 10 years, while at the same time being profitable today. Its called strategic planning.
No. Strategic planning is what CEOs did twenty years ago. Today's CEOs don't plan any further than the current quarter and their stock options, and that is the problem. It's called greed.
The simple fact is that we have entered a global economy.
The simple fact is that we have had a global economy for centuries. The other simple fact is that the U.S. is on the losing end of a 500 billion dollar trade imbalance.
No one should think that thier employer owes them a job, and no one should think that they owe thier employer anything but an honest day's work.
That's a really sad viewpoint that has only become popular by constant retelling since companies started being run by corporate raiders. A few decades back, companies and workers had loyalty, and that is what made American companies successful. Now, the current executives are spending that *capital* for personal gain, and the sheep are following, parroting their newspeak about global economies.
The simple fact is, make yourself valuable to the organization and you will probably have a job.
The simple fact is, many workers who made themselves very valuable to the company and built those companies into sucessful entities have been discarded in favor of more money for a CEO who has often just been hired. Skills have nothing to do with offshoring.
The entitlement mentality is killing the US.
You're right. Those silly people who go into debt for many thousands of dollars for an education, work hard, and help build a company should have no reason to think they should be able to retain their jobs. They're just a bunch of whiners, and they deserve to lose their jobs. Putting them in the unemployment line will stiffen their lips and save the U.S. Hoo-yaaahh!
That was a looooooooong post, but I applaud you for putting into precise words what my mind's been thinking for years. Government is the ultimate mob.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
Your cocky and snide remarks suggest you are the one who lacks any reasonable understanding of the REAL WORLD.
It's fairly simple, and to help you overcome your limitations, I'll use small words:
If you force labor to cost more near you, those who need labor will get labor cheaper away from you.
Now, back to big-boy talk:
THAT is the bastard son of globalization. The 1000 lbs gorrilla in the room NOBODY wants to talk about.
The only way to offset these artificial gaps in the cost of labor is to (A) remove the constraints on local labor or (B) add the same constraints on exported labor. Personally, I like (B).
The topic was discussing outsourcing of jobs and blaming it on CEOs. It's obviously not *THEIR* fault. We've paved a road for them, then bitch when they drive down the road.
So tell me, do you believe saying the most idiotic things in a complex way makes you appear intelligent, and will put people off of questioning your basic, flawed premise?
You believe that people are irrelevant, only the treatment of the group matters, and individuals who happen to be doing well should take a step back and realize that they're really being held down.
Your entire main paragraph stank of the "white man holding me down" attitude that's absurd. In addition, by placing such an emphasis on race, you imply that certain races can't really succeed in today's unjust world, and any members that do are just deluded.
Also, wealth creation is quite real, and it continues, even in today's cut throat business environment. If wealth cannot be created, then how is it that the great majority of americans and europeans now live in comfort unheard of even for the aristocracy at the time of the industrial revolution. Even many of today's poor people have cars, televisions, and access to emergency health care (yeah, no insurance, blah blah blah). The number one health problem of the poor people in the united states is obesity. Not starving to death under the jack boot heal of the local noble. So anyway, WHO THE FUCK DID WE STEAL ALL THAT MONEY FROM?
We didn't. We created the wealth. That continues today, as there's been no drastic upheavel of the western civilization that has created all that wealth. Sure, life's tough sometimes for individuals.
Incidentally, the western civilization you think is doomed to the dustbin of history has no viable replacement- most certainly not transnational progressivism, which ignore such blatantly obvious principles as the corruption of unaccountable power (Saddam Husseins brutal regime, UN's oil for food scandal, for starters) It also ignores the fact that there will always be certain individuals in society are morally irredeemable and need to isolated from the rest and that human nature is to act in your own self interest.
Western Civilization, especially the United States implemenation thereof is the best way to do all of the following:
1. Ensure the advancement of science by securing the benefits of research for those who did it.
2. Ensure that people produce goods & services, for the simple fact that they own the rewards for doing so. (property rights)
3. Keep peace between democratic market countries, because they find having a country as a trading partner is more desirable than invading it.
4. Ensure horse shit ideas like yours are thoroughly hosed down by respecting freedom of speech and a questioning attitude.
5. Locking up most bad guys, and keeping most innocent people free by having the rule of law prevail and a mostly fair justice system.
I do not claim the United States system is perfect (far from it), but it's the best the world's got by a longshot. If you don't beleive me, compare the amount of people immigrating to the united states to the amount of people emigrating from the united states.
You've spent far too much time traveling in the ultra left circles at college (sometimes high schoolers pick up on this crap too), where the "Earth-in-crisis:, communism is the best way, surrender our soveirengty to a bunch of countries who aren't half as good as us by any measure you can honestly consider, and make the world into one big commune."
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
As for Barrett... the obvious question is... if he wants to export every professional-level job in his organization to the Third World, why would the quality of US education matter to him? Another obvious point is... if the quality of education in the US is so bad, why are so many foriegners sending their kids TO the USA for a college education? Not to say that our public schools don't suck, but our college grads seem to be as well educated as everyone else's. Our college system might be more efficient if we didn't have so many kids requiring bonehead English as freshmen, but I don't see a lot of urgency with respect to improving primary and secondary education unless we have some idea as to where these kids will be working when they get out of college.
Of course, his real goal here is to persuade kids to stay in school, run up tens of thousands of dollars in debt so Intel and other US companies can cherry-pick the top 5% and the rest can go to work at Walmart or McDonald's starting their adult lives tens of thousands of dollars in debt, even worse off than the people around them who didn't "try to make it through the system".
What he is whining about is:
1) Barrett isn't complaining about the lack of trained professionals, he is complaining about the lack of professionals willing to work for minimum wage.
2) It is unlikely that he actually believes what he's saying. The cognitive dissonance between his saying "get all the education you can" and "I don't have a solution to that" is a bit too obvious. What he's trying to protect is not Intel, but his ability to pick up a few more quarters worth of vested stock options and their market price before he retires and sells out. If America is no longer a fit place to live even for the wealthy by the time he's done, there are other countries. If Intel is screwed long-term due to Barrett's use of Intel resources to train foriegn competitors, he will have no reason to care, he'll have made his pile. If regulation hits the outshoring marketplace, even if the regulation only eliminates US subsidies to outsourcing, investment analysts will be looking a lot harder at Intel's financials, and using offshoring as an excuse to cook the books to show higher quarterly profit won't work anymore. This would interfere with his pursuit of wealth at the expense of everybody else.
With respect to competitive marketplaces, Intel has been #1 for so long despite generally inferior products (see also Microsloth) that Barrett won't know a competitive marketplace until it bites him in the ass.
As for comparing him with Benedict Arnold. . . it isn't fair, he and his generation of CEOs appear to be trying to do even more damage to America long-term than Benedict ever dreamed of. If Benedict Arnold's treason had worked out, a few thousand Americans might have wound up "up against the wall". But people would still have been able to farm land and make things, they would merely have been paying taxes to England without representation for a couple or three more generations.
The long-term result of offshoring as it's being practiced now will inevitably result in Americans as a group moving way down the economic ladder. Want to see hunger and poverty in America and a generation of college educated kids with no jobs available above the warm body level? Just wait.
What's the alternative? Other than changing law and regulations that favor offshoring, massive public sector investment in basic science and technology R&D to create the products and services of tomorrow.
Tech Public Policy stuff
"real hardship"? The Grapes of Wrath is a novel, fer cryin' out loud. A work of fiction.
Actually, even if the labor cost approximately the same as it did here in the states it would still be cheaper to outsource for many companies. This is due to US laws that promote foreign investments, essentially allowing the company to tax defer all of the earnings as long as they are kept abroad. Thus they play a shell game where they either reinvest in foreign operations, or simply hide the money overseas, evading US tax law entirely. This is something that my state (Minnesota) is dealing with on a state level as a similar provision is in our tax code. One of the reasons that despite corporate profits increasing over 15% in the state, corporate income tax is actually down.