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An Independent Study on Offshoring IT?

Posted by michael on from the where-do-you-want-to-go-today dept.

vsprintf writes "What are the real effects of offshoring on the U.S. technology sector? Pick your economist on the subject. The Bush administration's Gregory Mankiw says it's all good, and exporting jobs is just a new way to do trade. In Congressional testimony, Ralph Gomory says a little bit is okay, but too much is bad, while Herman Daly says it's just plain bad. The ITAA's paid mouthpiece, Harris Miller, says it must be good because IT workers in India wear Nike tennis shoes. At last, it appears the IEEE-USA has persuaded Congress to pay for an independent study to determine how offshoring really affects U.S. IT."

2 of 642 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Mankiw is such a hypocrite by NearlyHeadless · · Score: 4, Informative
    He basically wrote all these economic books and once he was hired by the Bush administration, he contradicts his writings.
    Almost all economists agree with what Mankiw said, e.g. leftish econcomist J. Bradford Delong, a Democrat who hates George Bush says "Greg Mankiw is on the right side" of the outsourcing debate. What Mankiw said caused most members of the Bush administration to cringe. Although most know it's true, it's not the kind of thing you're supposed to say out loud.

    For an economically-informed discussion of outsouring, see this article by Daniel Drezner.

  2. Re:The fallacy by Rotten168 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Nonsense... without offshoring there never would have been a computer revolution in the first place. To think there would've is completely ignorant. Where do you think this computer you're using was made?

    PC's didn't become mass-consumables until they started being largely made overseas (except for the processors). There would have been much fewer computer programming jobs without offshoring.

    The economic arguments for free trade are sound and they are pretty much laws at this point. When an industry is offshored, it's cost to consumers is generally lowered. Not only that but that creates a whole new class of middle-class consumers.

    In the end, it is my belief that offshoring will at some point generate a whole new slew of new computer jobs, but they just may not be the kind we had before.