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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
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.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
On the surface, this seems logical, and is often the first argument made by proponents of this emerging 'global economy'. Bush's own reference to tapping the growing indian 'middle class' play on this very argument.
However, do a little googling on 'indian middle class' and you'll find that the US equivilent wage to lead a nice middle class life in India is placed somwhere (depending on the year and on the study) between $6,000 and $15,000 per year.
I'm no isolationist, but there is a serious catch here that noone on either side of the issue is directly addressing - I live in a place where it takes at least $40,000 to 50,000 to lead a nice middle class life. What can I possibly produce that would generate that income from a market in India? As other posters here have already alluded to, the indian middle class will get a much better deal from Indian (or Chinese, etc) produced goods.
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.
"That naive cube! How long must I suffer this!" --Sheldon J. Plankton
Except fast food won't be exported, they'll just set up a McDonald's in India
Which will have to pay franchising fees to McDonald's America, and also purchase raw product from McDonald's Indian Distribution centers which are owned by McDonald's America.
all those fancy plasma TVs aren't made in America
But are paid for and sold by American companies.
so the American working man won't benefit, but the big American companies will..
That depends on how you define the American "working man". "Working man" used to mean factory workers and service personnel. As time goes on, it has been changing to mean corporate workers (many of who can get $$$ bonuses for opening business in new areas) and entrepenuers. As long as the change isn't too sudden (thus leaving a massive number of specialized workers jobless), such change is far from a bad thing. In fact, it generally means more wealth and independence for all.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
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.
It's that little word 'free' that has them fooled. The problem is that they don't understand that it's freedom for markets, not freedom for people. Not everyone has the same access to markets, and therefore freedom isn't distributed fairly or even guaranteed to the participants who do have access. That's why we have people who can't participate in a market screwed by large companies who drive down the cost of their labor. That's why we have participants in markets who are not free because they live in Vietnam. I doubt that this is the optimal solution to a fair distribution of the world's economic products.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
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.
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
I'm deeply suspicious of the idea of intellectual property as a source of economic growth.
If the U.S. were to dominate the world economy via intellectual property (but not in any other way), why would other countries continuing paying us for knowledge which once in the wild can be reproduced again and again at no cost?
Right now countries will respect our IP "ownership", but that's because they can't sell their products here if they don't. With the U.S. still the largest economy on the planet, you don't want to be shut out. However, once the rest of the world develops robust middle-class markets the cost of paying the US again and again for ideas is going to lose its appeal. Intellectual property (especially in the form of patents) is a "I got here first, so you can't do this without my permission" model. It's a fiction that only works as long as everyone playing agrees to believe in it (unlike, say, a rock, which is there whether you believe in it or not).
Life is short: void the warranty.
This is so ridiculous I can't help commenting. First of all, "most" of the USA does not live in poverty by ANY measure. Second, by the standards of the world, the poverty rate in the US is effectively zero. Take a look at how fat people are in "poverty" neighborhoods, and that will tell you something.
Not to say the US can't improve, but your point is just stupid.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
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.
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.
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?
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.
Go ahead, change the numbers around all you want. As long as you stick with possible values (ie. non-negative values), the facts remain the same. Namely that fact that one nation cannot always be the best at producing everything.
Yes it can. One nation can be the best at producing everything. It's 100% possible in theory. In practive however, of course the French will always make better cream coffee than Americans.
However, when it comes to mass produced goods like cars, computers, software, clothes, etc, etc, etc... China can and is best at producing these goods at the lowest price.
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. Cheaper goods from China may or may not make things better for Americans, or for Chinese people for that matter.
The weightless economy is an ivory tower concept, that is consistently held up as an aspirational one. But bottom line, countries with a relatively high manufacturing and exports boom. Countries without don't. America is currently without, and seems most likely to continue withou for some time. All because some economist says that goods produced in sweatshops by serfs living a totalitatrian state should be allowed to freely compete with citizens in a prosperous democracy.
Jobs go to China for one reason and one reason only. It's cheaper.
May the Maths Be with you!
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'd love to see all of the money taken out of politics, but in this case the cure is a lot worse than the disease.
Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
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.
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.
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?
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
"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.
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 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.