Slashdot Mirror
India Outsourcers Find Back Door in Canada
securitas writes "Metro International newspapers Toronto edition reports that more Indian companies are opening back doors into the United States by setting up shop in Canada. The issue of outsourcing, offshoring and nearshoring has become a hot issue, with the 2004 presidential election less than a week away. Candidate John Kerry has said he will close the tax loophole that makes it advantageous to outsource call centers."
I think near-shore or off-shore makes no difference as they're still outsourcing, ie taking away jobs which could have been given to locals.
Bush said druing a debate that he will let Mexicans to come to US to work legally, and gradually obtain residency. If this happens, the Canadian-Indian issue is small in comparison.
Maybe the ideal "screening" is based on the percentage of employees' residency status, so if over 50% of a Canadian company is from developing countries, it's no deal.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
I think it's because there was a fad for awhile for directors of TV and movies to film in Canada, because it was cheaper, and for a little while a lot of places in Southern California were feeling it. But then prices started going up in the areas in Canada where filming was being done because there was awareness that there were lots of rich people there all of a sudden, and the locals acted accordingly. It'll balance itself out. At least, in my youthful optimism, I'm going to hope it will.
I knew from the post that someone would immediately whine that it mentioned Kerry's stance.. and immediately wanted to post something about it...
Slashdot is not a TV or radio network. There is no reason for it to give "equal time" or avoid showing bias. It's "news for nerds" - it doesn't claim to be nonpartisan (or partisan).
The internet is not the same as other "media outlets", and Slashdot has no "responsibility" to be any certain way.
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Also please remember that the US has spent the last twenty five years literally ramming free trade down the world's collective throat (admittedly, an effort made on behalf of the financial elite, not workers).
Normally I'm pretty pro-republican, but I don't see particular story as biased. Kerry has said he will close the tax loophole that essentailly encourages outsourcing. Bush says (see debate #3 transcript) we should get retrained and go to community college.
/. and it's moderators are left leaning can't be denied. This just isn't a good example.
It's a fact that outsourcing is a hot issue (for some). It's a fact Kerry has made that statement a number of times that he'll fix it. Will he? Can he? What is he going to fix exactly? I doubt it, but it's a pursuasive (and noteable) statement.
Now the fact that
I was doing a tech support call to Dell the other day to replace a DOA monitor. This item had a warantee under Dell's "Higher-Education Service Contract." Now, I only spoke to one person, so I can't comment on the entire situation. But for what it's worth, the guy on the other end spoke clear english, but he had a certain emphasis on vowels that struck me as odd. And when he was reading me back the letters, expanding each with a word for clarity, he said "...and 'p', as in Pierre."
"God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh." -Voltaire
If I hadn't been through all of this election I probably wouldn't have believed my eyes. This report from last February from people in Wisconson finding Caller ID signatures from Canada for the Kerry Election Call Center? Makes you wonder if there will be political loopholes in any laws similar to those for the National No Call list.
Today is a gift. Save the receipt.
Wusthof knives are OK but I have given up on henckels. If you really want great knives I would go for the japanese brands myself. Global (forged only) or masahiro are fantastic.
If you want German knives the messermeisters are a great value and are as good as wusthofs IMHO.
If you want the best bang for the buck I'd go with forschner or Tramontina Professional Series. Tramontina are made in Brazil and are an exceptional value for being forged.
If I was buying something for my mother I'd by the tramontina, for myself I am saving up for a nenox.
evil is as evil does
But in the overall picture there will be many more people looking for a lot fewer jobs. A lot of people take minimum wage jobs now because they HAVE to, which locks out a lot of other unqualified workers. Raising the minimum wage is a BAD idea, as is a so called "living" wage.
Frankly, minimum wage jobs should not be held by people with familial responsibilities - they are a stepping stone to bigger and better things. More often than not, only slackers who need to change jobs often (from one McDonalds to Wendies to Burger King) because they aren't doing a good job are the ones stuck at minimum wage. I'm not saying good people don't get stuck at minimum wage, I'm saying people make decisions and if they don't like their current positions they need to make better decisions - like taking that minimum wage job that has the potential to pay more in the future if you do good work, or taking the minimum wage job that might actually give you some worthwhile work experience.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
A lot of economists argue that the minimum wage leads to unemployment. Yet we keep on raising the minimum wage every now and then, and it doesn't seem to have a significant effect on unemployment.
The reason is simple: only 2% of US employees earn the minimum wage. Most of that 2% is retail fast food workers. It is so low that the vast, vast majority of jobs have market-based prices higher than the minimum wage. It may have a deleterious effect on teenage unemployment, but not unemployment in general.
The "smart" politician will say to the public "Oh horrors, there must be a minimum wage hike so people aren't in poverty". What he means is "The market prices for 98% of jobs in this country went up, so raise the minimum wage just enough to make it look like I care, but won't actually lead to significantly higher unemployment."
Take this reasoning and apply it to China and India, both of which also have a minimum wage, though much, much smaller than that of the US). Their min wage t probably only affects a small part of their population as well (as many of the people in those country don't work for wages anyway but are subsistence farmers, and the ones who do tend to make more than them minimum wage).
Would that be more or less embarrassing than when Dan Quayle was heading for Latin America and mentioned that he needed to brush up on his Latin?
Amusingly, even had he actually said it, it wouldn't actually be that bad of an idea. When we lived in Tucson (not far from the Mexican border), my father was actually the "go-to" guy for children who only spoke spainish when none of the doctors who actually spoke spainish were around.
He doesn't speak spainish, but he'd had years of Latin; however, he discovered that if you speak latin with a Mexican accent, even most kids can guess what you're trying to say, and by treating their spainish as badly accented Latin, he could fumble through what they were trying to say.
I can verify from my own experience that the same applies to Italian ^_^
Also French (as verified by a girl who transferred to my high school which had French classes from a school which had Latin classes), Portuguese, and Romanian. Learning Latin makes it very easy to learn the other five Romance (Latin-based) languages.
It can also improve one's English, since English has many words that derive from Latin.