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Small Town USA Competing With India
William Hood writes "According to a news article at ABC, companies are sometimes opting to outsource to rural USA rather than foreign countries. Although it still achieves the same result of lowering the value of a job, I think the idea of moving to a larger house that costs less in a town with no traffic is a much better option than flying to Bangalore to train your replacement." From the article: "Sebeka is 14 miles from the closest traffic light, hours from the nearest Starbucks coffee shop and a far cry from the Chicago suburb he left. 'There is no traffic,' said technical consultant Clayton Seal, who also works in Sebeka. 'Anytime, day or night, you can cross Main Street -- almost don't have to look 'cause there's nobody there.' Seal also lost his job to outsourcing."
How exactly do you buy a larger house on a smaller salary? Chances are, if they move you to a more remote and cheaper part of the country, they're going to reduce your salary to an adjusted range for that region.
So let me get this straight... you move away from your family and friends. You pull your children out of their school, away from their family and away from their friends. You go through the trouble of selling your house and moving to a new place and buying a new house on your reduced salary. You lose the conveniences and diversity of a big city.
And what do you end up with? A job that could still always be outsourced if someone gets that bug up their ass. And what happens when that position is no longer there? Well, now you're stuck in the middle of nowhere and will probably have to move again because your new little podunk town isn't where all the jobs are - just your current one.
But if you want to inconvenience your family and live like a nomad, at the beck, whim and call of your employer - go for it.
For the record, my employer did this recently, too. But I refused to follow along unless they not only retained my previous salary dollar for dollar (not just salary GRADE), but gave me an increase. Most people, however, are not in a position to make such demands and will be in the "do it or we give your job to some guy in Russia" category.
Even companies that are doing this then move on to the next step of outsourcing, because no matter how cheap they can find labor in America, it's cheaper elsewhere. There are places without OSHA. Places without the same expectation of benefits. Places without the same taxation requirements or insurance. Places with cheaper construction, electricity and maintenance costs. If you can hire an engineer for $4-$7/hr outside of this country, why would you ever waste your money hiring an American when they could make more than that at Burger King?
To stay employable in the future in this country, you need to have highly marketable skills that are unlikely to be shipped overseas. Brush up on your ability to push a broom or ring up a cash register.
Seriously, any and every job that can be outsourced, eventually will be. I can't think of many that could not be. Even surgery eventually (since we saw the story of a surgery taking place across the ocean, via a remote/robot). Management could be handled overseas. Product manufacturing can be done over seas. Taking orders at a fast food drive through can be done overseas. Gas pumping can be automated. Even cashier work will eventually be automated. I guess security guard work is probably a sure bet. Police work. Janitorial work. And, I suppose, hollywood/acting type of work. Maybe teaching?
And yes, I'm a little bitter because I was too young to get into the game to enjoy the dot-com insanity and profit from it and now it feels less like a career every day and more like an 8-5 burger flipping job.
Although it still achieves the same result of lowering the value of a job
We are still a capitalist society. If someone is willing to do a job just as well (or better) than the guy currently doing it, and for less money, what do you think will happen?
For the guy that is accepting the job out in the country this may be an good thing idea because the cost of living is often much less out in the country than in the burbs or in a big city. I'm sure there are also people out there that like both working with computers and living on farms, all with the added benefit of having little to no commute to worry about.
Another good side effect of this would be bringing money into smaller, rural communities without bringing in Walmart (I live in Kentucky and there are many such areas neighboring the town that I live).
Regardless, I agree with Hood, I would very much prefer to hear that jobs are being outsourced more and more to Americans rather than being sent overseas to India.
Debronsky said the town's isolation will help guarantee workers will stick around. "There's no other work within two, three hundred miles," Debronsky said with a smile.
Translation: "We can treat these people like complete shit if we choose, and most of them will just roll over and take it due to the hassle of relocating to find alternate employment."
Living in the city is important to some people, but not to all. I lived in Seattle for a dozen years. My wife comes from a small town in eastern Washington state (we met in college in Seattle). Every time we go back to visit her folks, I always end up thinking "this is such a wonderful place - too bad there aren't any jobs".
Personally I'd take this sort of job in a short second. Friendlier people, a real sense of community, no commute, an amazingly lower cost of living... sure sounds good to me. Plus it'd make my wife happy - she's still a small-town girl at heart.
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Some positive things I can personally attest to about living in a rural area:
Your kids can graduate as Valedictorian or top 10% with relative ease
You can turn your TV/music way up and no neighbor cares.
Because it takes longer to get from A to B, you get a lot less visitors, particularly annoying visitors.
You actually take grass for granted (note: When I went to college, people were surprised at how I would cut across a grassy area without even thinking about it--apparently grass was respected if it was next to a sidewalk).
More space for personal projects.
Less traffic (as pointed out in the article).
No "Homeowners Association"...if you want to do home improvements or park cars in the yard, have at it.
An excellent view of the night sky.
Those are just a few of the things I miss about living in a rural area...
On the other hand, a company that gets massive tax breaks and general corporate welfare on the cost of american citizens should not be able to sell those same american citizens out for cheaper foreign labor that the citizens that helped get and keep the company running in the first place could not ever possibly compete with, simply because they had the misfortune of living in a top-society that values the Fortune 500 more than they value employing americans and keeping the economy strong?
How is the economy going to work out when the only jobs in this country are service jobs and everything that is consumed is produced overseas? Including knowledge and intellectual property.
No, nobody has a "right" to a job - but that doesn't mean anyone has the right to sell the entire country short, either. There is a serious difference between the freedom of the employer and the freedom of the employee in this country. You probably couldn't even live on the street for what they're paying in a lot of cases overseas. Are you suggesting that people in this country are just whiney and lazy because they can't compete with a position that requires 10 years of experience and a 4 year university degree on $6/hr?
Wake up and stop buying the Fox News Channel business-line hook and sinker. Not everything big business does is glorious and representative of democracy and freedom. A lot of it is underhanded, backstabbing and unpatriotic. Like using offshoring as a forceful threat to induce Americans to accept lower wages and worse working conditions.
I can code anything you can imagine, and work with any software program. I live in nowheresville PA :P Nothing to do here but bum on the internet 24/7 and wait for Dungeons and Dragons Online to be released.
God spoke to me.
I lived in Sebeka in 1990, it was a really nice little town. Good school, nice people, a public pool and ice rink. It even has a little river running through it.
I don't remember it being THAT small tho. I wouldn't want to live there now, but if I ever wanted to raise a family I could think of worse places.
How can you go wrong living in a place less than 10 miles from Nimrod, MN??
And then he did that thing with that stuff and it was like, wow...
My boss is always looking to outsource our jobs to India, China or Poland. Fortunately they are so paranoid about people stealing our business ideas, they never go through with their plans.
You will notice a distinct lack of protectionism when it comes to outsourcing jobs. When our industries are being undermined by cheaper foreign imports, the government starts introducing tariff barriers and/or quotas. This is because the rich people at the top of the chain are being affected. In contrast, job outsourcing benefits these same rich people, so there is no reason for the government to introduce protective measures. The government only protects its direct paymasters, not the little fish.
Sometimes I wonder if it's harder to understand tech support outsourced to India, or southern US.
What surprises me is that firms seem more than willing to outsource entire projects to another country or to some out of the way rural place, but as soon as the subject of current employees working from home comes up, it immediately get's dismissed for reasons usually related to "making sure the work is getting done".
A few data points from Plattsburg, Missouri (pop. 2,375), where I call home... based on what I can tell (and I've lived in Chicago and SoCal, as well as other rural areas) these data points could be duplicated in many areas:
"It was a summer's tale: Just a boy, his Linux, and a head full of dreams..."
I live in Harrisonburg, a college town in VA where $35,000 would actually be a pretty good starting salary for a programmer since the cost of living is $17,000 a year. I'd rather be paid $40-45,000 a year here starting out than $60,000 in Fairfax, VA which is a pretty large IT area in the US, because the money would go farther here.
:-D
Seriously, these companies are abysmally stupid. They can always hire an English-speaking CS or CIS student and start a new branch in bumblefuck USA for much less than going to India. The best part about it for the management is that it's all domestic and if they do it right, they can drive out that day and talk to the team in person.
Like many CS students here, I'd rather work in this town for $45,000 because it's close enough to bigger areas that it's not a struggle to get out on the weekend, but it's small enough to make an entry level salary really attractive. I can honestly say that I'd be very happy making that same salary around here for 4-5 years because barring VA's tax rate going through the roof (yeah, fuck you Gov. Warner!) it'd be easy to really save and invest A LOT out here on that kind of salary.
Outsource to bumblefuck USA, not Bangalore India. That should be our new anti-offshoring slogan
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During the Democratic presidential primary I heard one candidate talk about the need to stop giving welfare money to large corporations but instead give tax breaks and incentives to small businesses. The rationale is that small businesses keep jobs here in America rather than outsource them. I like the idear not only because it keeps jobs in America, but it fits in well with the American Dream. Giving people the opportunities of making a good living while being your own boss.
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It's not an option because the Indian government will not allow US citizens to work there. They've got an amazingly one-way division of labor.
Rural America is quite different from rural Europe in that it typically consists of very marginalized societies that live in their own communities governed by their own rules and frequently exist outside the main judiciary system. Yes I'm talking rednecks with shotguns here.
Rural America, unlike rural Europe does not benefit from equalization funds similar to Europe and resembles Bangalore India much more than it resembles villages in coastal France or northern Scotland.
When you move to rural areas you also give up a lot that is taken for granted in urban environments, that is selection of foods and products, access to culture and amenities and the ability to mingle with like-minded people. There simply is just a lack of everything.
Now, the housing cost compensates a little bit especially if you intend to have more than a couple of kids. What you have to offset this against is the real possibility that even if you manage to hold on to your job your spouse may not find gainful employment in a rural or semi-rural area. This is frequently a problem for my co-workers who have well educated but frequently underemployed spouses and girlfriends.
Rural areas may get hit hard by the impending energy crisis. There is nothing for public transport in where I live and no real chance of seeing any. Having a car is an absolute necessity to even stay fed and clothed. Driving distances tend to be enormous. My work place is 60 miles from my house while the nearest grocery shop is at least 5 miles away.
As a European I can't get over that I have to travel that far for milk and bread with no walkable community. And I'm actually in the main town's subdivision!
Having ended up where I am I'm seriously reconsidering returning to Europe. You can make a little more money working here vs Europe but you have to sacrifice sooo much more!
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Of course, I didn't move to "Bumfuck, Noplace, U.S.A" -- I moved to a place which had a fair amount of local high tech biz taking advantage of the lower cost of living, not quite the rural extreme depicted dependent on a single remote employer.
What tends to happen is that the high-tech people in a rural area with traditional low-tech employment opportunities tend to be the local "rich folk" that stimulate and reinvigurate the local economy.
You could've hired me.
Wake up. It was never Seal's job in the first place. No-one owns a job or has a right to a job.
Remarkably, people tend to work better if they have some reasonable expectation that their jobs are their jobs, and good employers understand this. Attitudes like the one you express, while all too common, are ultimately destructive to employers and employees alike.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
While I agree that what is happening with American companies outsourcing is highly unethical at first sight. But the more I think about this and look back on history, the more I'm starting to see that America has been spoiled with a quality of life far beyond what should normally have been. This is in part to the tapping of cheap labor.
Now fast forward today... We have international travel and instant communicans that it makes globalism that much closer to home. As such, the process of outsourcing (and insourcing too) is what happens when you reach a point of achieving Global-Economic-Equilibrium. As each country demands higher pay for the services they are selling, you simple re-outsource to Africa, Mexico, Asia...etc untill the cost of their services equals that of what can be bought in America.
Now you might think this really *sucks*. But let me ask you something. Would you rather force to keep jobs in America so you can buy your next "X-Box"? Or, would you rather the jobs be offered to 10 people in your place that just wish to have clean water and shelter over their head? In retrospect, I now know what the ethical choice should be.
Basically to sum things up, we Americans and Europeans are spoiled and don't realize just how good of a life we have it. Untill the rest of the world catches up in skills and industry and thus demand higher wages themselves, expect the 1st world to stagnate for some time. Keep in mind this will only be a temporary event that might last for 20+ years from now. However, the fostering of free enterprise does alow for democrocy at the same time which should make for a safer and more peaceful world.
Life is not for the lazy.
Since when have markets EVER worked the way you describe? Your proposition reminds me of my vegetarian friends who don't eat meat because they think that if we consume less meat, it will help solve world hunger problems. That's NOT why people are hungry, we throw food away every day in this country. We have more than enough surplus to feed the entire world. It's because markets are inefficient. If all Americans decided to quit eating meat tomorrow, that still wouldn't change the fact that the reason people go hungry is because they don't have money, and without money, you don't get to eat in a market based economy.
The same goes for your example of labor outsourcing. Corporations are not doing this to provide running water, etc. to third world countries. Only a small minority in India are benefitting from any of this outsourcing, the rest are just as poor as they ever were. It would be nice if corporations were actually installing infrastructure, but that's not reality. The reality is that they are doing the bare minimum, like making sure that the warehouses that the employees work in have electricity, and running water, but when those employees go home, they still live in the same 3rd world standards that they had before. Again, this is a small minority, the rest are living in poverty. The net effect of outsourcing has been to lower the standard of living, not to raise it. As soon as the standard of living gets to high, the corporations will move. The goal is to drive wages down to the lowest level. Small miniorities of rich people will benefit, both in the US and in the 3rd world, but everyone else will suffer.
You keep describing this as a process of wealth redistribution to the 3rd world, when the reality is that the wealth is being distributed to the rich. The way markets have worked, and the way that they have always worked, is that the poor get poorer and the rich get richer. The net effect of free trade is not redistribution of wealth to 3rd world countries, but is in fact to redistribute wealth out of the hands of the middle class and in to the hands of the upper class. I would quit thinking about this in terms of nationality, that only confuses the issue. Free trade's goal is not the redistribution of wealth between nations, but is in fact a policy that redistributes wealth between class. Making "India" or "China" richer means absolutely nothing. Nationalism no longer has meaning in this world of globalization. The proper way to view this and to gain understanding into why free trade proponents love it so much, is to view it in terms of class. When one does a class based analysis, and looks at what this policy is doing to each class (middle vs upper vs lower), it becomes obvious that around the world, free trade has taken money away from the middle and lower classes, and put it in the hands of the upper classes. The rich in India, China, US, etc. have gotten quite a bit richer treating and trading middle class labor as if they were commodities, and the poor have gotten quite a bit poorer as a result.
My parents have lived in Moses Lake for the last 12 years. They're trying to sell their house and get out of there; unfortunately for them the housing market there is not as hot as it is other places. In fact they haven't had any bites in the last couple of months it's been on the market.
You mention water skiing in Moses Lake - However whenever I have visited the lake is full of algae scum. It's a rather stagnant lake. Not anything I'd want to swim in.
And the weather? It gets very cold in the Winter (down around 0 is not unusual) and very hot in the Summer (100 is not unusual this time of the year). And it's a desert landscape without much of anything interesting. There's a park nearby called the Potholes Park (sounds just lovely). Lots of farms around so you can get plenty of pesticide spray wafting your way (one of the reasons my parents want to move - it has become enough of a problem that it's effecting their health). Oh and then there's the Hanford Nuclear Reservation not an hour away - lot's of glow-in-the-dark fun to be had there!
No, Moses Lake is not the beauty spot you make it out to be. I actually find it to be one of the most depressing places I've ever visited - but maybe it's partly because I prefer the green side of the mountains.