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President Defends Global Outsourcing
mytrip wrote to mention a New York Times article discussing President Bush's trip to the Indian subcontinent. There, he urged Americans to welcome global competition for their jobs. From the article: "Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip, strongly defended the outsourcing of American jobs to India as the reality of a global economy, and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods ... 'The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable,'"
How many of you are making more money because of all the people in China, India, and other cheap-labor locales, who buy stuff that you produce? To vote, Click here
Now, how many of you know somebody who lost their job because of overseas competition? To vote, Click here
Based on that unscientific survey, I'd say that George Bush is talking smack. The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers and replacing them with cheap overseas labor. There may be more wealth, but it's all concentrated in a few hands.
Bush can't understand what's it's like for an ordinary family to suffer the devastation of unemployment because he's never lived through it.
Perhaps we should offer someone in India the job of American President for 1/10 of the salary he makes. Then we'll see how much he supports it.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
If you want a free market you have to accept the consequences.
Religion for nerds. Stuff that really matters
"and that if we can make a product they want". Ok, you hear him well its time we all quit our jobs and become curry spice makers! We will be Ba-Zillion-Airs!.
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What becomes viable? Almost any manufactured product the Indian middle class want can be made in India less expensively than the US can make it. If the Indians can't do it, the Chinese will do it for them.
I can envisage US companies making products in Asia for sale in Asia, with the profits coming back to the US companies. The only people in the US who will benefit are the owners of the companies who do are successful doing this.
It looks to me like Bush is one more pushing the "increased business profits are good for my friends" line. I'm not sure how the average US citizen will benefit from this strategy.
VA Software in Fremont, Calif., a provider of software, information and community support to IT managers and development professionals, keeps core, business-critical work at home, according to Colin Bodell, CTO. "Work that benefits from close proximity to our customers stays in the U.S. Work that can be done anywhere is typically sent to India," he says.
Bottom line: Slashdot's parent company and President Bush are on the same boat on this one. Editors shouldn't ignore or forget that.
To summarize: This policy is good for large multinational businesses, bad for working Americans.
While I don't like outsourcing from a consumer perspective (spend four hours on the phone with a Dell "technician" that can't speak English), I think there is a point to be made in the fact that we don't try nearly as hard to sell our crap overseas as foreigners do selling their crap to us. Outsourcing wouldn't be such an issue if we weren't the only people buying our stuff.
Just lately here in Ontario (Canada), a bunch of manufacturing jobs disappeared. I am unaffected by it, since I work as a software developer. When the local politicians spin it as opportunity to grow towards more of a service workforce from a manufacturing one, I listen and agree... but when the bubble burst for dot-coms, I couldn't care less what they said, I was worried about my future employment.
Long story short, those unaffected by outsourcing directly will agree with Bush's view that there is a market to sell other goods (that are not already outsourced to India), and that is good for the country. Those affected by the outsourcing won't give a shit about a new market, and only care about their lost job/income/life.
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
Too many people will either object because its Bush or object because they feel entitled to their job.
The fact is the world doesn't care. We either compete to win or we lose. If all you are willing to do is bitch about Bush or your employer (or usually the case - portraying yourself as victim even though it happened to someone else) then your going to lose.
The world economy is such fun. It doesn't care what you think and it don't care what you think your entitled to. Accept it and then deal with.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
"the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods"
wait, what does america produce these days, other than malls and walmarts?
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
...but first, they need a job to pay for it, and that's where my fellow Americans can help today. God bless.
per capita GDP is $3100. per capita GDP in US is $41,800. not much of a trade.
Bush's globalization focus is disturbing to me. It is reducing the US economy to one of consumption, while production is leaving the country. Couple that with increasing federal spending, and debt, and increasing personal spending, and debt, and the US will be an economic hostage to those who buy US debt securities.
Gas stations on the Garden State Parkway are now run by Lukoil, a Russian oil company. More and more of America's cash is leaving the country - our affluence is being purchased at the expense of our future.
Rich preppy boy. Oil boy. Oil daddy. Oil family. Let's outsource that whole klan.
The maximization of profits brings the greatest amount of human happiness.
Chasing short-term gains will lead to long-term social stability.
Destroying good jobs creates better ones.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
...not that anyone should be suprised.
Your job gets outsourced? Don't worry. Just upgrade your skills. Eventually everyone will be a CEO!
That's the usual refrain here when outsourcing debates start. In addition to the fact that we can't all be the best and ok but not amazing programmers have to do something for a living, if we don't have the entry level jobs here, who will learn the skills to let them design programs?
I bet Michael Dell sells a lot of computers to Indian Call centers. Or more likely, ships a lot of computers to "his" call centers.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
And this disaster of a president is not right on very much. The global economy is a reality. Cheap labor is a reality. No wall, physical or legislative, can hermetically seal the country away from this fact. Mostly, the congress can only hand out special dispensations to groups they expect to favorably vote for their particular party, and will make the situation worse. And make EVERY consumer pay more. Anyone promising to make globalism go away will never be able to deliver and will make things worse for everyone.
For the industry many Slashdotters, including myself, work in, the situation has changed since the 1990's.
1990's - Indian programmers programmed for major US corporations in the US.
2000's - Indian programmers program for major US corporations in India.
The evolution of the internet made this possible and will also make this impossible to stop.
The reality is that as the economy becomes global, Americans are going to loose money. Americans have been profiting off other countries poverty for so long that we have come to expect a certain level of (undeserved) wealth. As the global economy starts to balance out, the United States economy has nowhere to go but down.
The only reason we buy products from China and such is that they are LESS EXPENSIVE than the same product made here.
It is NOT because it's a DIFFERENT product.
Which pretty much leaves just food, Intel/AMD chips and movies/music.
Yeah, that's going to help the average US citizen.
Why would a chinese or indian buy an American product when they can buy something made in their own country by people making one tenth what our workers make?
Globalization works great for the rich people. It forces their entire workforce to take pay and benefit cuts in order to eek out a living. At the same time, the people who sit on the top of the pile are getting tax cuts and crying about how unfair it is that they be asked to contribute anything to the society that made them rich in the first place.
Again, this shows that Bush and his ilk have no connection with the citizens of this country.
-All that is gold does not glitter - Tolkien
www.ra
It's not about trading what one has in surplus. The theory is that one trades in the goods in which one has a comparative advantage. That is, you trade in the goods that cost you the least to produce.
A surplus of a particular good will end up being eliminated by market forces. If the supply exceeds the demand, then the price will lower until there is no more surplus.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
At some point, in order for OUR economy to grow, we have to bring the rest of the world up to speed. Most of the world lives in poverty. That has to change.
Of course, until everyone is up to speed, shoving jobs to third-world countries means that developed countries are going to see a LONG period of economic depression. And, of course, the corporations and their CEOs are STILL going to get richer, becaues their labor costs will plummet at the same time their sales increase.
Still, it has to happen eventually. It's just gonna suck for the U.S. and Europe.
I don't care much for the president as a person nor as an executive, but to blame this on Bush is pointless. This overseas market/globalization has been coming about for a long time and no one person can rightly be blamed for it. Groups of people, maybe. Americans firstly, possibly. We as Americans expect to consume to our hearts content while still maintaining great wealth and job security.
Quick telling us fairly tales, Mr. Bush. Trading a cow for 5 magic beans will not lead to fortune, riches, and a life lived happily ever after.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
...and said that the United States should instead focus on India as a vital new market for American goods...
What goods, Mr President? ALL the manufacturing has gone to China. Maybe we can seel the Indians the 1,000,001 scams and rip-offs that remain the mainstay of American 'economics'?
In other words, its good for me but possibly not for the people I claim to represent. Oh well.
Mr. Bush, reiterating a theme of his trip...
Not that I'd expect more from the NY Times, or the foaming at the mouth liberals of Slashdot, but it used to be that the office of President of the United States was something you'd respect, and so you would refer to the president as 'President Bush' instead of Mr. Bush, kind of like how you refer to a doctor as "Doctor SuchandSuch" instead of "Mr. SuchandSuch".
Anyone agree? Then reply!
"There, he urged Americans to welcome global competition for their jobs."
Too bad we couldn't outsource Bush's job to the President of India.
Or alternatively, hire some some street urchin in Calcutta to do Bush's job. The urchin is probably smarter than what we got now.
....I doubt that most of the people who want free markets have really thought this through. They just know that it sounds good.
Finding God in a Dog
Manmohan Singh would probably make a much better president than our wee George.
I'm sure we can retrain him for an exciting career in fry cookery.
1) We would not be making the products. They would. We will be changing bedpans, learning to be lawyers, or teaching snot nosed brats how to change bed pans. The only Americans in the value stream are the owners.
2) A global economy only means more money for shareholders, not joe blow. If his job needs to go overseas, he's pumping gas to whoever is left that can afford a car.
3) What the fuck do we care about India (or China)? They don't pay our taxes. They aren't getting shot at in Iraq. That they don't like Pakistan is really the only useful thing about them. They didn't vote for Dubya, hell not even half of us did.
4) Their workers cannot compete fairly against american workers, owing largely to property values in the US. Ever try to buy a small house near San Jose? 50 year mortgage ring a bell?
5) US dollars invested overseas are not ending up in american hands. They're ending up in India. How is that good for us?
6) Why should US children bother to learn math or science? There will be no jobs utilizing those skills. Instead they should be learning history, deceit and bed pan frisbee.
7) Who is going to be left to build and design missiles, aircraft, tanks, and navy ships if our unskilled factory jobs are done elsewhere, and all our highly skilled design jobs are done elsewhere? Oh that's right, we have a great track record of peace lately.
8) The only thing keeping the investors in the US is the relative safety, uncorrupt government (by comparison), and generally complacent populace. If they start getting hungry they will get angry, and have no problem shooting your ass.
Ever heard of Intellectual Property?
Global outsourcing could lead to a race to the bottom where whoever is willing to do a satisfactory job for the least amount sets the standard for those wages.
Either you figure out a way to exploit those low-wage workers, or you end up being one.
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Hey now, even Jack got the hen that laid the golden eggs.
"...understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want..."
He forgot to mention along with the 300 million in the middle class and 700 million starving on subsistence wages it's a great market he wants to grow for us. We're so fortunate to have forward thinking leadership. Why New Orleans might even be a candidate for this kind of help.
how the often libertarian gestalt of Slashdot suddenly advocates government-sponsored trade protectionism as soon as the topic of *computer-related* jobs comes up. Farm subsidies are economically inefficient, and they distort the true price of food. The same thing is true of the oil industry. Why can't the government get smart and start allowing non-distorted prices for gasoline?! Obviously the government is in the hands of special interests. Ah, but then the subject of outsourcing comes up, and the tech industry is under threat and in need of assistance!
There's clear hypocrisy at play here. We want competition and open markets, we want global cooperation in open source software development, we just don't want to give up top dog status in areas that directly affect our jobs.
Made in China is fine and programming in India is fine, as long as the price of laptops keeps dropping. When a product is even a few dollars more expensive than average, Slashdotters are more than willing to scream and yell about it. Well, lower prices are the result of global markets. More buyers, more sources of cheap production.
We'd rather get cheap, well-made goods and donate to aid organizations than truly allow developing economies to compete with us.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yeah, in the fairy tale.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
But this is /. and I'm pedantic ... so ... :)
... over time ... less focus on education because there just isn't enough of a payoff for it. Except for lawyers and doctors. And too many lawyers looking at a bunch of doctors has its own problems.
It costs a lot of money to get a PhD. Which, for most people, means a lot of student loans. There's no way you're going to finance night school on a WalMart paycheck.
Which means a lot of debt that cannot be paid off on a WalMart paycheck.
Which means
The same goes for a Masters degree.
The same goes for a Bachelors degree.
When the jobs will only require and support the "free" education you get at a public high school, that's all that most people will pursue.
And once the education rate is in decline, it's all over for the country.
JibJab has a nice succinct summary on global outsourcing called Bix Box Mart
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
THEY TOOK OUR JOBS!
The book above covers the topic of globalization rather well. It would really help those of you who haven't read it understand that the issue is bigger than american jobs going over seas.
At any rate, the fact of the matter is not everything can be outsourced and that there is a lot of political reform that is going to have to happen in countries like CHINA/INDIA before higher level jobs are outsourced.
Protectionism isn't going to help us at all in the long run. Instead of complaining about a lot of jobs going overseas, we should focus on how America can continue to lead the world in areas like higher education and innovation/R&D. If we don't, it's only a matter of time before China/India/some other country steps up and takes the lead.
At any rate, read the book. It's actually pretty interesting. I have to read it for my telecomm class.
If you object to something that our government does, there is a simple solution:
Get someone else elected! Join a campaign! Even if your representative agrees with you, it is likely there is a nearby district that doesn't. Go over there and join that campaign, instead.
You have a printer, print and distribute leaflets. Get to know your neighbors, talk to them.
It doesn't even matter if you win on the issues you care about, as long as you win. Use local issues. If you are in Texas, for example, remind everybody that Sam Travis would never have ceeded american ports of our southern borders, and the republican congressmen that rolled over on that one aren't true texans...true texans never retreat, never surrender.
How can anyone hear if you aren't willing to raise your voice?
(Kerry, FWIW, talked about eliminating some of the tax incentives that encourage companies to offshore. At least he understood the problem and had an appropriate, if timid, response.)
Ya' know, I'm starting to think that Bush finally figured out that he no longer has to worry about getting reelected. When controversial stuff like the Dubai port deal and Indian nuclear power come out on the news, he hardly even defends his position any more. He just does whatever he feels like.
The mask is off. Now we get to meet the real Dubya.
Have you ever wondered How to Take Over
just wondering what someone in india's middle class would make that would allow them to purchase goods made in the usa?
In the unlikely event that I ever find myself agreeing with George W. Bush on anything, I will carefully rethink my position and try to find where I made a mistake.
I lost my job to outsourcing. I was out of work for nearly a year.
It was hell, it was torment, and it was impossible to find work...until I outsourced my job search.
I was at wit's end until I was inspired by My Outsourced Life and I did something about it and landed a great job thanks to my friend "Steven" in India.
Sure, Bush's attitude is cocky because I strongly suspect he thinks that we are "better than" India; but the important thing to take out of this is : outsourcing is not going away, and you can either exploit it or let it ruin you.
The cocky part is the American spirit, for overcoming adversity in the worst of times, with hard work, ingenuity and creativity. Dedication to excellence in the work you do will keep you going, and if you want something badly enough you will find a way to get it.
Yeah, will we don't have to accept it.
Because everyone agrees 100% with everything their employer says and does, right?
No longer make anything, period. They outsourced all our manufacturing decades ago. What in the fuck are we supposed to sell them, pets.com stock?
What's disrespectful about calling someone Mister? Calling him "Shrub" is disrespectful, calling him "Mr. Bush" is hardly a "liberal NY Times" offense.
l
For instance, here's Bill O'Reilly at Fox News referring to him as such. Just another moonbat liberal, that O'Reilly!
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180837,00.htm
The revolution will NOT be televised.
>> he [Bush] urged Americans to welcome global competition for their jobs.
What a fuckwit.
So maybe he'll reduce taxes and cost of living in the US so we can compete with people in economies where houses cost $2k and you can feed a family on $1k a year.
"It is reducing the US economy to one of consumption"
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the end goal of an economy? Or do you think we should produce a bunch of goods just for the sake of having them around?
"the US will be an economic hostage to those who buy US debt securities"
That is flat out wrong. First of all, US debt securities are owed mainly to the US government and to other US citizens. Second of all, if the US economy stops producing enough new value to cover our new debts, the value of US currency will drop, making foreign debt less meaning-full. The problem is that government spending crowds out private spending. It doesn't matter where the money nominally comes from. If it comes from taxes, it prevents private citizens or companies from spending it. If it comes from bonds, it prevents money from being invested in private companies, or being given out as loans to private citizens.
"More and more of America's cash is leaving the country"
That is true in nominal dollars, but not as a percentage of our GDP. US GDP growth has always outpaced growth in US debt. The federal budget should always be compared to the GDP, raw numbers in this case are meaningless.
There is nothing wrong with outsourcing: hire the best worker, regardless of the country.
It may be unavoidable, but it shouldn't be encouraged by tax policies that permit corporations write off the expenses accociated with outsourcing. If the outsourcing actually saves money by itself, then it is inevitable. But if corporations are finding extra savings through tax policies - that's the injustice.
Almost anything we make can be made cheaper in China or even India.
And as time goes by, more manufacturing will be moved there.
This isn't about DIFFERENT products. There aren't any different products. I can outfit an entire house at WalMart and almost all of their stuff is imported from China. So any country that would be a consumer of our products would be smarter to just get those same products from China. We do.
I'm in favour of a global economy, but not in the way it is being done.
Right now, we're in a race to the bottom because we aren't putting any barriers on countries without the same worker protections or environmental protections that we have.
Rather than dragging us down, we need to bring them up.
Great. Pay them to make our products that we, in turn, sell to them. Has Bush started toking/snorting/drinking again?
I'll be outsourcing my $0.02 for profit...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
I have. You face a 70% import duty on IT equipment, plus months-long waits to clear customs. We even once had a machine torn open and trashed and the packaging shredded by Indian customs, who then sent it back to us through an agent in Hong Kong after three months. The whole time, our customer was asking us daily, "where the hell is it?" We didn't know because no one would tell us. Our shipper (UPS) just said it was in Indian customs.
Something tells me we're going to have much luck selling stuff to those 300 million middle-class Indians. It reminds me of the "billion-consumer" Chinese market we were all excited about twenty years ago.
everytime a job is outsourced to india we should shoot a cow.
"Granted, Bill did his share, but at least he got shit done, didn't destroy our image across the globe and hand our country over to radical religious nuts.
Got his "shit" done? Clinton pushed in a bill that balanced our budget way before our economy was ready, taking too much money out of our pockets sending us into a hard stagflation that resulted in one of the worst recessions we have suffered in decades.
Bush got his "shit" done by his tax cuts and fixing all of Bill's mistakes.
Bush and the rest of the politicos in the US and probably Britain don't care if our jobs go to India/China/N.Korea or where ever because they don't see the jobs as "ours". The jobs, so they think, belong to the corporations and can be given and taken away as the corporations see fit. Bush and co. would be happy as clams if the Common American made $.25/hr, as long as Bush and co. still ran the country. They have the power and the money, and we have the votes, but they can buy our votes and we can't vote for their power and money. Welcome to the REAL America, brothers.
Here will be an old abusing of God's patience and the king's English.
I agree with the concept of a free market. The only problem is that there nothing free in our market. The US is kept at a significant disadvantage by our draconian tax system that punishes achievement.
Although it's only one part of the solution, revamping our tax system to make the US competitive in the global marketplace would go a LONG way in solving this problem. And the best way to go about revamping our tax system is the http://fairtax.org/
Another part of the solution would be to find a way to compel other countries to compete fairly and on the same playing field, i.e. removal of the "Japanese Inspection" of American products at their ports and customs stations. If not, perhaps we as Amerians should consider imposing the same anti-competitive tariffs and procedures on THEIR products as they impose on ours.
So the long and short of it is that both the Republicans and the Democrats are both full of it -- their only interest is to maintain their political power by keeping the current idiotic tax system in place whereby they can manipulate public opinion, pander to their particular voting blocs and stay in office. Moving to the Fair Tax would effectively put control of how much tax we as consumers pay in taxes back into our own hands, as well as make American products competitive again, both domestically and abroad, by elimination of the embedded taxes in ALL of our products and services.
Campaign financing reforms are useless. They won't solve any problems. First of all, the money will still find its way to politicians. Sure, go ahead and cap donations at some fixed amount. Now the politicians will receive funding via other avenues, likely unbeknownst to the public.
Second of all, we'd likely see a situation where only the rich could afford to run for office. In many places that's already the case, even without reforms.
The only solution is a well-informed, intellectual citizenry. Unfortunately, the mass media in the US does not lead to such a populace. Most of the people have little incentive to take an active role in monitoring who is financing the politicians, and thus do not base their votes accordingly.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
Sure, 300 million "middle class" is a decent number. And yes, that's a huge market for our business interests here in the states. Of course, this course of action will cause the standard of living for many Americans to drop, will raise the elite class in India even higher, and do nothing for the 700 million poverty sticken that live there.
Just like every other president, he is bowing to elite business interests. The folks who will make money here are our elite, and their elite. Everyone else doesn't matter, as they are too poor to contribute to political campaigns. And there isn't a thing anyone can do about it. Just ask Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Guam, Iraq, all of Indochina, and Sudan what happens when you don't cooperate with US business interests, and try to develop an economy the US doesn't have influence over.
Yeah, so? Fire doesn't care whether you stick your hand in it or not. That doesn't mean you should stick your hand in it. You can put a fire resistant glove on before putting your hand in or you could put your hands close to the fire and just to warm them or you can put barbeque sauce on them. You have some control over this.
America doesn't need to have a nation. Let's just remove the citizen rule and "national" security laws and be done with it.
Would Bush be President if he was getting paid in Rupee's?
If Bush wants to be competitive with slavery friendly countries(Got RedDot?), let him lead us by getting paid $4513.76 per year in US wages.
And yes we can all outsource our jobs and take advantage of these of them. But where will that leave us when WE need to create something. Say if we go to WAR. Say if oil gets magically gets cut off. Say if we have a nuclear detonation.
I'm all for being fair, so let's start with the people making the laws to give our infrastructure away to the highest bidder and largest enslaved population.
Globalization, outsourcing, all that focuses on free trade. Free trade is good, as long as the rules are fair. But there is one important component missing: the freedom to choose where you like to life and work. While trading on a global scale becomes easier, we are still forced to deal with immigration laws from the past centuries in every country. There is even no transition phase in sight which might give us a bit more freedom. As long as we have closed borders, in both directions, we will find that companies exploit our lack of freedom.
Published on Monday, February 27, 2006 by CommonDreams.org
When Americans No Longer Own America
by Thom Hartmann
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Through a combination of the "Fast Track" authority pushed for by Reagan and GHW Bush, sweetheart trade deals involving "most favored nation status" for dictatorships like China, and Clinton pushing us into NAFTA and the WTO (via GATT), we've abandoned the principles of tariff-based trade that built American industry and kept us strong for over 200 years.
The old concept was that if there was a dollar's worth of labor in a pair of shoes made in the USA, and somebody wanted to import shoes from China where there may only be ten cents worth of labor in those shoes, we'd level the playing field for labor by putting a 90-cent import tariff on each pair of shoes. Companies could choose to make their products here or overseas, but the ultimate cost of labor would be the same.
Then came the flat-worlders, led by misguided true believers and promoted by multinational corporations. Do away with those tariffs, they said, because they "restrain trade." Let everything in, and tax nothing. The result has been an explosion of cheap goods coming into our nation, and the loss of millions of good manufacturing jobs and thousands of manufacturing companies. Entire industry sectors have been wiped out.
These policies have kneecapped the American middle class. Our nation's largest employer has gone from being the unionized General Motors to the poverty-wages Wal-Mart. Americans have gone from having a net savings rate around 10 percent in the 1970s to a minus .5 percent in 2005 - meaning that they're going into debt or selling off their assets just to maintain their lifestyle.
At the same time, federal policy has been to do the same thing at a national level. Because our so-called "free trade" policies have left us with an over $700 billion annual trade deficit, other countries are sitting on huge piles of the dollars we gave them to buy their stuff (via Wal-Mart and other "low cost" retailers). But we no longer manufacture anything they want to buy with those dollars.
So instead of buying our manufactured goods, they are doing what we used to do with Third World nations - they are buying us, the USA, chunk by chunk. In particular, they want to buy things in America that will continue to produce profits, and then to take those profits overseas where they're invested to make other nations strong. The "things" they're buying are, by and large, corporations, utilities, and natural resources.
Back in the pre-Reagan days, American companies made profits that were distributed among Americans. They used their profits to build more factories, or diversify into other businesses. The profits stayed in America.
Today, foreigners awash with our consumer dollars are on a two-decades-long buying spree. The UK's BP bought Amoco for $48 billion - now Amoco's profits go to England. Deutsche Telekom bought VoiceStream Wireless, so their profits go to Germany, which is where most of the profits from Random House, Allied Signal, Chrysler, Doubleday, Cyprus Amax's US Coal Mining Operations, GTE/Sylvania, and Westinghouse's Power Generation profits go as well. Ralston Purina's profits go to Switzerland, along with Gerber's; TransAmerica's profits go to The Netherlands, while John Hancock Insurance's profits go to Canada. Even American Bankers Insurance Group is owned now by Fortis AG in Belgium.
Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat world" so-called "free trade" p
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
Why do politicians who support minimum wage laws and all sorts of legislation for protecting U.S. employees nonetheless have no problems when the companies thumb their noses and hire employees with none of these protections? Is it because the politicians are creating reasons for the companies to do so and also spinning the same legislation as "for the people" at home who are merely necessary to win elections and prevent uprisings?
Making new labor laws isn't the solution, even though it may be the right thing to do at the moment. while i agree that total free trade is really only hurting americans right now, trade laws only allow us to continue to profit off of the rest of the world's poverty. the reason america became an economic superpower in the first place is because we industrialzed before other countries, and that made us special, now, other countries are also industrialized, and we arn't special anymore, it seems to me that it would be wise to use our current wealth to help project ourselves to something new, as opposed to stubbornly sticking to labor laws that only insulate us from the rest of the world. while blalant outsourcing is only going to hurt americans today, hiding behind laws won't help us in the long run, we need to become better educated and find something that can make us stand out in the world, because manufacturing and mass production isn't going to cut it anymore.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
At some point, in order for OUR economy to grow, we have to bring the rest of the world up to speed. Most of the world lives in poverty. That has to change.
OK, so how's that going to happen? Right now the US has about 5% of the world's population, yet consumes about 25% of the world's natural resources.
If India and China as a whole were raised to our standard of living, then as roughly 50% of the world's population, they would consume 250% of the world's natural resou... oops.
ed
If you decide not to outsource, that doesn't shield you (and by extension your employees) from global competition. If you outsource, some of them may lose their jobs (or be promoted). If you can't compete, they may all lose their jobs.
Some people just can't stand it unless they can be sure that poor people in other countries will stay poor by not having the chance to compete for their jobs.
Manufacturing a car isn't magic. There is nothing that limits that technology to the USofA. Even if they cannot make them as fast as we can TODAY, they can match our speed in 10 years.
And, for the kill, they wouldn't be buying cars from the US. They'd be buying them, as we do, from Japan.
And 99% of the chips in a computer are already made in China or Taiwan. And they crank out motherboards, too. The only thing we still have is Intel and AMD. And China is looking at their own processor.
It's a race to the bottom and we need to stop it now.
How long until the telecos start demanding a surcharge on outsourced labor? "It's made possible by our pipes after all, and we're entitled to our 'fair share' of the cost savings other companies are reaping from outsourcing through our pipes."
When it comes to outsourcing discussions, Slashdot is at its populist worst. No one wants to explain why it's ok to buy PC hardware from Taiwan, but not PC software from India (outsourcing is simply importing a service, and there's no meaningful difference between it and importing goods). And no one wants to explain why, despite all the wailing and gnashing of teeth about outsourcing, unemployment numbers look like they do here:
http://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/surveymost?bls
(select the 4th item and have them draw a graph for you!)
Imposing Libertarian views on everyone online since 1992.
Outsourcing is not evil. It's not even a losing situation for those of us in the US. The fact is that outsourcing is the natural result of the constant shifting in how countries maximize their resources. India is a natural choice for American companies -- like Dell -- to outsource tech jobs, because there are plenty of people there who can 1) speak English, 2) do the work, and 3) do it for less money. Okay, so now you're saying, "Yeah, well, who cares about companies cutting their expenses? All that money goes into the pockets of the CEOs who are already ridiculously rich." Well, yes and no. But mostly no. Labor is always the most expensive item on a budget -- and that's why when times get tough, you see super-companies like GM and Ford and Boeing announcing thousands of layoffs. The overall cost of labor affects the bottom line -- especially in the highly competitive tech world, where the price of hardware is always coming down, but the cost of labor is constant or rising. Why do companies like Dell want to reduce their expenses? In Dell's case, it allows them to price their computers at a point that is much less than their competitors'. They sell more machines. If they don't have to pay their tech support $20/hour, they can move silicon at a faster rate, plain and simple, and the company can grow. If the company doesn't grow, plain and simple: it will die. And suddenly, you will have a lot more than a few tech support guys and engineers out of jobs; you'll have the sales staffs and accountants out of work, as well as the guy who runs the convenience store across the street from Dell HQ in Round Rock. The local Starbucks will have to cut back an employee or two. Guys, it's just a fact of the world economy. Some people will do the same work for cheaper. That genie's not going back in the bottle, and Bush is right: the alternative would be worse.
How many of you are making more money because of all the people in China, India, and other cheap-labor locales, who buy stuff that you produce? To vote, Click here [republicans.org]
How many of us benefit from quality goods at very low prices? Judging from the lines at Walmart, lots.
Now, how many of you know somebody who lost their job because of overseas competition? To vote, Click here [democrats.org]
Now, how many of those people have moved on and have a better job? That would be almost all judging by the unemployment numbers.
The only people who really benefit from offshoring are the business owners who can costs by firing American workers and replacing them with cheap overseas labor. There may be more wealth, but it's all concentrated in a few hands.
Try following the reasoning: businesses make a profit and shareholders benefit from increased stock price and dividends. Thus validated, businesses grow into new markets and create new jobs. That class warfare stuff went out with Carter. It is pretty discredited.
Bush can't understand what's it's like for an ordinary family to suffer the devastation of unemployment because he's never lived through it.
Unemployment is devastating, no doubt. But I would take the high growth, high opportunity economy we have here over low growth nanny states that predominate elsewhere. Over your lifetime you will be materially better off.
an ill wind that blows no good
I agree jobs being done overseas is part of a global economy. But the current state of outsourcing is fundamentally no different to a company in the US then clothing makers having their clothes made in sweatshops overseas. Moral issues aside, that's ok, because we have moved from being a manufacturing based economy to an information based economy. But with them starting to move information based jobs overseas, what can we do now other then find jobs that might be under our ability? For outsourcing to be ok as part of a global economy, it would be done on the basis of skills. Country foo has better programmers then us? They should get our jobs then. It's as simple as that for a global economy. I have no idea about the quality India's IT skills, but I'm assuming they are no different then those of someone in America who worked hard to get their skills. And at least in the area of tech support, outsourcing is clearly hurting the quality of service. It seems that if I call tech support for anything, I can clearly tell if it has been outsourced due to poor email grammar or not being able to understand them. True, some may have been outsourced and I haven't noticed, but if someone can't effectively communicate with customers, someone else should have the job. And I have had no problem understanding professors with accents when others have complained, so you know it must be bad.
In undeveloped countries, the consumer controls the market. In capitalist America, the market controls you.
It might sound inflamatory and perhaps it is. But I have to wonder how many jobs have been lost when companies move to FREE SOFTWARE? We all complain when software isn't free as in beer and we LOVE when we hear about a large corporation moving to Linux/Apache/MySQL or whatever because it's cheaper. But every time that happens, someone or some group loses their jobs because of it. Garaunteed.
We live in a world economy now so get used to it. Adapt to it or get a job at WalMart.
Quite in tune with an earlier comment ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=14181474&sid=1 70151 ).
Bush's decision to choose Hyderabad over other Indian tech hubs like Bangalore, Pune comes close on the heels of the city bagging the $3bn Fab City project by the AMD-SemIndia consortium. Bush has also announced setting up of a new US consulate in Hyderabad, since the Andhra Pradesh state contributes majority of the Indian techies visiting US.
Telugu is now the largest spoken Indian language in the Silicon Valley / SF Bay Area. An article about Bush's visit to Hyderabad, & the Telugu diaspora in America
Let's make him president of some bumblefuck island in the middle of nowhere where he and jackass accomplices can't do any more damage.
How about outsourcing some of the stuff that the NSA does, or other government jobs?
National Security? Nah - the UK does it (name a super computer manufacturer in GB...) So do other countries.
But, that's the point. By outsourcing our knowledge, we're outsourcing our security. It's just not the right thing to do.
Frankly, the Republicans and (some) Democrats won't be happy until we're working for food.
I work as a Solaris admin and I've been affected more by LAMP than outsourcing although I can feel the effects from both.
the company I work for, which makes components for folks like Cisco and Nortel, was buying parts from a US suppler. The parts are machined on CNC-like equipment. However, after months of bad parts we ended up switching to a supplier in China to get better quality. The lowest price was from the US supplier.
I tend to believe the fact we can better parts from China is the fact that they now have more experienced workers and engineers in their plants. We've been outsourcing for so long that the expertise is gone in NA.
The worrying part is: what will happen as fuel costs rise and equalizes the cost "savings" that many management people used to justify outsourcing. We're shipping raw materials there and getting back finished goods but that only works while the transportation cost stays low. Those days are almost gone...
shows he has no grasp of world economics.
We have to provide these poor countries with goods they want at a price they can afford.
So where are these goods going to nede to be made? India. Where are they going to need to be designed? India. Who is giong to get the employment opportunities? People in India. The only Americasn to benefit from this is the corporate heads and their Mercedes salesman.
It is only conmpetitive if the cost of living is similiar.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
You might be right. But I'd say in 99% of the cases of a company moving to Linux/Apache/MySQL they are moving from Windows/IIS/MS-SQL. I can't give any numbers about Microsoft's policy when a company stops paying them for a product to use an open source equivalent, but I doubt they'd lay off entire teams of people because a few companies are no longer their clients. They're not going to go bankrupt because of it any time soon.
It's like sex, except I'm having it!
The most depressing thing about watching Bush speak--and this has been the case for as long as he's been in the public eye--is that he doesn't even seem to understand the issues underlying the questions he is asked.
Asked about globalization, he comes back with some platitude about education being the solution to all that ails us. Well that was what they told the autoworkers 20 years ago: learn to program computers! And never mind the fact that even if education were the solution, we're doing nothing in this country to make it more accessible. Quite the opposite: We've shifted more of the risk of advanced education onto students at the same time that educational requirements for employment have increased. These past 30 years have been a complete clusterfuck for people who earn most of their living from a salary rather than through investments (Ie, the poorer 90 percent of us.)
Asked to address this, it's like he doesn't even understand the question.
We are SO SCREWED.
wait, what does america produce these days, other than malls and walmarts?
A recent Slashdot article tells us:
The U.S. is still the number one producer/distributor of spam in the world.
Swedish plasma phys. PhD student; MSc EE; knows maths, programming, electronics; finance interest; seeks opportunities
A person in India can survive on a couple of dollars a day. The rent, food, clothing, etc is cheaper. Hell even games like World of Warcraft is cheaper for people in India. Computers are cheaper...it is all cheaper. Plus they have less mandatory benefits - meaning they can get hosed more easily by their employer.
How does this effect us...right off the bat we CANNOT compete with those prices. While someone in India might make $3/hour, by law people here in the US HAVE to make 5.75 (or whatever it is) per hour. People who make 5.75 per hour cannot survive on their own, they need to work two jobs to be able to survive.
So President Bush - go fuck yourself you self-centered bastard.
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
The last slashdot article I read about outsourcing in India link to a article noting a young DOCTOR in India with more than TEN YEARS of C experience was earning what would equate to about $10,000.00 -- and that most people with similar experience levels made more like $5-7k.
What the fark could we, the US, possibly be able to sell India that they cannot produce cheaper themselves?
Please, someone explain to me exactly how the US stands to benefit from trade with India aside from dirt-cheap-labor and goods produced by India?
honestly folks....Democrats are just as bad. It doesn't matter whom you vote for, Honest!
Not all would change from that platform, but if it's a big country or corporation changing. You would find it hard to believe the account management people might lose their jobs as a direct effect? Or the indirect effect of lost revenues cutting workforce?
Sure it woulnd't happen every time directly, but lost of revenue is loss of revenue.
Whenever a debate about outsourcing gets underway, things tend to polarize quickly. You get the one end saying that nothing should be outsourced, and the other saying that companies should go back to the old days of zero regulation. Those of us in the middle kind of get drowned out.
My worry has always been what will happen to the entry-level career path in IT. If every single help desk job or grunt code maintenance/QA job is outsourced, there's no way for a new graduate to break into the field like there was for me in the past. I still feel relatively comfortable with my situation; I've managed to get enough exposure to areas outside of IT, and kept myself from becoming way too specialized. I also have enough experience and am a fast enough learner to adapt to most changes. The only fear I personally have is of being forced to take a management or project management job simply because technical work doesn't exist anymore. The worry I have for the long term is where the rest of the smart techies are going to come from.
Just rememeber that computers are still a mystery for 90% of the population out there, and about 99% of all executives. If they see that they can get rid of their expensive, tempremental employees that everyone else hates dealing with, they'll do it. Usually, the replacement's work will be "good enough" to justify the cost savings. I've never heard of anyone being completely bowled over by the level of service they receive from outsourcing; they just like the price.
I still think we're stuck in a negative feedback loop. Students see they can't make gobs of money in computer-related fields anymore, so they don't study math and science. COmpanies still need talent, and can't find as much cheap new grad labor as they can overseas. And so on and so on.
Please... Asia is more diverse than anything else out there. They have the biggest democracy (india) which is what the conversation is about. India is no worse than the US in violating human rights. Both have rules against "Terrorism" that violate the basic principles of both their constitutions, POTA (india, later repealed) - Patriot Act (US, still in existance). China sure could improve, but that is for their people to want and change not you. Frankly you post seems too ignorant, and you seem tooo comfertable clumping a variety of cultures/countries together.
Everything else is supplied, cheaper and as fast or faster by other countries.
Which means that the execs at Intel have money, but the rest of the US economy is reduced to trying to sell services to Intel and those execs.
Our economy cannot survive that. It would collapse.
JULES: Do they call it a Curry Quarter Pounder?
VINCENT: No, they got the metric system there, they wouldn't know what the fuck a Quarter Pounder is.
JULES: What'd they call it?
VINCENT: Curry Royale.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
That is the most insightful things I've seen on this article. So, that's what we have to do: become owners. How to do it?
Invest and save. That's it. That's how you become one of "them".
That's what I'm doing.
Saturday is April 1. Slashdot will be shut down. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Firstly, Bush is promoting world economics, not just U.S. economics. Secondly, everybody always looks at politics and thinks "How does this benefit me?", but the fact is, most things the government does will not benefit you specifically. In the long run, you will benefit, but the effects will not be so easily traceable back to that policy you disagreed with so long ago. Promoting world economics promotes U.S. economics.
Outsourcing lowers the value of programming in the U.S. since it could be more cheaply acquired by outsourcing; it's true. Now, look past that. This lowers the number of demanded programmers in the U.S. (and the pay of those who do score programming jobs). Costs for software development is lowered, and the need for cheaper software is met. People who can't find jobs programming go on to find other kinds of jobs, those that are more profitable. Whenever a job is more profitable, that's because there is an unsatisfied need in the economy for that product or service. Overall, people will enjoy cheaper and more readily available products in every field, not just software.
Why should our economy be locked into these few things like software development when diverting our resources into more needy areas would be a greater benefit?
It will be interesting to see much the machinations of the BushCo crime syndicate will be revealed to the 'Merican People.
BushCo is
Al-Qaeda.
News video clips reveal Bush dynasty connections to United Arab Emirates
WNY Media Network has a recent news video clip compilation that reveals the close connections between the Bush family and the United Arab Emirates. No wonder Bush is turning a deaf ear to the concerns expressed by Democrats and Repulicans.
President Bush's family and members of the Bush administration have long-standing business connections with the UAE... Bush defying his very own party leadership and his party in defending the Dubai port deal... The oil-rich United Arab Emirates is a major investor in The Carlyle Group, the private equity investment group where the President's father once served as senior advisor, and is a who's who of former high level government officials... Just last year, Dubai International Capital, a government buyout firm, invested in an 8 billion dollar Carlyle fund. Another family connection, the president's brother, Neil Bush, has reportedly received funding for his education software company from UAE investors. Then there is the cabinet connection: Treasury Secretary John Snow was chairman of railroad company CSX. After he left the company for the White House, CSX sold its international operations to Dubai Ports World for more than a billion dollars.
This message has a dual meaning: 1. I'm in India and I want you all to know that I like saying things people like to *hear* *here*, although the *here* is relative, so that equals, "I like telling people things they like to *hear* based on their location" 2. If I'm lucky my friends over *here* will *hear* me say things over*here* that they like to(and for the Kenmore washer and dryer set...)*hear*. I can only imagine the utter chaos that would ensue if the message was delivered 3rd person. It's so easy to trick people, you can almost do it using 1 word metaphoric descriptions.
Our system needs a major overhaul (or maybe a complete teardown and rebuild).
I like the idea of limiting contributions to only people who can vote in that race.
But what about allowing 3rd parties (also out-of-state) to buy time on TV to run their "informational" ads about "issues"?
Personally, I'd limit all PAC's to only producing PRINTED material and sending that to the Congress Critters. No money. No trips. No lunch meetings. Nothing.
How could any American business make money selling to an Indian middle class that pays in rupees? Well, take heart! Your president has a plan. Contrary to popular myth, Bush is not going to stop Iran's Euro based oil bourse from opening. He doesn't plan on America BUYING their oil anyway. Another war will be started by bombing the defences in the Strait of Hormuz (Yes, tactical nukes will be involved) and once a perimiter is established, Haliburton tankers just start bringing home the oil stored near the port. The revaluation of global oil to the Euro sends your greenback into unstoppable freefall, thus ensuring Americans stay and spend in America, because the USD will be roughly on par with the rupee when it's all over. Every other nation gets screwed by the 8-9 trillion dollar foreign debt though, because that deficit will be in USD, which while still a dollar at home, will be worthless globally. Want a PS3? bring an SUV full of 20s to your nearest Walmart. Oh and I hope none of you plan on travelling. Your vacation savings will be worthless too. Except in nations like India of course. Good luck, and for what its worth, he's screwed the rest of us too.
Here's a link to a USDA report on hunger in the US. Unfortunatly, it is on the rise. 11.9% of US households suffer from food insecurity, while 3.9% suffer from hunger. That's about 11 million people. But go on thinking everyone here is fat and happy, if that helps you sleep easier at night.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
How true; The current situation is almost unprecedented, since the unemployment rate has only exceeded the current level 8 times in the last 60 years, including most of the 1980s.
Oops...
Quoting Bush: "'The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable" In other words, better market to the middle class in India since they are getting our jobs, because the middle class market in America is shrinking.... :(
You're messin' with my Zen Thing, man.....
We must remember that the media itself consists of corporations. Just take the case of NBC. It's owned by General Electric. General Electric is also well-known for their manufacturing of military products.
We all know that war is often very profitable for both those who manufacture the supplies consumed during conflict, as well as for those who report on said conflict. Therefore it seems unlikely that those who are benefitting the most from a rather pro-war administration (if not an entire system) will stand against it.
Such an initiative would require the corporate mass media of the US to in turn speak out against itself. Again, it's doubtful that it would do it, at least to the extent where real change may happen.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
It tells me something different than it tells you.
"How fat people are" in the US is a piss-poor measure of their poverty level ... except, perhaps, in the opposite direction that you're assuming. Due mostly to warping effect of agribusiness corporations and their reps in Congress have on the market, it's cheaper to be fat and malnourished in the US than it is to be slim and healthy.
I was rather surprised. Because that's just gross oversimplification, the kind of thing you'd expect to hear from a 10 year old. Outsourcing happens because people work for less in India because the standard of living is less there. I'm not an economist, so someone correct me if that comment was way off target.
When the subject of offshoring comes up, the response by free market advocates is "adapt or die". Name one adaptation that we Americans can achieve that East Indians inherently cannot provide for pennies on our dollar?
What are East Indians genetically incapable of providing in India that you hope to provide your employer here?
Nothing at all. Absolutely nothing. If we allow offshoring to run unchecked, you will find this out the hard way.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
The problem isn't that the importing and exporting of technology is global, it's that everything else still isn't global.
You can buy technology from anywhere but you can't easily go there to work. You can buy military technology from India but you can't go to India and work for their military. You can buy spaceships from Russia but you can't go to Russia to work on their spaceships. You can buy oil from terrorists but you can't work as a terrorist.
The other inequality is the environmental laws. You can buy nickel from Russia because Russia doesn't limit pollution but you can't go into the business of selling nickel because y.o.u. have pollution limits. You can buy chemicals from India because India doesn't have health laws but you can't sell them chemicals because y.o.u. have health laws.
Having globalization in only selected areas but restricting everything else is causing a lot of pain.
If you really want globalization, you can't have inequality of environmental laws or national security interests.
and I am the head of an outsourcing firm. Its not my firm, Iam just another employee. Prior to my present assignment I used to work for a large multinational corp. My dilemma is this, I ve been conducting interviews for trainees in this firm. There is complete realization amongst top management that the salaries we are offering these trainees are worth duck's feathers. I ve been stuck here in this firm for about 2 years now looking for ways to escape and let my conscience be lighter. The money is coming indeals from all over the world, and Iam responsible for some of these deals. What I am amazed at is how far the greed goes. I don't see an end to this greed. There will always be a smaller margin that can be squeezed. When does the milking for profits stop and humanity begin?
I completely empathize with people in the US who are at the receiving end. But somewhere most of us (even the better paid ones like me) need to realize that its humans we are dealing with and put an end to absolute exploitation. Iam tired looking for jobs and praying. I'll take a salary cut than see these kids go through this shit so early in their careers. Despite what they might tell you, most Indian workers go through hell with their employers.
I know this is going to get lost in the sea of posts, but here goes. I AM a tech worker with a college degree. I see people around me losing jobs to outsourcing every day. I personally hate the idea. At the same time I've made a point of studying the economic theory behind much of this.
The common thread I keep seeing intoned over and over in threads here is all the doom and gloom, that everything can be done cheaper elsewhere and jobs will go and go never to return. To some extent this is true, jobs will leave. Things ARE cheaper in India. However what people neglect is how market conditions change in the target countries. In India for instance, the demand for that cheap labor is so high, that already you are seeing a substantial increase in wages over even 10 years ago (its still very small compared to US salaries, but it IS rising). This is generating that middle class spoken of in the article. At the same time these same engineers are creating a consumer class and discovering a sense of entitlement. Doesn't all this sound familiar, oh yeah, its what happened in the US over a span of 50-60 years or so. The general concept behind globalization isn't that the US economy and work for is destroyed and impoverished, but rather one of the world economy reaching parity. 10-15 years from now, the overall cost of labor will be comparable, or close to comparable between india and the US most likely. Companies won't offshore to india, it will instead be to china, or russsia, or some country in africa. The point to the theory is the that haves and the have nots will come closer together in a global economy. Workers in India will eventually earn the same rights and standards of employment as the US and Europe. At the same time Europe and the US will learn how to make its workers cost less to companies. And while all this is going on, new economic powers will be rising in the way india is now. The process in it ultimate form would have many many nations all competing on even footing, but before that can happen the process of realocation of resources needs to happen. Its painful, but its not the end of the world. Sure people will lose jobs, but we as people will adapt and move on. As has been mentioned we AREN'T entitled to anything by right, we work hard, we do jobs, we earn money. The US unemployment rate for all the doom and gloom is still one of the best in the world. There will always be people who suffer do to economics, and whenever thos people are concentrated in one sector they will complain loudly (look at the manufacturing sector of the past), but those same people always make do and move on.
Either that, or it will be feudalism all over again- the robots will benefit the top 1% of society and everybody else will simply starve to death.
.. the more people benefit.
.. so that means many people now doing service jobs will have to switch to more labor intensive factory jobs.
.. and our life expectancy has increased). Also, look at how much improved the Chinese people's quality of life has become (dont listen to the media, go over there and see the change from just 10 years ago ..I have chinese friends who go back for vacation and i've seen the pictures ..and they tell me how well people are doing over there now compared to 1990's and 80's). India is improving as well though at a slower pace. Yet, you want to roll back the clock on everyone's quality of life and have a labor based economy globally.
So you are against automation too? Or do you want everyone to be forced to work and ban people from automating goods production? Maybe ban the ox and cart too? Think of all the jobs that will create. Hey why are you using a computer? Shouldnt you be writing on stone tablets so that stone quarriers will have jobs?
Without marxism, we have many luxuries undreamed of in the past. Fact is, the greater our production capacity
Look at all the modern things we have cell phones, cable tv, more affordable cars with higher reliability (nowadays cars get 100k miles easily). Air travel is also much cheaper and far more available (a larger percent of the population travels by air than at any time in history etc.) Do you honestly think we have the the labor capacity to produce all this stuff that China's tens of millions and India's tens of millions are producing for our economy? We have "only" a few million unemployed people
The quality of life here has gone up (calling long distance is cheaper, computers are widely available, more people have cars
The U.S. can set up a Great firewall of America that blocks all traffic going to and from corporations that outsource labor. I'm sure there are companies who already have the experience in helping out in blocking traffic at national borders... *cough* Cisco *cough* China *cough*.
I'm giving up moderation to comment on this rediculous protectionism.
I'll suggest some answers to your problems that would make everything in the US, seeing as that is what is most important to you.
1)We will be making the products, you will take a test before entering college determining your exact skills. For the rest of your life you will do those jobs, farmer? doctor? teacher? lawyer? Every American will be in the value stream
2)A national economy will mean equality for everybody. You have an equal chance of being a gas pumper or a driver. Everyone can afford a car.
3)We all pay taxes to the state, the state provides us with housing. It's fair.
4)All American workers compete by taking a standardized test to get their jobs.
5)All US dollars will end up in US hands. We will not trade with any country, no matter how innefficient, we are Americans!
6)US children will have some of the best elementary education, 98% literacy rate (see Cuba), they will all learn math, science, history and how to study for the college entrance exams.
7)Those whos exams lead them to military school will design necessary defense equipment. No foreigners will come onto our borders!
8)All Americans will be investors, right Comrade?
Why is it people think protectionism works? The only reason free trade doesn't work is because of protectionism. Subsidies, tarrifs, quotas, and nationalism. It's all just short sighted thinking, spurred by personal emotional investment in the status quo. Yeah, keeping things local will guarantee you a job, but its gonna be shitty. You will have to live off what your community makes, and if they don't make it, too bad! With a global community you have access to what everyone makes.
The whole idea behind it is comparitive advantage, you make what you are good at, I make what I am good at. The Indians are good at programming for cheaper, you should take advantage of the wealth of resources available in America to be good at something worth more money.
"how can they call it a MINE if everything here is THEIRS?!?!" -Straight Jacket
More American workers lose their jobs to lower-cost foreign labor. Some of them may find comparable work, others may find work that pays less. Some may remain unemployed. Here you have a situation where a number of individuals who were able to participate in higher spending levels, have been confronted with conditions that now mandate they spend less. Combine less spending with the lower cost of foreign goods, and the net benefit may be marginal, if it even exists. The only "winners" in this game are the ones at the top of the money chain.
The scholarship thing is quite amusing. In order to fund more tax cuts, student loan interest subsidies have been drastically slashed. I know a bunch of people will probably jump on me saying that we shouldn't be subsidizing these things in the first place. Please don't bother unless you're willing to give up your mortgage deduction handouts and communist public highway system.
I have worked in the telecom industry for 14 years and I have still to see a successful outsourcing project, i.e. a project where it is obvious that money have been saved. Outsourcing has several big costs. First it is the move itself. Moving an entire product costs a lot of money and at the same time you lose a lot of knowledge and competence. If the move fails then you lose even more by the failure and the succesive move. I have observerved this e.g. when a major company moved manufacturing of a product from Sweden to Scotland. The scots sucked so bad that a very silent move was made to Hungary. I have also seen other functions move bigtime to other parts of Europe just to silently move back since it just did not work.
Another case is where you move a product made out of very expensive components to a low salary country. If the salary cost is less than 10% of the product it is debatable if a move really makes sense. It would make sense to redesign the product with cheaper components but not doing a move since the cost of the move might not be earned back in many many years.
Another thing that affects the efficency of any development is proximity. It is more efficient if people sit close to eachother. A distributed project over timezones, languages and cultures has a lot of problems and overhead.
I think this is a job for mythbusters. Start some development projects and outsource some them to India, China or Pakistan (or better, a project of mixed Indians and Pakistanis!) and see how much money you save and how much grief your projectmanagers get. I honestly think that outsourcing simply does not work and is just a big myth because no one has ever calculated properly how much it costs.
Food, shelter, clothing, health, recreation, education, transportation.
Those are the basic areas for all industries. Anything "new" will still be in one of those. Whether there are lots or few "new" industries, it really won't matter unless they are REVOLUTIONARY.
And revolutionary ideas need fertile ground to start in. If you aren't working in manufacturing, then it is highly unlikely that you'll think of a revolutionary new way of manufacturing. The more jobs we send overseas, the fewer people we'll have with the experience to make the new discoveries.
If we aren't manufacturing cars, then we'll still be importing the model that incorporates the next revolution in auto-manufacturing, design, safety or whatever. We'll be importing the flying cars. We'll be importing the hover cars.
In the past, we've often taken the lead in discovering the next revolution. But that was when WE were the ones also producing the previous editions.
Once we lose that, there is no reason to believe that we'll ever "discover" the next revolution and lots of statistical reasoning to believe that we will not. There are lots more people in the world than in the US. If it doesn't require basic operational knowledge, then they have the advantage.
What do we have a competitive advantage in? All our electronics made in Japan. If you go to any other country in the world you'll see lots and lots of VW's and Hondas, but hardly any GM's or Fords. All our computers are made in Taiwan. All our random stuff we buy at Walmart is made in China.
What exactly is the competitive advantage that we have? And please, not hand waving vague mention of us being the best and brightest. What practical advantage do we have? Our educational system hasn't been keeping up and is underfunded, so we can't rely on being smarter than others. We have a high standard and thus cost of living, so we're too expensive to employ in grunt manufacturing work. So what is our advantage?
This sig has been temporarily disconnected or is no longer in service
I am totally confused by this kind of thinking. I am a Solaris system administrator. I'm also a Linux system administrator. People can pay me for setting up and running big expensive hardware, the little cheap stuff, or to migrate inbetween them. I admin a group of Sun machines at work and am working on implementing a Linux grid. The only way to be adversely affected by LAMP is if your company is migrating in that direction and you're not helping.
I've been on several (programmer) interviews in the past few months. Excluding defense companies, more than 50% of the people who have interviewed me were not native-born US citizens. Even in defense companies, that percentage (IME) is 15%.
I think the debate over offshoring is long since over. Corporations aren't offshoring because hiring people in India is cheaper than hiring Americans. They are offshoring because hiring people in India is cheaper than hiring Indians in the US. Americans just aren't in the game any more.
The irony of it all is that the Indians will get the ones getting the shaft in the end. US and European corporations will work them 60-80 hours a week for a pittance. There won't ever be a middle class in India or China like there used to be in the US. The future is something new, not a rehash of what happened in 20th century America. Don't worry too much about it. It will all be over soon enough.
When you talk of America and human rights, do keep its 400 year history in mind. America was founded on the blood of a huge native population, that now lives in reservations. And how about the africans who were brought here as slaves and were treated as less than human beings. Would America even exist if it were not for those human rights violations???
If you don't believe me that an unfettered free market leads to conditions similar to the world of Charles Dickens, compare the conditions that Dickens writes about in Oliver Twist to the conditions in countries where sweat shops are prevalent. People in those factories work horendously long hours under terrible conditions. And if they raise their voices, they lose their livlihood. They have little or no power to influence the conditions of their lives. They are simply a resource that is to be consumed by a giant machine called a corporation. It's all about power. The ability of the powerful to force others work for almost nothing. It is the antithesis of democracy.
In the early twentieth century, there was pressure to control the private interests who exploited people for their own gain. Democratically elected governments took power from the private sector. They raised taxes on corporations. To prevent corporations from fleeing to friendlier shores, the flow of money across borders was restricted, and tariff barriers were raised. What followed was a period of unprecedented prosperity in North America and Europe. Money that would have gone to building extravagant mansions for the extremely rich instead went into building roads and hospitals and fire stations. Corporations were prevented from acting badly by powerful governments, who in effect acted as police forces on corporations.
Today there is a move backwards to the mean conditions of the 1800's. Money may now flow freely across borders, and so corporations may flee governments that dare to restrict their activities. Democratic governments are under relentless pressure to lower taxes on corporations, tipping the balance of power away from the public interest and towards the private sector. And so we see the reappearance of Dickensonian sweat shops around the world, in the places where governments are powerless, or in collusion with the private interests. It is in these sweat shops that we see the nature of the corporate machines laid bare. There is no concern for ethics or morality. There is only profit.
I am not arguing against trade. I am arguing for regulated trade, in which democratic governments actually have the power to penalize those in the private sector who act badly. There must be a force to act in the Public Interest in our society, and that force is a well funded democratically elected government.
I think the man should be impeached for all his lies, but at least on this issue, I agree with him. Globalization is a reality. Adapt or get left behind. Read Tom Friedman's book, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374292884/qid=11 41416047/sr=2-1/ref=pd_bbs_b_2_1/102-0508254-23673 29?s=books&v=glance&n=283155The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century
Freedom, freedom, freedom... except for those brownskinned people in the Indian subcontinent! They must not be allowed to work for American employers! You can outsource to South Dakota, or even Canada or Germany if necessary. But not to India, or Mexico, China, or Dubai! They have the wrong skin color!
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
This may be offtopic, but why is it that big business is all in favor of globalization when it comes to getting cheap labor from other countries, but resists the consequences that globalization will have on their intellectual property to do more liberal copyright/patent laws in other countries?
And why are so many others against globalization when it comes to losing their jobs to cheaper guys in India or China, and yet willing to take advantage of the fact that other countries like China don't protect IP the way the US does so that they can continue to pirate intellectual property from content providers.
I'm all for being pro business or pro labor or anti piracy or anti copyright, but let's get some consistency. Globalization is going to have consequences both positive and negative for everyone, and I think that everyone needs to take the good with the bad. Big Business can't have it both ways, and neither should labor expect to.
Outsourcing is international trade. Two companies, one in America, one in India, exchange money for software.
If outsourcing is to a company's advantage then they will try to do it. That's a given. The only way to prevent outsourcing is to put up massive and draconian trade barriers.
Unfortunately, such trade barriers would impoverish the American people and cripple the American economy. An enormous amount of America's (and indeed the world's) wealth is due to international trade. It's one of the few points that most economists agree on.
So do you want to lose your job from outsourcing or from a crippled economy?
Outsourcing is like a bulldozer. Not just because it's unstoppable, but because it's a tool that reduces the amount of resources necessary to complete a task. Before bulldozers, it would take dozens of men with shovels several days to clear the foundation for a new building. Once the bulldozer came around, the job could be done much more quickly and efficiently, so the men who had historically used shovels lost their jobs. However since the job could be completed more quickly with fewer men, that meant their could be more buildings built for less money. You don't hear people complaining about the invention of bulldozer's because men who used shovels lost their jobs, do you?
People act like all the money saved from every job that goes over seas goes straight into lining the pockets of business executives. While I'm sure the business execs are getting some extra cash out of the deal, most of the money is being reinvested in their company. So if a project can be completed for 1/3 the cost, likely there will be two projects instead of just one. That means there will be more coordinating positions, which are higher paying than the grunt work positions were in the first place.
Yes, some people lose their jobs in the process, and that's a pitty, but just as you can't expect contractors not to use bulldozers so that men with shovels will still have jobs, you can't expect business executives to ignore a powerful tool to keep people with a less valuable skill employed.
All that said, I do one a problem with outsourcing. As the countries we outsource to become more developed, that resource disappears.
it's like getting ass-raped by an 800 pound gorilla.
Guess what it's time for America? That's right another trip to the showers!!
2000 Election scandal - Ass Rape
9/11 - Ass Rape
CIA Ops Leak - Ass Rape
2004 Election- Fist Fuck
Domestic Spying - Ass Rape with a shovel
US Ports Issue - Fist Fuck with a Crow-Bar
If they would jsut use some lube, it might not hurt so bad.
I like-a do-the cha-cha.
and not via protectionist acts either. There's a very simple thing that needs to be done, and we can even blame the "terrorists" for it. It comes down to this:
Inspect every bit of imported product. 100%. Means we have to hire more people to do it, and the funds should come from those importing items.
yes, this would raise the cost of imported items. It would also truly enhance our border security in ways promised but not seen, not only because everything commercial would be inspected, but because that effort would also require more folks at the borders/ports/etc.
It would also employ more people, who may have lost jobs to those imported items. The raised cost might make it more attractive to produce some items here domestically again, again employing some of those folks.
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Software developers have to eat and shop. And when enough middle class people move out of your community, stores close. First the small ones, then the bigger ones, then the restaurants, then the grocery stores... It happened in our community - the grocery store that's left is the worst installation of a chain you've ever seen, a couple of tiny cheap restaurants and the world's smallest Blockbuster. The grocery chain store does half its business on welfare/wic/etc in one of the oldest established neighborhoods in our city. The pretty decent hotel is now a flophouse. The owner of the grocery store even bought the plaza across the street before all this happened to keep any competition out - now he's stuck with it. A decent grocery store is now 4 or 12 miles away. The stores that are typically migtrating from storefronts to boxes have all passed on this neighborhood and set up across town or closed. The greek diner is still doing well, thank goodness. The state is making the main road into a 4-lane state highway - all to get people through here to somewhere else. One well-placed call center or service center or assembly plant could turn it all around. But instead, the work is being done by people who will work for less because their life to date is lousy compared to ours, we don't have to pay them all those pesky benefits and follow all those tedious safety rules, and the people who used to make a decent living doing the work here are shoved into worse straits.
Plus, India can't afford what we make here. We can make the profits on marketing and distributing it all, but it'll all be made in China. Even our traditional strength is failing - Americans increasingly don't want American cars (GM+Ford+Dodge had a 50% US market share last year - it'll be less this year) why would the rest of the world?
What did we expect from a president who's got a noose around his sack being held by some of the richest CEOs still not in prison? You'd expect someone who's never going to run for anything, whose veep isn't going to run, whose majority leader isn't going to crawl, to have an epiphany and realize that since he can't win or lose, he should just do the right thing.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
India population (1 billion) and its GDP is smaller than China (1.3 billion +). According to digitimes.com, there are at least 300 million cellular users in China. Having a cellular service is a good indication you are out of poverty but you are still not in middle-class. I don't think India has 50 million middle-class even counting the children and old folks who don't poccess cellular phone in a middle-class family.
Brown and Root was a small construction company in southeast Texas formed in 1914 by Herman Brown with his brother-in-law Dan Root. Mr. Brown was a conservative and staunch opponent of the New Deal when he befriended a congressional staffer by the name of Lyndon Johnson in the early thirties. Johnson was ambition and wanted up the ladder from a staff position to an elected official. Herman Brown made that happen. With a lot of money. In exchange, once Lyndon won a seat in congress, he arranged for Brown and Root to build a number of public projects such as the Marshall Ford Dam, and the Naval Air Station at Corpus Christi.
Lyndon wasn't much for house debate, nor was he a skilled lawyer, so writing and pushing through legislation was particularly difficult for him. Which for a congressman is a pretty serious drawback. But Lyndon was a big - physically imposing - man. And he had access to a lot of money through his connections at Brown and Root. So pretty soon Lyndon was passing contributions around to various Democratic congressmen in threatened races throughout the country. Because of this Lyndon grew very powerful in a very short time - powerful enough to attempt a run for Senate only two years after having won election as a congressman. He lost that first bid, but within a few election cycles large numbers of congressmen owed their seats to his arranged donations. Lyndon had the choice of committee seats at his disposal, and quickly became close friends with then congressional leader Sam Rayburn.
But Lyndon still wasn't satisfied. He wanted to be a Senator. So off to his friends at Brown and Root asking to finance a new election bid for Senate. This time he won, but only because he cheated. Didn't matter. Once again he climbed the ladder from junior Senator from Texas in 1948 to minority leader in a single six year term (the Democrats lost the senate majority during the election of '52). He did this through funneling corporate contributions, much of which came from Brown and Root.
Of course, we all know how Lyndon Johnson wound up as President. He was chosen to be JFKs vice presidential nominee in order to shore up the southern vote. Nobody expected him to have any power in that position. But JFK was assassinated in Dallas Texas on Nov 22nd, 1963 and soon thereafter Johnson assumed the Presidency.
Who was there right behind him scoring military contracts left and right? Brown and Root. Soon to be named Kellog, Brown and Root. And then soon thereafter to be purchased by Halliburton.
We all know who Halliburton is, don't we? History sure is a strange thing...
See the works of Robert Caro for a detailed history of Johnson and his connection with corporate financing. He was arguably one of the founders of this whole cross state campaign financing fiasco.
Ditto ... Solaris admin turned Linux admin. Still have a few Solaris boxes kicking around but their days are numbered. I have a few Apache servers going but no MySQL or PHP, here it's Oracle and Java. About 90% of Solaris skills transpose directly to Linux.
Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws-Plato
Maybe you just don't get it? Job outsourcing has happened and will happen always in a market economy - hell any economy. You are not owed a job by the government or by any business. I grew up in a totalitarian communist regime, and coming from that background, the free market is a gift from Heaven. Outsourcing aside, your job, and only job, is to figure out what the market wants and supply it - if that means re-education if you lose your job to an outsider (and in most cases it does), then that is what you have to do. Either your company outsources its jobs, or another somewhere else will, because if they can produce something cheaper for which there is a demand, they're the ones that will get the business, while we'll be stuck with useless artificially inflated and OVERPRICED goods that we can do nothing with but sell within our local economy - hence no exports. The developing world (which most of the world is) is looking to buy cheap goods because that's all they can afford. As in the industrial revolution and the aftermath where industrial jobs were outsourced to other countries, science, technology, and invention replaced those jobs with new jobs that created demand for a new set of goods, and a new job market. Stay ahead and informed or get left behind. This does not mean you have to cheat to get to the top.
If you can catch five rabbits a day with your spear and someone else in another tribe has a bow and arrow and can catch thirty a day and trade them at a lower cost than you to your tribe, it's your responsibility to figure out a way to catch more rabbits at a lower expense - it is NOT your Village Chief's responsibility to outlaw the extra meat to protect your inefficient use of time and resources. It's time for you to find a way to get more rabbits - afterall, the benefits are crucial to all. If you're smart and watch the trends, you'll always be a step ahead.
One thing that we have fallen a behind on in the US, which is in part due to the conservative nasty policies of the Bush administration is Science and Technology. That's the only thing that will keep us competitive on the global market. For example, when a foreign entity develops breakthrough cures to all types of illnesses from research on stem cells which is really being hampered here in the US by conservative sectarian BS, they'll have a wonderful lucrative business and a monopoly on the business. Maybe when the technology becomes established and they've developed newer technologies, they'll outsource some of their lesser jobs to us - because we were too busy whining about losing some job to an Indian programmer who could do the same job much cheaper.
Whiny Americans. Stop bitching and create new things to help all of us.
My job is under threat of being outsourced, my boss brought it up at a meeting recently. I suppose it's time for me to do something that distinguishes me from the potential cheaper employees or get left behind. Imagine that - I have to work to stay ahead.
Marius
Using this political forum, I simply want to apologize to all you left wing nuts and say "you were right". I give up trying to defend anything Bush has to say anymore personally or on-line (not that I've done it here recently).
Between the destabilization / chaos going on in Iraq as the Bush admin. clearly didn't plan or forsee what was going to happen after Saddam, and now the absolute, irrevocable proof that Bush does lie and cover up (in this case, Katrina), it's getting REALLY HARD to get behind the president on anything these days... It just makes the Bush admin look like a bunch of inept, CYA idiots whose guiding principal is cronyism. When Bush opens his mouth, most non-koolaid drinking conservatives should now wonder just what agenda does he have.
BUT, I'm STILL not voting Democratic because (A) they are just as bad as the Republicans, and (B) they very much want to take away the right to persue my hobbies with all the strength they can muster (ie, off-road vehicle driving).
May I suggest that all slashdotters consider this thought? Especially any economists. Read the concept, note it down, then re-read your notes before you go to bed. Upon awakening see if any new ideas have surfaced and respond. OK, here goes.
The USA should safeguard its people from troubles anywhere in the world. Therefore I suggest that the USA should keep and nourish in the USA some minimum, perhaps of 20-30%, of the industries that are outsourced. This would not be entirely cost efficient because its not as purely efficient an economy that eternally chases the lowest price. Take for example if a considerable amount of international steelmaking capacity goes away, then we should have sufficient capacity to supply the minimum level. Another example might be like maintaining a mimimum level of heating in the winter to kind of survive - like 45 degrees. Here we are not looking for comfort but survival. Flu vaccine is another area that would need to be supported. In the 1970's we had (I believe) 24-26 companies that manufactured flu vaccines. Now we have four which is barely enough today to supply and protect from seasonal type A viruses. I guess Malcom Gladwell's "Tipping Point" might provide another perspective of how to picture the minimum level needed.
This would also turn the 'just in time manufacturing' on its head because a minimum amount of raw materials and goods would have to be kept in the pipeline. Of course employment and many areas of the economy would be affected.
Here is an off topic suggestion is to make slashdot more like the better blogs are with insightful and thought out comments rather than what we typically see. Perhaps rather than react to stories (i.e. current mode), slashdot could request think pieces on various ideas then we could comment on these.
Thanks,
Jim Burke
"In the end, U.S. workers can't compete until the cost of living differences, as well as the differences in currency valuation flatten out. Globalization will innevitably lead to this flattening, but the upheaval in the US, with its relatively high costs and current currency valuations, will be severe, I expect the ranks of the working poor to swell massively, with consequences that, so far, I have yet to hear any politician (or economist) deal with honestly."
What is happening is nothing new. It has been happening forever, it is just now happening at a much faster pace thanks to technology in shipping and communications.
Our cost of living is going to decline. Already household goods are incredibly cheap thanks to overseas labor. So are electronics. The only real obstacles to us all deciding to go back to 1968 wages are the prices of gasoline, cars, and housing. Eventually all of those will collapse, also. The automobile industry is on the brink of it right now. The Big Three auto makers are just about to buckle under their labor costs. As soon as China comes online with mass-produced automobiles it's going to be all over for them.
Eventually there will be little difference between the cost of labor in different parts of the world. Then, taxation policies will be the lure to attract businesses.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
It's interesting how so many people don't understand "comparative advantage". Outsourcing, by its very nature, indicates that the services are being imported (instead of generated domestically) because the exporting country can do a better job. If that's not true, then the importation of those services will stop. If it is true, then the importation of those services will grow. All economic models that encompass free trade ideas will show us that the united states, as a hole, will be better off by outsourcing jobs so long as no gross human rights are being violated. We can see a loss in jobs due to outsourcing due to the direct replacement of labor, but we can also see an increase in jobs in other markets due to the increased efficiency of the whole US economy. In fact, it would appear (although counter-intuitive) that outsourcing jobs actually allows more jobs to be created domestically than were lost to outsourcing. So, some customer service people loose their jobs. But for every person who looses his job to outsourcing, at least one other job will be created in another job sector to replace that lost job.
Not so. A lot of Japanese companies have moved their facilities from China and other countries, BACK to Japan. Why? Because, quite frankly, you get what you pay for. Workers who are uneducated, untrained, unmotivated...don't make a good product. I'm sure there are great Chinese manufacturing companies, but US companies don't have any real tools to find them except by trial and error.
I remember talking to someone about tools. Snap-On makes their tools here in the US for the most part, with US metal. They also license their tools to AutoZone, which makes them in China using Chinese metal. I've yet to have a problem, but he said a town near him that lost manufacturing business to China regained it after binning (rejections) from metalurgy defects went from 25% to 75%.
Please help metamoderate.
"Americans" working for an average salary in the 5 digit range should welcome the competition, because it's "the reality of a global economy," but Halliburton, working for an average contract in the 10 digit range, doesn't need the competition and should instead receive no-bid contracts. I wonder why that is? Is Halliburton participating in the economy of some other globe we don't know about?
Slashdot? Oh, I just read it for the articles.
Outsourcing is good - for sure.
Depends on to whom.
If you look at the long term consequences of the current "global economy" and "free trade" rules, it's not impossible to see a future world where due to outsourcing some countries will function almost as "gated resort countries" for the riches of the world, while other countries will function as the cheap, environmentally destroyed "production countries", where the poor population from the "gated resort countries" will be force-migrated.
Outsourcing for corporations: it's sure great. Tyen can find the ceapest labour, resources anywhere.
For this to happen the American CEO or shareholders don't not even need to move to India.
Outsourcing for local workers: not that great.
In order to sell your skills there, is not that easy, you probably would have to move there.
But why would they take you anyway, your job moved to India not because you were not good enough, but because someone in India will do it cheaper.
Outsourcing for local customers: not necessarily.
Sure, you can get cheaper all the goods made in India, but since you decided to stay in North America, the corporations are not willing to pass on you all the savings, just as much as keep them competitive here.
The global open economy is not that global for you as a local customer: you simply can not get goods for the best price, anywhere on the world. You can not even do that in the North American Free Trade zone, just think of buying something in Canada from someone in the "free trade" partner USA: you will have to pay duties. The great "free trade" rethorics applies only if you are a company. The very same corporations are demanding to keep different price structure for different regions of the world. See region coded DVDs: same product, different price.
Last time I tried to send a chip to India, duties, taxes, & paperwork came to 100x the product value. Big companies can game this, but I'm just a start-up.
"If you don't believe me that an unfettered free market leads to conditions similar to the world of Charles Dickens"
That was not an unfettered free market. There were many laws that stifled competition. Monopolies, in fact, cannot exist without laws to protect their power.
"Democratically elected governments took power from the private sector."
What you are describing is tyranny. Abuse of power. It is all about power: the ruling class taking power away from the people because the members of the ruling class were supposedly democratically elected.
"They raised taxes on corporations."
Of course. Greed was the name of the game. They are/were out to rob us.
"tariff barriers were raised."
Tariff barriers? Nothing but the government getting rich off of people making the best decisions for their lives.
"What followed was a period of unprecedented prosperity in North America and Europe."
No, this was not the case.
"Money that would have gone to building extravagant mansions for the extremely rich instead went into building roads and hospitals and fire stations."
So? The rich earned that money. It is their business what to do withit.
"Corporations were prevented from acting badly by powerful governments, who in effect acted as police forces on corporations."
You have this one backwards. Corporations were encouraged to act badly by governments: taxes and restrictions always result in layoffs. Corporations otherwise are naturally perfectly accountable: if a corporation sucks, no one will work for it or do business with it.
"Today there is a move backwards"
You have this "backwards". What is happening today is the natrual, truly progressive trend toward power for the people, and less power for the rulers.
"so corporations may flee governments that dare to restrict their activities."
That is as it should be. The government should not get in the way of businesses serving people.
"Democratic governments are under relentless pressure to lower taxes on corporations"
As they should be. Taxes are WAY too high.
"tipping the balance of power away from the public interest and towards the private sector."
The private sector IS the public interest. The balance is being tipped from the ruling class to the ruled.
"And so we see the reappearance of Dickensonian sweat shops around the world, in the places where governments are powerless, or in collusion with the private interests."
You know nothing of history or the current world. The sweat shops mainbly flourish where the government maintains the control you want. In places like Vietnam and China, which are still socialist.
"It is in these sweat shops that we see the nature of the corporate machines laid bare. There is no concern for ethics or morality. There is only profit."
That is the true nature of socialism: more power for the powerful. If China and Vietnam truly downsized the government and shifted power to the private sector, this problem would be greatly reduced.
"I am not arguing against trade."
You are arguing against free and fair trade.
"I am arguing for regulated trade, in which democratic governments actually have the power to penalize those in the private sector who act badly."
The free market is the best judge of who is acting badly, and it punishes those who do act badly. All the government does is punish those who do not serve the ruling elites.
"There must be a force to act in the Public Interest in our society"
There is. It is capitalism: a system where everyone gets paid for the full, fair, and real value of what they trade or work for.
"and that force is a well funded democratically elected government."
Government acts only in government's interest. The less of it, the better. It must not meddle in our personal and private decisions, which includes all economic matters. Thank you for your long defense of abusive and fascistic power grabs by the government at the expense of the people. You seem to have forgotten all the lessons in history.
Top and middle management travel so frequently that it would make almost no practical difference in results if we outsourced them. It would, however, make an enormous difference to the profitability of corporations and shareholder returns. Imagine how desirable it would be to save $150 million golden parachute and reinvest in R&D or employee retention? And so many foreign students have come and earned MBAs in U.S. business schools that there is absolutely no argument there that foreign CEOs couldn't do as good a job as American CEOs. Aha! the American CEO might say, 'but business is about communication and bold action, and that's something that people from protectionist economies and repressive societies just can't match.' Uh-huh. The average foreign student scores higher on any test of English than any American does. And bold action? Apparently they've never seen Chinese grandmas trying to get on a Beijing bus.
In short, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. The single best way to cut U.S. corporate labor costs is to outsource the top of the pyramid.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
The horror should they outsource ZONKS job.
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
Ignoring the fact that the US dollar was and is the buoy for all currencies worldwide and we have publicly stated for decades that we are committed to a strong dollar policy so as to not crash others economoies (even in the face of gross undervaluation such as China's yuan), the dollar has dropped in real valuation by more than 50% and is considered pretty much dead-on now. That "the dollar is over-valued" stuff went out about two years ago.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
There's one problem in Bush's analysis. If all the manufacturing is in India, China and the like, and all the product support is outsourced to the same places, and all the consumers are in those places, then why precisely should those consumers go to an American company to buy locally-made goods and services?
My rebuttal: "Yes, and we're buying Big Macs from Indian-owned McDonald franchises and coffee from Indian-owned 7-11 and Dunkin Donuts franchises and when we have trouble with our Whirlpool appliance, we can talk to someone in India who will repeatedly tell us to unplug it and see if it works when we plug it in again."
The US Government has a huge budget to support itself. Huge chunk of that goes to support our military which is the only thing keeping the crazies of the world from kicking out butts. With outsourcing, american workers will make less thus paying less in taxes. How the heck is the government is going to support itself? I think it's all great in the short term, the rich owners of the US industry will outsource alot of our jobs and make a ton of $$$ but in the long term, the US will be a bankrupt country. What are they going to do with all their $$ then? CZ
even if education were the solution, we're doing nothing in this country to make it more accessibleeven if education were the solution, we're doing nothing in this country to make it more accessible
Unfortunately we'd have to reserve a mass amount of slots for domestic recovery, which are capped at $3000/4 years no matter what university. Think social class integration (along with the National Guard escorting Midwesterners into Yale, MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Rice, Brown and others like them) into exclusionary institutions, with no "required 4.0 just to make an easy fail" way to kick them out. Sure, some think that removes choice, but unfortunately since they've given up on the millions, it's probably the only option.
Next, you guarantee that they will be able find work in whatever they train for 20 years(at the highest level paid for the position) before the next offshoring wave, or they are responsible for more re-education at the company expense. Since they've been given wide latitude in removing 100 years of labor protection, it's only fair to return the favor.
The only thing he's done to education is devalue a Yale degree.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
"it is ok for america for you to lose *your* job. don't you dare come near the good ole boy job network, though. i'll listen to your phone calls and eventually label you a terrorist and lock you up indefinitely. jesus told me this was right. btw, he sends his regards."
ps - i am christian and this guy's lies, and other unethical, self centered and immoral actions, embarrass the heck out of me and, i can say quite confidently, god, too.
no, i don't speak on god's behalf very often, but sometimes you just have to. and this is one of those times.
So you don't think that if a Fortune 500 company kicked out Oracle in favor of MySQL any Oracle people would lose their jobs? OSS doesn't employ many salespeople.
"It would strip their power to screw over the average citizen."
If you don't think the people who either own or run said corporations wouldn't be business as usual hob nobbing and charging up $3k tabs at the Capital Grille, you're out of your fricken mind. Most politicians are already millionaires before they enter office and the wealthy generally like to mingle with the wealthy. The campaign contributions are the _symptom_ of the problem, not the cause. Take out every penny of it, private individual included, and the problem would persist.
If a local piano teacher wanders into your representative's _local_ office (when they actually happen to be there) followed five minutes later by the local owner of a large manufacturing plant and they both want to blather on about their views on economics and labor issues... who do you think will get more time and consideration? It has nothing to do with money changing hands and everything to do with economic and social standing... and there's no silver bullet to kill that beast.
With so many important events to pick from http://in.rediff.com/news/bush06.html - especially the nuclear pact - Slashdot chooses outsourcing as the "event to report".
CZ
The savings rate now is -0.5% and it was 10% in the 70s,
It had to be with inflation running at 12% and banks paying higher even rates it was the only way to stay above water. Do I need to remind your that the misery index reached historical heights during the Carter years? The low savings rate is not Mr. Bush's fault. He lowered tax rates on dividends that make it more worthwhile to save and invest. Also, remember that the savings rate doesn't reflect the large run up in equity most people have seen on their homes. To argue that your material standard of living was higher in the 70's is absurd.
high growth and high opportunity for the upper crust of society, the middle class and lower class don't have either.
Tell 12 million Mexican illegal aliens that America is a bad place to be if you are poor but want to work.
My dad used to be able to provide enough money (in a unionized blue collar factory job) to enable my mother to be a stay-at-home mum, me to go to university and saving a little bit, nowadays this would require probably 3 full time jobs at the salary rates we have now.
The unions provided leverage when their wasn't an excess of labor around the world. There is now no one can change it. You also probably had 1 car, 1 phone, and an electric bill. That's it. No other choices. No credit cards. And your parents had priorities. Today you are bombarded by options. The fact that most people choose to spend like drunken sailors drives their need to work. It is not easy to resist forces of consumerism in the US. But you can't blame President Bush for America's lack of restraint.
an ill wind that blows no good
Because the profit go to a centralised small group of the population (the top tier) which is smaller and smaller, and thus this does not help America a bit, whereas the middle income group shrink and the lowest income group grows. In an extreme situation you have a few holding all the money or "corporate-king" with no middle income at all, and an huge poor population scrapping around for some job. Oh, and before you protest and say this would not happen : the most rich do not need a "country" to be a winner (they do not need America) they can take their peanuts away and invest globally on the world level and still be winner. Only the local "basic worker" population needs local a good local economy. So it is perfectly thinkable to stop any financing in US, when the marketed service/product are overtaken by other country which produce cheaper. The US needs the world, the world need the US economy less and less. In this course to the bottom there is only a winner : the new baron building their fief out of a mountain a money and not caring a bit of the locals no matter the country.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Yes, some Oracle employees could be displaced. If somone can only sell Oracle products, can't get a job in another part of Oracle, and can't get a sales job with another company, they may be lucky enough to work as a Walmart greeter. There are no guarantees that any particular skills are marketable. This is especially relevant to people who have highly specialized skills that are only useful in one environment. Twenty years ago, I used to program in Turbo BASIC on an Atari 800. I don't think I could get a decent job if that's all I could do. Fortunately, I have developed other skills which are valuable in the current job market.
Even those who make their money on, well, money, don't want a truly free market. They want CAPITAL mobility. Period.
"They're so rich, one small withdrawal and Switzerland goes THIRD WORLD!"
--Edina Monsoon.
I think we should outsource the president's job first.
I'm a card carrying republican, and I voted for him unfortunately. Forgive me.
Your post makes no sense. To give a fictional example:
Joe works as a therapist. He has a bachelor degree and works 45 hours a week at Saint Claire's hospistal. He is now going for his masters degree and this is taking up 15-20 hours a week of his time after work. When he gets his masters on June 20, 2008 he will get an instant raise of $10,000 a year.
This kind of crap is so common in the modern American workforce. We have a therapist who between work and college is putting in 60-65 hours a week and must be burnt out. This burn out would probably make him worse at his job and he is no longer committed to work but also school. And for this he will be rewarded? Does it make sense?
What is happening is many companies no longer want to do much entry level training or evaluating of work abilities. How much you get paid is being reduced to a formula of how many years experience you have, how many years at your current company you worked and what level of education you received. What is mattering less and less is how much work someone does and how well. What is the point of being the most productive worker at your job if someone with more experience and better education credentials will always get paid more at your company? You may as well just settle into performing in proportion to your pay. Between June 19 before he receives his masters, and on June 20 does fictional Joe really become so much better at his job to deserve such a huge raise? It would be nice if more companies evaluated worker performance instead of relying on the diploma mill. All a masters degree means is you have a masters, it does not necessarily mean you became a better worker.
In order to cater to an Indian market, we would actually have to produce goods to export. The last time I bought anything that was produced in a factory, it had a sticker on it telling me what other country it was from - usually China. (And most 'American made' products, as Wal-Mart was so kind to show us a few years back, are only assembled or packaged here, with the rest of the work being done overseas.) Due to the fact that most of the manufacturing jobs in America have been outsourced to one place or another, and that beginning a manufacturing-oriented business is very expensive, I don't think anybody is going to be taking advantage of that market any time soon, especially not farmers. What Bush is saying, essentially, is that we should welcome outsourcing and become competitive - by accepting fast-food salaries to work in unsafe factories owned by foreign companies. Meanwhile, we should export all the resources and materials - namely food, it would seem - we can spare, since we aren't doing anything with them.
The man just gets dumber, doesn't he?
or you have to do so anonymously (so that the politicians don't know who's doing it).
Good suggestion, but unworkable. If you make anonymous contributions happen, by say some sort of doubl-blind administration of the funds, I can still tell a congressman to 'expect a large $55,428.71 bump to their campaign funds on tuesday, and they will know exactly where it came from. Nobody else will, though.
The only method is to make everything completely open to scrutiny. Make the process as trasnparent as possible. You can't stop people from comming up with new methods of gaming the system, and peddling influence, but you can make it so that it is easier to see who is doing it.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
From what I've gathered from history, it is socialism that can't sustain itself.
Capitalism has raised everyone's living standards. Even the poor in America have cable, TVs, refrigerators, can be fat, etc., etc.
Our large middle class by any historical standard is incredibly rich. We have access to fruits and vegetables throughout the year. We have cell phones. Usually more than one car.
I generally find that people get jealous when they see people who have a lot. The solution is usually something that leads to everyone having little to next to nothing.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
"These two drivers in conjunction with a downward adjustment in real income will force a huge swath of the current middle class into poverty, as banks forclose on homes and vehicles they can't make payments on. The fact that goods like milk and eggs, stereos and refrigerators may also decline is irrelevant, the financial structure of most middle class families is such that savings in those areas could not counterbalance the other debt. And with homes unable to sell for what the family paid for them, the banks will forcelose, now the banking indutry is saddled with real property they can't sell for what they're owed, so there is danger of a banking collpase as well.
IMHO the country WILL NOT SURVIVE a simultaneous collapse of the auto industry, the real estate markets, and the banking industry.
I agree entirely. I think the biggest impact for people will be the decline in real estate values. I suspect we are going to see a national mortgage forgiveness coming down the pipes. Every homeowner gets to deflate the value of his mortgage by "X" percentage, for example.
The banks may even go along with it. Because what is the alternative? The banks get to become owners of property that even they can't sell. The very people they evicted will then be back buying their own properties at greatly reduced prices. Might as well take the loss up front.
Politicians may even go along with it. You get millions of people thrown out of their homes and their is going to be a riot at the ballot box.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
I'd be willing to bet that any random educated indian would do a better job then him. Except for the whole nuking of pakistan thing. Other then that, all peaches and cream.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
www.fairtax.org
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
All of the poorest nations of the world have both food and beer available. Beer is surprisingly cheep and easy to produce and really only requires yeast(can be gotten for free since your breathing it right now) and grain. Remember all those sacks of flour that you see air dropped into Ethiopia? Nations such as Kenya or the poorest parts of India have street vendors that are just as convient and probably a cheaper and healthier alternative to Mc Donalds. Personally I think that it would be pretty cool to be able to get fresh grilled goat or chicken just by stepping outside the skyscraper where I work. The biggest issue with poor nations is corruption of their leadership. The leadership uses the resources that we as first world nations give them. Then again... The biggest issue with any nation is the corruption of their leadership.
There is or can be built a machine that can simulate any physical object. -Church-Turing principle
I work for my standard of living, not yours. If I own a business my standard of living will be better if I can hire Indian employees for less money, and their standard of living will go up as well, by having a nice job. If you don't care about people in other countries, why should I care about you?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
If your company is considering outsourcing your job, there are only one or two explanations. Both lead to the same conclusion:
1.) You do not provide a direct competitive advantage and generate revenue for them
OR
2.) They are bean-counting morons who don't understand that you provide a direct competitive advantage and generate revenue for them
Either way, just quietly start looking for a new job now making sure that when you sit down in the interview process and get to talk to the business people (if there are no biz people in the interview, don't take the job) have them explain how what you'll be doing creates a direct competitive advantage and generates revenue. It's not that the tasks you do can be outsourced and done cheaper, it's that you have to understand the business well enough to generate insights and deliver on the right tasks that maximize the ROI of keeping you around the company. If the business people in a perspective job doen't get that, leave them alone and let that bunch of idiots die off (like most new business ventures do). If a perspective job is part of a cost center, you don't want it. If a perspective job is not linked to the vision statement, you are not central enough to the business & you don't want it.
The new economy definition of job security is having the drive and professional skills to say "fuck you" to your current employer and go secure a job elsewhere.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Ok, so there are 300 million middle-class Indians. That means there are about 700 million lower-class and poor Indians who will work for pennies on every US dollar Americans will work for. That means "American" goods manufacture will be outsourced to India. Then the only money coming into America is through the corporations who own the means of manufacturing abroad and their mighty investors.
Face it, if you hold a blue-collar manufacturing job in the US, you'd better get some more skills or you're fucked.
if(!toilet_paper) roll.replace(new roll);
I guess people want to be paid well by companies for producing free software.
Seriously, the economic benefits of free, open software are the similar to outsourcing. Resources which were previously spent can now go to something else and produce more overall value.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Explain to me why paris hilton is so wealthy. What has she ever done for the world?
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Let me guess another economics major or minor?
"Tell 12 million Mexican illegal aliens that America is a bad place to be if you are poor but want to work."
In my town alot of immigrants from Mexico and South America live. Not too long ago the local newspaper covered the problems of apartment stacking where many immigrants lived stacked in apartments meant for less people. The reason why these people even bother is to remit back money and they cannot live what is described as a good life here. Living stacked with 10 people in an apartment meant for 1 or 2 cannot be a pleasant experience.
It is always nice to have economics graduates to tell everyone how things are better than in the past, that capitalism is progressing our lives. According to studies I have read on Greek Americans, in the 1800s when Greeks first started to come to America they lived much like the Mexicans, stacked in overcrowded housing. Except instead of day laboring most of them were sent to America by padrones who took a portion of their pay and hooked them up with work often exploiting them. So things are not getting much better despite all the people graduating Economics 101, despite the advances in technology and the passing of over a century.
The Dubai Ports World deal is waking Americans up to a painful reality: So-called "conservatives" and "flat world" globalists have bankrupted our nation for their own bag of silver, and in the process are selling off America.
Where do they keep this silver? In what financial instruments is it invested?
Money does not just disappear when a person sells something for a fat profit. They invest that money in other instruments, in effect simply transferring their ownership from one set of companies to another. Foreign-based companies may own and operate in America more and more, but more and more the wealth of America is invested in foreign-based companies because that is where the growth is. So who owns who?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
So you adapted as far as I can tell. Why do that when you can just complain about globalization and blame it all on Bush?
My point is that nothing will stop globalization and there is NOTHING anyone in the US govt. could do about it. Not that I think Bush doesn't have his flaws, but he's right that trying to stop outsourcing will kill America more than letting it occur.
it's simple.. to compete let's stop paying everyone, except the CEO's,
these wages that are too high to compete.
$5000 a year should be an acceptable salary in the US.
Eventually when we can ship every job overseas and the vast
majority of US citizens either work for the government or are
unemployed.. the work will come back..
of course the social upheaval, riots, economic depression,
spike in crime etc. might be bad for a few, mostly those who
won't live in nice gated communities. But it'll be worth it in
the long run.
vive la marketplace !
The size of India and China is such that any 'leveling' out between us will flatten the US and hardly change India and China overall. It's like mixing a glass of freshwater with the ocean and expecting an ocean of freshwater to be the result--not going to happen.
Also, as US cost of living goes down, and salaries eventually go down, our debt, public and private grow larger as a percentage of our income.
outsource the Presidency?
Strange how with the worst president in history running the show the suggestion seems a little less ridiculous.
Cheap outsourced jobs are good for corporations, and bad for EVERYONE else, so they could probably "lobby" Bush into supporting this idea.
Heh, he mentioned it as a possibility, but not in the near-future. I'm not too worried, I run their CAD department and do IC Mask Layout design. I'm studying to do EE anyway, and that's something that'll be around for a while.
Marius
Its just a few jobs lost by outsourcing and not that the whole economy is gonna come down because these jobs were outsourced to India or wherever.
Its high time people stop whining about outsourcing because it CANNOT be stopped.Big Corporations ( who also put in money into the political campaigns) are going to save money because they get almost the same quality(maybe not always) for much cheaper.The only way for America to stop outsourcing is to beat the price which is kind of impossible.And that is what trade is all about, isn't it?
Why don't people who constantly cry about outsourcing read a book about macro economics or something and come to terms with the whole situation?
Lord of the Binges.
False us/them dichotomies are a big part of the problem. One of the reasons globalization does ultimately raise all boats is that it gradually erodes archaic tribal nationalism. If/when you think you can live a better life in India, move there. You won't even have to learn a new language. If, on the other hand, you'd have a better quality of life here now or in 10, 20 or 50 years despite all the outsourcing, as I suspect is the case, stay. Nationality is an (in)convenient fiction.
Didn't we outsource manufacturing to China already?
Just because something is outsourced for cheaper doesn't mean it's necessarily better.
Not to mention there are other costs besides salaries to exporting services such as software development:
1. Long distance phone calls (in time and money)
2. Airline fares
3. Bandwidth
4. Security
5. Data privacy
I just looooove the fact that the IRS is shipping our taxes overseas as well as the medical industry doing that with our medical records.
The cost is more than just economical as it affects everything we are, including our social security numbers, tax information, and medical history.
> ...And yet approximately half of them still voted for him.
From The Onion:
Nation's Poor Win Election For Nation's Rich
November 10, 2004 | Issue 4045
WASHINGTON, DC--The economically disadvantaged segment of the U.S. population provided the decisive factor in another presidential election last Tuesday, handing control of the government to the rich and powerful once again.
"The Republican party--the party of industrial mega-capitalists, corporate financiers, power brokers, and the moneyed elite--would like to thank the undereducated rural poor, the struggling blue-collar workers in Middle America, and the God-fearing underpriviledged minorities who voted George W. Bush back into office," Karl Rove, senior advisor to Bush, told reporters at a press conference Monday. "You have selflessly sacrificed your well-being and voted against your own economic interest. For this, we humbly thank you."
Added Rove: "You have acted beyond the call of duty--or, for that matter, good sense."
According to Rove, the Republicans found strong support in non-urban areas populated by the people who would have benefited most from the lower-income tax cuts and social-service programs championed by Kerry. Regardless of their own interests, these citizens turned out in record numbers to elect conservatives into office at all levels of the government.
"My family's been suffering ever since I lost my job at the screen-door factory, and I haven't seen a doctor for well on four years now," said father of four Buddy Kaldrin of Eerie, CO. "Shit, I don't even remember what a dentist's chair looks like... Basically, I'd give up if it weren't for God's grace. So it's good to know we have a president who cares about religion, too."
Kaldrin added: "That's why I always vote straight-ticket Republican, just like my daddy did, before he lost the farm and shot himself in the head, and just like his daddy did, before he died of black-lung disease in the company coal mines."
Kaldrin was one of many who listed moral issues among their primary reasons for voting Republican.
"Our society is falling apart--our treasured values are under attack by terrorists," said Ellen Blaine of Givens, OH, a tiny rural farming community as likely to be attacked by terrorists as it is to be hit by a meteor. "We need someone with old-time morals in the White House. I may not have much of anything in this world, but at least I have my family."
"John Kerry is a flip-flopper," she continued. "I saw it on TV. Who knows what terrible things might've happened to my sons overseas if he'd been put in charge?"
Kerry supporters also turned out in large numbers this year, but they were outnumbered by those citizens who voted for Bush.
"The alliance between the tiny fraction at the top of the pyramid and the teeming masses of mouth-breathers at its enormous base has never been stronger," a triumphant Bush said. "We have an understanding, them and us. They help us stay rich, and in return, we help them stay poor. See? No matter what naysayers may think, the system works."
Added Bush: "God bless America's backwards hicks, lunchpail-toting blockheads, doddering elderly, and bumpity-car-driving Spanish-speakers."
Today we have
1) Cheaper phone calls, cheaper ability to communicate with loved ones
2) Higher life expectancy
3) Greater percentage of people owning homes
4) Greater percentage of people owning cars
5) Greater percent of people able to afford air travel
6) Fat people
7) Unemployment rate of 4.7%
The document you cited says that for most people "real income" between 1966 and 2001 hardly grew. At least they admit there wasn't a decline, but I think it was rude of them to leave out the technologies and things people have access to today.
With us shutting down our factories, a large middle-class market in India, China, Brazil, or wherever is meaningless to us. We have nothing to sell. I read an article how key components for our U.S. Military now come from China. We have shut down specialty factories that provided vital military components because the Chinese could do it cheaper. Well duh! The CEO's got rich, sent a cut to Washington as a campaign contribution and gradually the Chinese (and other 'cheap' Countries) are taking control of key military infrastructure components for us. When they get tired of our little military trists around the world we can be cut-off. Imagine this. There will never be a war with China because they control our supply chain. Learn Mandarin...
My experience with outsourcing has taught me one thing: There is more to competition than having someone agree to do the work for the lowest price. For one thing, doing the work correctly is often important. Also, doing the work agreed upon may be important to some.
I'm certain that there must be competent and willing workers in India who could do my job just as well for less money--but I have yet to meet them. I think that criticism of the quality of work by the technical worker is often perceived as a slight motivated purely by self-interest. I assure you that, at least for me, that is not the case--and I urge managers and executives to make certain that you are receiving the goods and services for which you have payed for. Of course, if you don't receive the goods and services you payed for--and you somehow manage to nullify the contract--you still may have to deal with the fact that you may have permanantly besmirched your company name and missed golden business opportunities. You may be spending "far less" on a project by utilizing overseas workers--but that may still be too high a price to pay if your project--and perhaps, ultimately, your business, ends up failing.
In my case, as a tester, I can say that the last time my company hired an outsourcing company (one of the top-three most well-known) to work on a project, the project was a disaster at every level. The design team completely fudged the design--which we had to fix; and the test-team was incapable of writing proper manual tests--much less automated test cases. You may argue that it is in the overseas company's best interest to maintain a positive relationship in the hope of garnering future business. I would have agreed had I not seen the tragic results of outsourcing first-hand on more than one occasion.
Ultimately, it is my opinion that trusting your products to overseas companies that may not share your personal interest in a successful launch jeapordises the economy far more than a more isolationist economic view ever could.
We never appreciate the things global outsourcing has given us. Think about millions of researchers, scientists, engineers, doctors etc have made america their home and contributed to the US economy. These people were in some sense out(IN)sourced from other countries (brain drain). US had the facilities and money to lure them which created more wealth for americans too.
"If you can catch five rabbits a day with your spear and someone else in another tribe has a bow and arrow and can catch thirty a day and trade them at a lower cost than you to your tribe, it's your responsibility to figure out a way to catch more rabbits at a lower expense - it is NOT your Village Chief's responsibility to outlaw the extra meat to protect your inefficient use of time and resources. It's time for you to find a way to get more rabbits - afterall, the benefits are crucial to all. If you're smart and watch the trends, you'll always be a step ahead."
Actually you are confusing productivity with efficiency. India and China don't have Bows and Arrows and we are stuck with spears. At the end of the day we both produce the same number of rabbits.
Two huge differences between the US and China/India is that we have enviromental standards to live by, and two we have basic human rights to uphold. The US cannot compete with this because we think that we have a responsibility to future generations. For countries where living day to day is the only thing that counts the environment and human lives are cheap and expendable.
Higher Education is becoming a luxury here in the states because uneducated people are easier to conrol. Soon we will all learn in school how god created everything, and all we need is Jesus.
But our cost of living hasn't declined. Look at energy costs which have skyrocketed over the last few years. Housing costs have also risen to the point where the middle class is becoming priced out of the market. Sure, electronics is cheaper, but it's always been the case, even when American companies dominated electronics. The cost of gasoline is not going to decline because demand is up all over the world now. The cost of housing might decline if the housing bubble bursts, however, in some sense it is being propped up by foreign investment ("all your loans are belong to us!").
Overall, no, it probably hasn't - mostly because of gasoline costs. But the cost of consumer goods is declining. Walmart has already been attributed to holding down inflation. Housing costs are rising? Sheesh, I don't know where you live, man, but in Atlanta, it's as cheap to buy as it is to rent. I've had to decrease the rent on my rental property every year I've owned it now because the price of rent is going down because the cost of housing is so cheap and financing is so readily available.
The two big hurdles to all of us taking a pay cut are housing and fuel.
I think fuel is going to take care of itself. When it gets painful enough, we are going to switch to something else, and when that happens it's going to be a landslide in revolutionary technology - I think engergy will be much cheaper in the long run.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.
Economists love to fudge this stuff, but the reality is a lot of them are simply bullshitting and/or don't really know how things are going to turn out.
Exactly. Economics is a soft science. It is not like physics or chemistry where we can perform experiments and get a hard, verifiable result that everyone can agree upon. Economics is a soft science that attempts to study human behavior in the aggregate. Sometimes it works and makes sense. Sometimes it doesn't. Either way, human behavior can and does change, sometimes completely randomly, meaning economics will not always be correct.
Further, old theories need to change with changing human society. In this case, comparative advantage has not caught up with either the internet age nor with world globalization.
I don't ask my government to solve the economy's problems, but I do ask that it at least understand them.
Outsourcing aside, your job, and only job, is to figure out what the market wants and supply it
"What the market wants" is dependent upon government policies that distort it in various directions. What that debate made clear is that Bush does not understand both the impact of the current policy and how the US government could distort (or stop distorting) the market in ways that benefit US citizens.
it is NOT your Village Chief's responsibility to outlaw the extra meat to protect your inefficient use of time and resources
Nobody is suggesting that offshoring be outlawed.
they'll outsource some of their lesser jobs to us - because we were too busy whining about losing some job to an Indian programmer who could do the same job much cheaper.
I am not whining about offshoring, I am not whining that the President isn't doing anything to stop it - I am whining that the President doesn't even understand it. No matter what your opinion on offshoring, it is absurd to suggest that highly skilled laid-off programmers return to community college.
Two huge differences between the US and China/India is that we have enviromental standards to live by, and two we have basic human rights to uphold. The US cannot compete with this because we think that we have a responsibility to future generations. For countries where living day to day is the only thing that counts the environment and human lives are cheap and expendable.
You have one thing to keep in mind regarding that - "we think that we have a responsibility to future generations", we chose this standard of living, if it becomes unsustainable, that's our fault as well. The most important thing we have to realize in this environmental fight against all that is evil to the planet is - we're all going to die. The planet did fine without us for millions of years, and it will do fine without us for millions more. And guess what? It's a self-correcting system. If we want to keep this standard we're welcome to work harder to maintain it - but it was our decision to live the way we do. We chose these environmental standards. "Basic human rights", what a load of bullshit if I have ever heard one, tell that to some of the inmates at Gitmo, tell that to the Iraqi prisoners we beat and tortured and humiliated, tell that to . Don't talk about basic human rights and environmental standards because those are very negotiable to our government (or any government for that matter), regardless of which party is in control. Politicians are self-serving, then come the constituents (the wealthy ones), and finally whatever is left over.
Higher Education is becoming a luxury here in the states because uneducated people are easier to conrol. Soon we will all learn in school how god created everything, and all we need is Jesus.
Amen. I couldn't agree with you more on that one.
It's a shitty system and I realize this, but if you look at it from a relative standpoint, it's a lot better than what is available in the rest of the world. I don't endorse the system, but the system gives me and anyone else who is interested a chance to move up or down. I have done so, in fact, my entire family has taken advantage of it, and it is a lot of work, but the barriers are not nearly as high as they are else where.
Marius
Is this progress? For China and India, yes; for the US worker, no.
WTF does George Bush represent anyway? India?
Slashdot isn't saying they disagree with VA, are they? So we can only assume they're okay with it.
If Slashdot is going to take some moral stand, it should do it with its own employer to, or it's...you guessed it, hypocrisy.
"Sufferin' succotash."
You will not solve it until you only allow fixed and equal time for each side combined with banning any other ads, etc.
Reality:
MOST the time the side with most the money wins. period.
Money raising is NOT democratic!
Paying reporters to say propaganda has to be made illegal. (which not only bush as done, but they've had agencies do it.)
Remember, a real debate has equal time and a fair moderator. The process needs to be about content; and you will not get that when its essentially unrestricted. So much money is at stake (==motivation) that any tiny hole compromises the system.
We have no hope of fixing the current system.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I can't believe the number of replies to this tired topic. It's over and you missed it.
The United States has a third world economy right now. We've floated it for the last six years by borrowing $1,500,000,000,000 on our houses - that's why you haven't noticed - and by working harder. You work fifty hours a week, and so does your wife (if you're lucky), and you don't have what every US factory worker had in the 1950's: a paid-for house in a crime-free neighborhood and best quality college ed for kids who were smart enough, and plenty for retirement - all on ONE income, one person working.
One million people come to the US from Mexico every year to work for 3 dollars per hour. Every one of them knows the score; Mexico is a feudal oligarchy ruled by its richest one tenth of one percent. And that's just how it works here.
Ask a successful American immigrant - Alberto the Attorney General. Bush is above the law - and by extension, so is he. Did you see Senator Leahy interview him? Alberto's got the smirk, just like his boss.
In ten years, the economy of the lower 48 states will be indistinguishable from that of northern Mexico, or most of India and Asia. You'll make just enough to reproduce more workers. And you'll work until you die.
Do people who vote Republican get their money's worth? You'd better believe it - as long as they are in the wealthiest one tenth of one percent.
For the rest of you, it's over and you missed it.
ChimpCo has a way of defending things which nobody in their right mind would defend.
Rapant corruption -- Congress for sale to the highest bidder
Screwy elections -- Exit polling inaccurate? Since when
Torture -- Gitmo, Abu Grahab
Rendition -- to countries who torture
Iraqi War -- Weapons of mass deception
Katrina -- Totally inept
9/11 -- There are still questions unanswered
PNAC -- The plan outlined in 1998
Downing Street Memoranda -- Fix the Intell
The Plame Affair -- what did the president know and when did he know it?
One could go on and on and on here.
ChimpCo, the most corrupt, inept, and criminal administration in the history of the USA.
With our Nations Ports being owned by the U.A.E.,
why not continue to follow suit and outsource the American Federal Government to India, that should save money.
Last time I checked the President of the USA gets a fat pay check of over $200,000+ per year.
A U.S. president from India could do a better job for only $50,000 a year.
State governments can be outsourced to Mexico and Canada,
and to save even more money the Department of Homeland Security can be run by Hamas.
Big business likes big government.
When the government is large and far reaching, it then has the power to legislate and regulate in favor of big business to help squash competition from small business.
Government here in the US should be minimal (at best) as set forth by the Constitution and the DoI. If the government doesn't have the power to regulate things in which it should not, then it doesn't have the ability to be biased to the largest campaign supporters.
Libertas in infinitum
And this is EXACTLY why the government should have little to no regulatory authority in the free market.
When the government is far-reaching, then the legislators are influenced by whoever writes their campaign checks. Big business gives lots of money in order to get legislation passed IN FAVOR of big business. Ever wonder why a small businessman these days really MUST have an attorney AND a tax accountant on retainer?
Independent and small business is a thread to big business. Therefore the big businesses attempt to skew the market in their favor by buying legislation.
The simple solution is to shrink the government and have a hands off approach to the market (thus the term "free" market) that way big business cannot pay off legislators to legislate in their favor and crush competition through regulation.
This is also why people in other places can make products/services for such a lower cost than we can in the US. Their regulation is almost nil whereas our regulation for business is through the roof.
Libertas in infinitum
...for the bird flu to hit. And it doesn't even have to hit here, it just has to hit somwhere. After global trade stops, after people don't have their goods in 24 hours, after half the tech companies lose their development labs there will be a large back lash.
Lamborghini - Owned by Audi (not American)
/Anyone else seen the 2006 Challenger concept? moly. Go Germans!
Maserati - Owned fully by Fiat (not American)
Just thought I'd point it out. The American Big 2 (as the 'third' is now owned by Germans) are also dying a slow painful death.
Back to the rest of your post. There hasn't been a massive capital flight from Europe (or anywhere for that matter) to the States, in fact it has been quite the opposite, hence the dollar dropping against everyone else so rapidly. I'm not sure how anyone can justify this deficit as ok. It is short-sighted suicide. Unless of course this Iraq war seriously pays off and keeps up swimming in oil for longer than the rest of the world. But from how pissed off the locals are (in Iraq) I don't think it's going to provide us with much.
I didn't realize that work was being shipped off-planet.
Let me help you with the confusion:
You are an admin. You get paid to administer computers. You do not work on a development team. Your job does not depend on the next "software" product going to market and being succesful.
We are programmers. We get paid to program computers....you know that software that you put on your servers?
Programmers DO lose jobs when other programmers write apllications for free. Admins are actually able to lower the budget at Corporation X and thus keep their jobs longer.
However OSS only forces people to keep the innovation level up. No more stagnating and making money of old technology.
what?
Trade deficits are not good in the longer run. We should demand that other nations purchage a roughly equal amount of goods or services before we open our gates so wide. Being the world's dumping ground for cheap products and cheap labor is not going to get it done.
Table-ized A.I.
If you can catch five rabbits a day with your spear and someone else in another tribe has a bow and arrow and can catch thirty a day and trade them at a lower cost than you to your tribe, it's your responsibility to figure out a way to catch more rabbits at a lower expense [...]
And if someone else in another tribe enslaves women and children, forcing them to hunt rabits so that he can profit from their labor, it's also your responsiblity to figure out a way to compete with that, too, right? You woudn't possibly expect anybody to try to put a stop to the abuse of the slaves. It's just business, after all. No harm done.
Being from Silicon Valley and having received my 4-year new media degree in 2001 right after its value went from about $60K/year to about $7/hr (actually $8 because my uncle wanted to do me a "favor"), I certainly share some of the concerns of people here. One I wonder about perhaps being overblown (although they do still matter but not as much as we might think) is the twin deficits. Basically, the trade deficit finances the budget deficit. If America ships dollars to Asia to buy products, the Asian manufacturer is going to turn those dollars into local currency to pay its workers and buy materials and such and the Asian central banks will take those dollars and buy T-bills. (they could also buy euros or yen or gold if so inclined but nominal yields on T-bills are highest) This is because they don't want another 1997 when they had inadequate dollar reserves to cover dollar withdrawals and basically got reamed harder than you're getting reamed right now. And I have to suspect that a lot of the capital flight from Asia at the time found a home in the Nasdaq, bolsering the tech and dot-com market as that money was looking for a quick buck to offset some nasty losses. Short story: you benefitted from their misery then just like they're benefitting from yours now. Globalization is really The Next Big Thing. And you have to embrace it if you want to not be basically a serf tied to the land. Nationality doesn't really matter too much in the context of business and economics anymore. To the extent that it ever did, that was only due to the trouble and expense of going offshore which is now greatly diminished. Some of that is artifical, like with NAFTA, but it's really unlikely to play any role in the information economy anyway. As far as manufacturing goes, I don't honestly believe that anyone on /. is that concerned about it. It's really more that politically, the union workers are much more numerous and therefore powerful in a democratic society than /.ers, so complaining about the loss of manufacturing jobs is really only a political maneuver. From a purely economic standpoint, however, Perot was quoted as saying about American workers that they want $20/hr to do a job you could train a monkey to do, which he was probably right about.
Therefore the only thing to do is have a skillset that makes you worth more than the next guy, regardless of race or nationality.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods
If there are not enough resources for everyone to prosper, you would like to see the US stop outsourcing, so that we are the ones to profit the most of the scarce remaining resources ? This is kind of egoistic :-( That's why I am for outsourcing because if one thing, it levels out the economies and everybody would get the same access to the world's resources.
a) Name one new industry that's being created.
b) Now name one new industry that's being created because of offshoring.
c) Now name one new industry that's being created and is not being offshored as we speak.
Here, I'll help you start out:
a) Biotech
The problem is
b) Biotech was not created by offshoring.
c) High end Biotech research work is being offshored as we speak. That's called knowledge work, not repetitive work - aka lab tech work - which itself is also being offshored.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Them buy what we produce? They don't "have the money" that we have, the "can't afford" what we produce. Why would they buy something made here here $3000.00 US when they can wait a month and buy it from somebody else (in another country) for $1500.00? This statement is just wrong-- "that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable". If we make a product they really want, some other country will start production and undercut what we (in the US) can afford to sell it for.
John W....
I am also a programmer. I have been a programmer for over 25 years, I've been a sysadmin for over 15. I do many related but different things. I didn't mention being a security expert either, because it didn't seem relevant.
In the context of my reply, the sysadmin roles were relevant. I do pretty much everything with Unix systems but design hardware. It was only a year ago that I was most recently part of a development team. That project was based in the US with us citizens writing programs to replace a commercial application written in India. Price isn't so important to the business when the product just doesn't work. Right now, I'm working for a development team doing system architecture. That may or may not require me to write code to make things work. I can relate to the programming side. I can't relate to the idea that people shouldn't develop their capabilities to be able to offer various services to their employers.
I haven't worked on commercial software for over 15 years. I primarily program for internal applications. If there was an open source program that fit the needs, that might be used. But most large companies have weird enough requirements that they have a bunch of programs to write and maintain these specialized applications.
I get to keep working longer because I keep learning new things and provide value to my employer. They keep paying me because it would cost more to get a handful of other people to do all the various things I do. If you want job security, be versatile enough to still be useful as priorities and projects change.
Programmers lose their jobs because they don't have other skills that are useful to the organization. Once you become a commodity, you can be easily replaced. If you want to find things to complain about, there's plenty to choose from. If you want to maintain your lifestyle by having a decent job, make sure you're providing enough value to your employer that your salary makes sense.
For example, a programmer can load Linux on a machine at home. Get comfortable with what it takes to install it, add disks, manage filesystems, do backups, and then call yourself a Jr. System Administrator. Talk to the other sysadmins at your company and find out what they spend most of their time doing and learn that. It's hard to justify having an extra programmer and extra sysadmin on staff for the busy times, but it's easy to keep the guy who can do some of each. Even through budget cuts, versatile people are harder to let go.
"Do not presume to say that I have not learned from history...this attack is of the ad hominem variety (attack the person, not the idea)."
I don't presume it: you reveal it. The worst problems have come from governments meddling in people's lives, supposedly for their best interest, rather than letting the people run their own lives. Look at Stalin, Mao, and the rest of the sorded history of the form of fascism known as "socialism".
"To a large extent I agree with you here. The problem is, I believe, that in the absence of any regulation for the public good, private power will gravitate into an increasingly small set of hands."
When you say "public good", you mean "government good". The regulations you support do exactly what you oppose: gravitate private power into an increasingly small set of hands: the government's. Remember the golden rule: those that makes the rules get the gold.
"Those who are in power will seek to increase it, often using whatever means possible."
Exactly. And you propose to give more power to the ones with the most power already, and the most power to abuse it. Only the government routinely shoots those it disagrees with.
"Where I agree with you is that corporations are creations of law, and and are thus protected by laws. So in that sense, monopolies have been supported by law."
This has nothing to do with corporations. Corporations merely exist to protect people from frivolous lawsuits. In a world where someone can spill coffee on her own lap and then get rich from lying in court about the company that sold the coffee, such protection is needed. I wish we would address the root of it and ban all frivolous lawsuits. But anyway, laws like patents, copyrights, licenses, and regulations are the laws that protect monopolies. The regulations by government have set the bar so high that nobody can start a new American car company. This is a perfect example of the government protecting oligarchy (in this case, the two American car companies that still exist).
"I ask you, does it matter how a rich person came by that money? Perhaps a rich person obtained their money through theft, or by the sale of narcotics or other illegal items, or by blackmail."
If so, then this person should be busted, same as the poor person. No difference, rich or poor.
"My opinion on this is that if a democratically accountable government gives up power, that power will simply flow into the hands of rich, powerful and unaccountable individuals. That power will not substantially flow into the hands of average individuals."
It will flow into the hands of average individuals. That is the case with the tax cuts under Reagan and Bush: most of the individuals having less stolen (getting the tax cuts) are non-rich. Most of the total money also goes to the non-rich.
Using an analogy, if we equate money with power, then a tax reduction that gives an average individual a few hundred extra dollars a year, and thus will give that person a small amount of "power". That same tax reduction will give an extraordinarily rich person a few millions of dollars extra per year. Tax reductions usually put more power into the hands of wealthy individuals. "
It is a bad analogy, since you use incorrect terms. Tax reductions do not "give" anything. They steal/take less. Also, look at the recent Bush tax cuts. Despite the media lie of "tax cuts for the rich", most of the individuals that benefited were non-rich, and most of the money went to them as well.
"I would rephrase it as "Government acts sometimes in the government's interest". "
I would rephrase it as "Government acts sometimes in the public interest". Yes, it sometimes does good things, such as when it cut taxes.
"Are you really calling Franklin Delano Roosevelt's government fascist and abusive? I thought World War II was fought against fascist and abusive governments."
It had that aspect about it, yes. In FDR's favor, some of the things he created were intended to be temporary a
"The classic opportunity for our American farmers and entrepreneurs and small businesses to understand is there is a 300 million-person market of middle class citizens here in India, and that if we can make a product they want, that it becomes viable"
Hmmm... Let's see... U.S. owns a company and gives their jobs to India. How is that us producing a product that they want?
I think what is being inferred here is that we are the innovators and everyone else are the laborers. Well, here is a news flash... Americans are getting dumber every day. Just look at kids coming out of college. They can't even form a single intelligent sentence without saying "like" or "uh". The education system in this country is failing and the next generation of entrepeneurs won't have a brain in their head. How is anyone going to invent anything that someone else will want to buy? The Japanese are so far ahead of us in technology, it's scary. They have been building hybrid cars for years, and American car makers are just now promising fuel efficient cars by 2007-2008. By then, the Japanese will have something far better. We are always a step behind, and now we are giving our jobs away. Anyone who thinks America is going to continue to prosper is a fool! The terrorists won't have to destroy us, because we destroy ourselves.
"Now you just have to work 1 job for 2 years, change to another, then another, then another... then oops you dont find one... then you find one, then you get outsourced, then you find another, you're fired, you change jobs... change.. change change."
Cry cry cry. You sure must be lousy at every job you do. The only reason anyone's job is outsourced is because someone else can do it better. You have no one to blame but yourself.
"But it used to be... 1 stable job that you could depend on, for your entire life, that would raise a family, afford a house, your retirement"
hell...someone who believes "The Waltons" is reality, and who has no idea that there are more good-paying jobs in the United States than at any time in history, and this is after (and because of) 20 or so years of "Rampant Globalism".
I wonder how he would feel if HIS job was the one being outsourced... they could hardly do a worse job :)
remember to loot and pillage before you burn!
We have yet another reason to declare Open Season on the White House.
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
The *average* Chinese worker (around a year ago) in the entire country, not just on the coast.. made around $300/year. However, wages are going up rapidly, so the average worker now probably makes much more, maybe $600 or more a year. Engineers might make much more, as much as 6 or 7 thousand dollars a year. I think the problem with the way most Americans look at global outsourcing is that they think that someone somehow owes them jobs because of their good looks. They couldn't be more wrong, in fact, the American economic system puts a burden on corporations to reduce their costs in any way possible, by exporting jobs, if necessary. Under capitalism, people exist to help corporations build capital. Supply and demand clearly changes in situations of low demand and high supply, and as more jobs go overseas and/or are replaced by silicon chips, demand for workers will fall along with wages. Sooner or later something has to give, and my guess is that Americans will have to accept a much lower standard of living in that intirim period while there are still jobs, and will have to accept no income once they are truly obsolete. Incomes, however, will rise for that shrinking number of people who have irreplaceable creative skills that are not scriptable by computers. They will do well in an atmosphere of heady prosperity. However, their days are numbered. Meanwhile, productivity will continue to rise, until no workers are producing infinite goods and services for a tiny number of elites. What is wrong with this picture?
Right away you seem to be clueless on what happened.
#1, when would our economy have been "ready" for a balanced budget? Before or after National Bankruptcy Day?
#2, what happened was a bubble brought on by new technologies, followed by a rather mild actual recession which was NOT stagflation. Did you pluck that term out of a book somewhere without actually reading it? Stag-flation was "stagnant economy" coupled with "high inflation." We didn't have "stagnant economy" back then, though it can readily be argued that we're having it now. We haven't had "high inflation" in DECADES, so I don't really know where you got that malarkey.
Bush got his "shit" done by his tax cuts and fixing all of Bill's mistakes.
I don't even know where to start with this. In WHAT MEASURABLE WAY is our economy in better shape now than it was the day Bush took office? In WHAT MEASURABLE WAY are our nation's infrastructure, financial situation, military preparedness, foreign policy, image abroad, social polity in better shape than they were on January 19, 2001? What THE FUCK are you talking about? Bush's tax cuts have been almost exclusively to people making $200,000+. I certainly haven't seen them, and I'm in spitting distance of six figures myself. Those tax cuts have BANKRUPTED our nation. We will have to STOP what we are doing right now, and completely reverse course to undo the damage.
The dishonesty of the tax cuts is breathtaking. It's well known that Bush's real intent is to "starve the beast" as prescribed by know-nothing dickwad trust-fund baby Grover Norquist. "Starve the beast" means to cut the government's financial resources while running up ruinous costs, then forcing people to decide which programs must be cut to continue. It's horribly dishonest and deceitful because absent the reckless financial irresponsibility of the Reagan and then Bush Jr. years we would not have this outrageous debt on our backs, and our social programs would be readily affordable and people would have no issue with continuing to pay for them as they provide tremendous benefit to society. If Bush or Norquist wants an honest open discussion of the validity of Social Security or Medicare they need to have the balls to stand up in front of the nation and actively begin that dialogue.
Oh wait, I forgot that Bush already tried to talk us all out of Social Security and got ROUNDLY shouted down for it.
I hope you're still standing around with your gaping mouth running about what a great guy Asshole Bush is when the bottom falls out. You might finally learn a think or two about stuff going around and then coming around.
One day I feel I'm ahead of the wheel / the next it's rolling over me / I can get back on / I can get back on
Maybe you have a good point.
Your post DIRECTLY implies two things:
1- In other words, since my job hasn't been outsourced to India, "neener neener" to those who have lost their jobs. I'm worrying about my own first.
2- This isn't about "saving the downtrodden worker from the corporate slavemaster," since you are more worried about workers that are less downtrodden.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Some of the obvious things that India has bought from USA in the past year 1) Over 10 billion dollars worth of Boeing planes. Where do you think they are made? What jobs do you think help create? I guess they are not Americans as they are not code monkeys eh. 2) Billions of dollars worth of telecom equipment contracts. If you have EVER bothered to read quaterly reports of almost ANY MAJOR american telecom equipment company - you will ALWAYS see that one of their bright spots is increasing sales of equipment in India. Majority of it is straight imports from USA. India's largest telecom service provider is going to have a $5 billion tender within next two months and American companies are heavy favorites to win it along with Siemens. 3) Medical and surgical equipment: India has almost no home grown manufacturing for this kind of high end items and trust me THEY COST A LOT. An american company just exported a $15 million MRI machine to a local hospital in India. 4) Weapons. Yes, some of you might frown upon selling weapons. But guess what? USA spends a TON OF MONEY on weapons R&D. So, if you DECIDE TO NOT MAKE money from one of your biggest research investments then dont bitch at others. Currently, India is almost single handedly boosting up Russian arms industry but some of those high stakes orders are bound to go to USA as relations improve. Those are just some things I can think from top of my head. Please atleast pretend to be intellectuals. Their is a huge potential for trade between USA and India. And as to WHY indians would buy USA products? For the same reason why Indians buy Japanese products. Q U A L I T Y and BRAND NAMES. Indians can be very conscious about brand names and if their is something that is Made in China vs. Made in USA, they WILL think of "Made in USA" product as higher quality. No questions asked.
According to loonies like you the US system is better to China's because you have more freedom to elect your representatives.
Oh wait, but only as long as they come from the two official parties.
What will you do, label any people daring to support other parties traitors? Like the Communists when somebody does not support the Communist party?
Oh wait, you pretty much did just that.
Guys, you keep creeping towards a totalitarian system and you are falling for it head, toe and sinker, and prod and happy for it.
The day the Republicans and the Democrats announce a goverment of National Unity (you think is unlikely? Just see how politicians and family members of the political elite jump from one side to the other) you will miss the shy attempts to have more parties that matter in US politics.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If you don't want to outsource, you will have huge immigration pressures. Or you will become poor (because you will be producing goods more inneficiently than others). Inneficiency brings unemployment, there are enough examples in recent world history for that to be considered an undisputed fact.
US standards of life are bettter than ever, real salaries, income per capita, unemployment are at an all time high.
If you have problems it is because your are oil junkies and can't put your Federal Goverment's credit card down. But if you have a war to finance, you clearly have to go deeply into debt to ensure you can kill all those uaccounted Iraqi civilians.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If "Apu" makes things in a more efficent (and thus more likely cheaper) way, then keeping Jue Consumer on his now inneficient job is hurting all the other Joes and Janes that are forced to pay inflated prices in order to keep Joe Consumer on his job.
By hiring "Apu" via outsourcing you are liberating the salary of Joe Consumer in the US economy in order to be allocated in a more productive fashion and also Apu becomes a potential costumer.
Money is allocated in a more efficient manner in the US economy to the bussinesses where is more profitable to invest.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.