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$4,400/Yr. Coders May Work On Dept. of Labor Project
theodp writes "To power the Tools for America's Job Seekers Challenge, the US Department of Labor tapped IdeaScale, a subsidiary of Survey Analytics, which is headquartered in Seattle with satellite offices in Nasik, India and Auckland, NZ (PDF). According to the Federal Register (PDF), an Emergency OMB Review was requested to launch the joint initiative of the DOL, White House, and IdeaScale to help out unemployed US workers. A cached Monster.com ad seeks candidates to work on the development and maintenance of ideascale.com, but in India at an annual salary of Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US). BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'" There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.
I have this weird feeling that had they gone with American services for building these websites at 10x the cost of using IdeaScale, the Slashdot summary would have read about the absurdly high spending that the Department of Labor is wasting our tax dollars on and would have something about a cursory glance finding tons of companies willing to fullfill the work order for 1/10 what they spent. Damned if you do, damned if you don't. They picked the route that most CEOs today are picking and they saved us from more tax dollar expenditures. Pick your poison.
And don't tell anybody but I think Obama's coffee mugs are
BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.
So because IdeaScale built an application to spec for the White House (who shouldn't have paid for it if it didn't meet requirements) and a bunch of pothead hippies turned up in full force to get their message out loud and clear on it, it's IdeaScale's fault? I think you'd be better off blaming the concept of democracy or the buzzword 'crowd-sourcing' as this is just kind of evidence of a technology-based bias of the voices.
You criticize the White House for doing something we all do then you blame the wonderful effects of democracy on a web application?
My work here is dung.
Yeah, job one for creating American jobs is farming jobs out to India. Nice.
Don't worry. I'm sure they'll be billed back to the Dept. of Labor at 100k per year, +20% finder's fee.
The ______ Agenda
Rs. 200,000 or Rs. 300,000 is a very low salary in India. Junior programmers generally get paid at least Rs.500,000 to Rs.700,000
BTW, an earlier White House-sponsored, IdeaScale-powered Open Government Brainstorm identified legalizing marijuana as one of the best ways to 'strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness.'
It is probably worth mentioning (if it was even worth bringing up the content of that site in the first place) that the current number one idea on that site is a meta-innovation aimed at giving users the ability to apply 'ignore' votes to ideas to better stifle unproductive but popular entries. Sounds like they need to throw the whole thing away and just run slashcode!
What do you guys make per year for coding this site? I can start getting the next submission ready...
Not that I am against it, but the mention of marijuana legalization has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on this particular story; it was mentioned (and rightly so) in the story about the brainstorming project, but it has no place here.
You get what you pay for.
A lot of people tend to think that just because the person is over in India they'll be willing to work for a sub-average wage. Which, given regular circumstances, is generally true. Coding is another thing all together. If you live in a poverish state, you can't be expected to know C++. In fact it might be a stretch to say you know how to operate a computer. Those people who get hired for "Tech Support" aren't guru's by any means (and I think we all knew that). But they have been trained how to handle with customers, the basics of operating a computer, and are given a good list of responses. Programming is not something you can train "on the job". You need previous knowledge on the basics of computers. Then you need to learn a bit of program theory, how it all works. Lastly you need to learn the Syntax of various languages. A lot of people drop out when they can't deal with the Syntax. Some people drop out when they can't get the theory. Some people just don't like computers. You can't hire someone off the street and think that within a short time they'll be able to pick up all of those skills.
That's not to say there aren't educated programmers that come from developing countries. Every once in a while a hard working family will be able to afford an education, and once they have that education, they usually fly stateside to make more money. They know that with their education they can be making way more money than 4400 USD a year. So they go and tack an extra digit to that paycheck, keep half and the other half is more than enough to either fly the family to the States or support them in India.
Basically what it boils down to, they're going to get some guy who can talk the talk but not walk the walk. He'll agree to $4400 a year for as long as he can hold the job since he was only make $1000 a year back at his old job. Because anyone who knows what they're doing knows they are worth more.
that software dev wages are now so low, even in India. How low can they really push these wages??
It's just a matter of time until the United States Department of Defense gets outsourced
US Department of Labor
For some reason, I read this as Department of DAY Labor..
What's with all the anti-administration flamebait recently? Yesterday, submitted as fact, were a set very dubious allegations that turned out to be false, surprising almost no-one. Today, we're supposed to get upset because an American company that also hires workers in India gets a contract to hire workers in America, and reprise the anger we felt when fratards overwhelmed a lackluster public response to an Obama administration suggestion box with their gormless suggestion to 'save the economy' by legalizing a plant that grows like a weed. What gives?
Software development and software, for that matter, has become a cheap commodity.
I can get a free version of software for any problem I may have. On the other hand, if I need fertilizer for my garden, I have to buy it. Fertilizer costs money: software is free.
That's right folks: cow shit is worth more than software.
The markets have spoken.
Sure, it might be driving down wages and benefits for Americans and allowing other nations to leverage our infrastructure for their profit, but isn't that just one of the perks of being a Friedmannite economy?
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Don't worry. In time, India will outsource its jobs to America.
I have friends in India. I discussed IT salary differences with them. I said "this web page says you can get software engineers for $5k/year in India. Is that for real?"
I was told that that's bullshit and that Indian professionals actually earn in excess of $20,000 per year. $5k/year would only buy interns with no education and no experience, from what my friends in Bangalore tell me.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Whoa, wait a minute...are you insinuating that there are no active marijuana activist groups that are politically active?
That's almost as ignorant as saying pot is as dangerous as cocaine.
Obviously, NORML and MPP are the two biggest...but there are literally HUNDREDS of them. Spend a couple minutes with some searches on Google...what you find will surprise you.
Living With a Nerd
Whoa, wait a minute...are you insinuating that there are no active marijuana activist groups that are politically active?
...and I just realized how poorly that was written. Still, you get my point...there are a huge number of marijuana activist groups who work full-time on this issue.
Again, two minutes and Google will show you the way.
Living With a Nerd
We have a marvellous system called Free Trade. You can tell it's good just from it's name. It promotes Freedom! All the nations of the world are joining together as one to allow free movement in goods across borders.
Unfortunately, they are all also being very careful to make sure that their citizens don't have the same freedom of movement as a toaster.
What must it be like, to work all day on an assembly line as a child, producing shoes that have more freedom than you do - they can go to America!!
We can whine for tariffs, and try to tax and regulate foreign trade. This sucks for the economy - incidentally, protectionist policies are said to have contributed to the Great Depression. Double good luck stopping trade in something like software, which can cross a border without even needing to be smuggled in a gas tank.
So many factors go into currency and cost of living differences of the kind between the US, and say, India. So, that's not changing any time soon. Unless the dollar crashes. :)
In fact, the only hope an American laborer really has in the mean time is to open their borders. Allow free movement in people. And hope that people from around the world will want to come to the US to work. While it's cheaper to make things in the 3rd world, no one really wants to live there. It kind of sucks to save money by eliminating working police, courts, fire exits, scholarships, clean streets, environmental regulations, safety rules, torts, and so forth. The current system only soldiers on because, workers just have no choice. If they had one, labor might elect to find a more favorable set of laws to live under, which would somewhat mitigate management's ability to shop for the most cheap-but-labor-unfriendly shit-where-you-sleep laws they can find.
Hardly anything could be a bigger screw than what we have now, which involves H1B programs that bring foreign skilled labor into the US to learn, get experience, and then forces them to take it back home to India, Asia, etc. But this is probably exactly why IBM, Sun, Microsoft, etc. all support H1B programs.
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Yeah, right, and all other downtrodden minorities are responsible for the poor treatment given to them, because they are too lazy to develop a "political voice".
Congratulations for justifying tryanny by the majority from the point of view of the majority. Well done there.
You might as well send those jobs to Canada, because 4400 U.S. dollars = 4 515.71984 Canadian dollars and... oh wait.
The evil computer program that shunted those random phrases together in a mockery of English syntax should be forceably retired. The summary manages to be long and tortured, yet strangely free of specific information.
(-1, Raw and Uncut is the only way to read)
Just for comparsion. I work as programmer for small Slovak hospital/database software vendor and after 5 years, my income is 13'000 $/year.
In all fairness, America did intercept all the trade Europe was going to attempt with India back in Columbus' day.
or script kiddies.
4000/year is too low for getting even an average quality indian coder. i have to compete with indians in web development, i know how ridiculously low rates they pull sometimes, but these rates generally are placed in projects that can be somehow gobbled up from premade code. i dont think with 400/month you are going to get quality ppl. youll probably get some college kids in a high turnover sweat shop.
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Not one reference to this being a kdawson post, or is my comment threshold set too high? ;)
Bark less. Wag more.
A lot of people will make the argument that "you can't blame people for going with the cheapest option out there that can get the job done". They say it's the American and capitalist way. After all, it's our fault as employees for not being competitive with our salaries. Brushing aside the whole "...while we give these same companies major tax breaks and incentives and our own government won't even employ us to do our own jobs... that our own taxes are paying for", the major problem is that we *can't* compete.
How can I compete with someone who makes $4,400/yr and yet live in America? They want to pay me Indian wages while paying American prices. After tax and other required withdrawals, that $4,400/yr wouldn't even cover the gas to get to and from work. I'd need an entire second salary just to pay for parking while at work.
who never fucking cut their costs even if they get stuff produced for cents in china. moreover, prices of each class of goods appear to be fixed around their respective price margins for decades. despite costs have fallen down to tenth or lower from before, they havent budged to cut down costs. there was supposed to be competition. where is it ? why isnt a fucking single company cutting costs to get more market reach ?
all these show that there has been a fucking unsigned, unwritten cartel established in each walk of american consumer life, and they are practically price fixing like the LCD producers did a few years ago.
or, just like how riaa members has been charged with price fixing just today.
no, dont blame anyone else. the problems of america lies in its unbridled corporate structure. corporations are free to do anything, under the pretense of free market, yet the consumer doesnt appear to be making use of any of that freedom.
as a result, your cost of living is insanely high. nike produces shoes for a few bucks in pakistan, sells them for $20-30 in turkey, sells same shoes for $80-100 in usa. they are practically raping the shit out of you.
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I would urge US slashdotters to call or e-mail your Congress-Person. If this is really true, it is a violation of US Federal Contracting standards. Generally, Federal IT contracts specify all workers on the contract to be either US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
people are telecommuting. they dont need to go abroad. there are many indians working out of india doing jobs for other countries as well as americans moving abroad to europe to work from there because cost of living is cheaper. its a digital age with freedoms.
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"Marijuana could be legal if they were willing to stop toking long enough to have a political voice and vote."
Dope is wasted on kids, I'm a grandfather and have been regularly smoking pot for 35yrs, at least a third of the people I know in my age bracket have a similar habit, none of us sit at home all day getting high. The only political party in my country that has a policy of repealing prohibition are the single issue "Marijuana party" and I believe the political options in the US are similar. You may be naive enough to vote for a single issue political party but the vintage stoners I know are not.
If I have to complete with $5K/year Indian programmers, I have a right to lower my living costs by outsourcing my yard maintenance to an $3/hour undocumented mexican gardener. Or by outsourcing my software purchases to $0/hour piratebay. I know there are good arguments about both of these pursuits, but then there are similar ones about skirting US labor laws by outsourcing. What's good for the goose is good for the gander.
Hey, I'm in the US, and it's obviously true. It's just inconveniently true.
Our anti-pot drug policies eliminate any possibility of salutary tax revenue from an industry that's worth billions even as a black market. In addition to that, we have to catch, try and incarcerate pot growers, sellers, and users at staggering expense (also billions, when all is said and done).
Pot is basically as harmless as alcohol, but since we force our educators and police to demonize it even while half of them use it themselves, we undercut the entire credibility of our anti-drug programs (which are important for helping kids avoid drugs that are actually dangerous). So not only do we get no tax on billions, but we spend billions, and we contribute to actual drug problems (at what additional cost I hesitate to guess).
We could still try the tired argument that pot really is dangerous. We have to hope not, since a huge portion of the population admits to using it in studies. The Netherlands notwithstanding, three of our last three presidents have admitted to using various illegal drugs and got elected anyway.
The open government brainstorming application worked perfectly. It distilled a set of great ideas directly from citizen activists with less lobbying, filtering and political BS.
Legalizing pot would be a great idea. It would cut waste, generate revenue, empty prisons, improve the health and safety of the nation's youth. It's too bad Obama absolutely cannot and will not do it. It would be political suicide. And that gets us into analyzing the particular hues that the fascinating kaleidoscope of American politics puts over reality...
Either way, you can't blame the app, or the app's developer for doing an unusually good job, just because the truth is embarrassing for the "national psyche."
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The article you quoted states:
>The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564, a slight increase from the same >period two years ago, a recent survey released by the Council of Labor Affairs (CLA) showed.
That's $1142 USD a Month, not annually. That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US. Compared with cost of living, it's not really a bad deal.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn or Taiwan Semiconductor, their annual bonus this year is expected to be 6 month of salary. Any US tech companies giving out 6 months of bonus this year?
I have actually read something to that effect.
As the Indian economy grows, they will likely have demand for IT jobs grow faster than they can produce graduates.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Says the poster on Slashdot...
By the way, all cannabis lovers are not stoners that spend their whole day high. All people who like to drink beer or wine are not pathological alcoholics. Some people actually enjoy the productive effect a low dose of THC can have on the cognitive functions. It is a slight euphoria state like the one given by alcohol but without the dumbing down of intellectual capacities. The day it is legal, I think my two work drugs will be coffee and THC. Coffee when fast low-level coding is needed and THC when architecture has to be done with the big picture in mind.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
The U.S. Government is essentially paying non-U.S. citizens to maintain a web-site for Americans seeking employment?
Sorry, but my Irony Meter (TM) just pegged and is now completely non-functional.
Outsourcing whatever we can just frees up Americans to do more productive and high-paying jobs, such as, you know, really cool jobs and stuff.
If you read the article you would see that the title is bullshit. It's described as $4,4000 in the article... which with a poorly placed comment looks like 4,400 when it's actually 44,000
Which is a pretty average wage for a developer.
There's no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.
Hello?
I'm not an American and I don't live in the USA, but from the outside looking in, it seems to me the USA is running up GIGANTIC debts and deficits, with the citizenry unwilling to pay additional taxes (i.e. consumption taxes like a VAT) to fund government spending.
So to me this seems like a good way to get spending under control. You can't on the one hand be unwilling to pay taxes and on the other hand want the government to hire $80K/year coders - If the US citizens have said no more taxes then they have to accept government cost-cutting like this...
Well, we got legalized pot in Holland and all the same problems. Well, not all the same (unemployment rate is 3.9% and we ain't as fat yet) but close.
I think Douglas Adams said it best. People are a problem.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
>>It's just a matter of time until the United States Department of Defense gets outsourced
You mean like Blackwater?
Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
Good god, that’s hard to follow. There are so many links I can’t tell which one is the main article, there are acronyms that I don’t recognise, and it’s not tied together at all. The flow of information just jumps from one thing to another with little apparent connection between them. It’s also incorrect.
Let me see if I’m understanding this, and make it easier to follow...
Now we hit the first non sequitur... how is the development and maintenance of ideascale.com related to the Jobs for America’s Job Seekers Challenge?
The connection is – apparently – that the same people developing and maintaining the IdeaScale website will presumably also be designing the platform to “allow toolmakers and developers to present their free online job tools to workforce development experts and jobseekers for discussion, rating, and voting”. That’s a bit of a stretch, but okay. (As kdawson correctly pointed out, “There’s no guarantee that Indian workers recruited by that Monster.com ad would work on US Department of Labor projects.” Wait a second... did kdawson actually get something right? At any rate that still doesn’t make up for posting this atrocity to begin with.)
Now we hit the second non sequitur... what does IdeaScale’s other contest/survey have to do with this one, other than being hosted by the same company? Does the results of a previous survey on how to “strengthen our democracy and promote efficiency and effectiveness” have anything to do with this contest? They have no control over the results of the project: they’re just designing the system to take submissions and allow people to vote on them...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Obama hires Indian code-slaves to make a website to help people find jobs.
McBushcain would have given Haliburton $200 billion to maybe hire some more people, if they wanted to.
Ron Paul would have left unemployment for the market to solve and hit the snooze button on his alarm.
For great justice.
How much does a fry cook at McDonald's make in India? Cost of living a huge factor even within the United States so they are just throwing around meaningless numbers.
You sir underestimate the power of reproduction.
--- Need web hosting?
Is this a story about outsourcing or pot legalization?
Should the respective sides haul out their canned pro/anti stands for one issue, the other, or both?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
That's comparable to the US minimum wage, but in a country you can have lunch for 1-2$ US.
Here in the States, a fairly nutritious frozen dinner costs 1 to 2 USD at Walmart*.
Oh, and for folks working at Foxconn
But is there an NBCconn of opposite political persuasion to "fair and balance" them out?
For those people, do you know what the alternatives are? There really aren't very many and they all are to live in poverty. It sucks, but an undeveloped nation is an undeveloped nation. Every developed nation has gone through a ton of bullshit and squalor before it got to where it is. Free trade benefits everyone, but it requires a little bit of faith in the process. As soon as you get money flowing in to an undeveloped nation, you are providing a catalyst for their society to mature. When things get too expensive for a developed country - they will leave. However, you will have established a market in the undeveloped country and helped its development. In the case of "Fair Trade," you are inspiring a stagnant economy by singling out individual sources to receive relatively enormous amounts of money. Social change won't be inspired by over-compensating a few people.
Before that will happen, salaries of IT positions in India will have to rise above comparable IT positions in the US.
Unless their entire cost of living rises at the same rate as the IT salaries (okay, it might, if most of their economy is based on working in IT), I’d be better off moving to India and working there rather than working in the US for an Indian company and getting paid the same amount.
Come to think of it, if I really believed that was going to happen, the best course of action would be to move to India now, get myself up to a good living level using my current savings (I’d be quite rich, to them), get a job in IT for local wages, and wait for the pay to go up.
Hell, even if the pay wasn’t going to skyrocket, how much money would I have to take to India in order to live as a rich man, working there to supplement my savings and make them last for the rest of my life? E.g. if I could make $5,000 or $6,000/year in IT, and a really great lifestyle could be had for $10,000/year, then starting off with savings of $100,000 would last me more than 20 years...
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
Hemp is a great product, but although it is related to marijuana, it is not a drug and doesn't help your argument. Other than the US, most countries allow hemp to be cultivated, processed and sold; even countries where marijuana is illegal.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
You know of course that the jean cartel will never allow this...
Social change won't be inspired by over-compensating a few people.
It's funny you put it that way.
Let's take an example from real life.
If you have a country that allows slavery in some industry (I won't name any names, but you know who you are), and you have free trade, what does that do to the labor market in other countries where free men try to earn a living in that same industry?
"Oh, well, it benefits the slaves to be able to work harder so their owners can sell more goods to foreign markets. And one day, after a ton of bullshit and a lot of faith and a lot of petty details that aren't that important, they can arrive at the same place as American workers!"
But sadly, no. All this really does is over-compensate the foreign and domestic slave owners. And it can only be accomplished by preventing people from crossing borders - just as we do today, with immigration policies. The slaves desperately want to be up and out of the plantation, shopping for working and living conditions the same way that we, as consumers, shop for the cheapest labor and goods. As soon as they actually can, you have an actual "free" market - in labor as well as goods. Under this regime, the "benefits" to the slaves happen so fast your head spins. :) But I guess we, as Americans, need something that's not quite so fast as that. :)
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It gives me a headache.
Alexander Peter Kristopeit bought his basement from his mommy for one dollar.
America is dead.
In holland we got "Bakellende", a prime minister who is best described as George W. Bush without the razor sharp intellect and Blair without the integrity. The guy is called the teflon president because everything just slides off him, thanks to the coalition nature of the dutch system.
The left (well supposedly) PvDA is so horny for government they constantly bend over backwards rather then just saying "enough is enough" and forcing new elections. The Christian Union is a tiny part that has no business being in a government but was allowed in because it gives the CDA a partner that will bend over even more because without this arrangement there is no way in hell they would ever have a say on anything.
And to fight it all, the bright new hope? We got the SP (Socialist Party) who was ONCE led by the only guy you could trust even if you didn't agree with him and is now being led by a woman who doesn't want to offend anyone and is about as much a socialist as Blair (being left wing does NOT mean you have to be a bleeding heart but it does mean you have to LISTEN to the voter, the worker, not just your elitist friends, armchair socialists).
And on the right, there is Wilders, that some of you might have heard off. His bright idea for the future? To back the CDA even if the CDA doesn't want to work with him... oh yeah, 4 more years of Bakellende. Seems the guy learned nothing from the party that preceded him, LPF, who lost all votes after working with CDA. Everyone who ever worked with the CDA lost votes.
And you wish to complain to me about the US system? At least you guys got a chance. Things are so bad in the US, it can only get better. In holland the CDA has succeeded for years to slide ever downwards but push the blame on everyone else.
Sometimes I think WWIII wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. Get a fresh start.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Uh, but he's wrong! From his own link, the Taiwanese workers are earning about USD1150 per MONTH (which is actually not bad in the 3rd world country I'm in[1]).
The _FIRST_ sentence says it: "The average worker in Taiwan earns a monthly salary of NT$36,564".
Google says 36564 Taiwanese dollars is about USD1150 : http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&num=100&q=36564+TWD+in+usd&btnG=Search&meta=
If the average US person can't figure out the difference between years and months, or have poor reading comprehension, or can't be bothered to check stuff properly, it's no surprise US bosses are outsourcing to other countries.
So what if those 3rd world workers are crap. No point paying far more for just as crap (or worse).
And guess what, many of these "3rd world" workers aren't that crap.
See: http://www.bunniestudios.com/blog/?p=185
I've shown some kids these videos and told them that that's the sort of competition they'll be facing (more so as countries like Vietnam start getting into it as well).
[1] FWIW, I'm a cheap worker (relative to the USA) in a 3rd world country. But hey at least I can read, spell and do basic math (with help from Google :) ). I can even write some simple perl and python code...
Please correct the article. The job posting list the "Pay Scale : Rs. 2,00,000 - 3,00,000 / Year – Depends upon candidates experience" - There is a zero missing from the article amount, which translates to a pay scale is $40k - $60k and not $4k to $6k.
My 85 year old conservative grandfather offered the following regarding marijuana legalization:
"They should legalize and tax it, like liquor. Its just like prohibition in the 1920s, people will use it regardless of the law and the only ones who make money are the gangsters with blood on their hands."
When asked what he thought the difference between a pot smoker and someone with a camel in one hand and bourbon in the other, he responed:
"A free hand".
no company ever attempts to get ahead of their competition by cutting prices seriously. isnt it fishy ?
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Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($4,4000 to $6,600 US)
Maybe it's just me, but I'm still kind of shocked to see numbers like this. The current exchange rate (as I type this) between the U.S. dollar and Indian rupee is about 45.7 to 1! Okay, so the above numbers are only slightly off (rounded for readability I'm sure), but still, does this remind anyone else of Snow Crash?
Yeah, that is what all the closet stoners say. "Dude, like, I am prodick...prodact...produckive. I went to my job at the BK lounge just last week."
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
This is all just re balancing.
The problem. Manufacturing and Engineer get hit first.
Most Western countries face structural deficits largely because the productive parts of their economy are paid globally competitive wages, but the regulatory and public sector are paid wages negotiated abstractly or are protected from global competition (doctors, lawyers).
Hence, our huge deficits.
Take Detroit for example. As Manufacturing wages dipped and job losses occurred, you would expect public sector salaries to drop as well. In time, they will adjust...
Eventually this will all re balance. The wage gap (largely imposed by government) is unsustainable. How does a population making 30k-40/year afford doctors and lawyers earning 250k, 80k teachers, 80k transit workers...? the answer is...it doesn't. It made sense when auto workers made 90k... but not anymore.
Taxing the super rich doesn't help either. Just do the math. There just aren't that many rich people out there. Take the CEO of walmart's salary and his stock optins and divide it by the number of walmart employees and it works out to a few dollars each year.
Either through direct wage cuts, or currency inflation or protectionism... this will have to correct itself.
So long as we have free trade, you will get a better deal elsewhere. If we had a true free market... as wages in industry dropped to compensate, public sector and regulatory wages would drop as well... and things would be in balance... home prices would drop... (deflation). Your lower wage would not feel lower. But we don't have a free market, so that is all moot.
That's an interesting situation, it's true -- but I don't think it really affects the social dynamics of money flowing in. In a situation like that, you see money being distributed extremely unequally. The greater the disparity between slave owner quality of life and slave quality of life, the closer the slaves get to revolting. When it comes down to it, the slaves have a choice - revolt, or continue being a slave.
I would urge US slashdotters to call or e-mail your Congress-Critter. If this is really true, it is a violation of US Federal Contracting standards. Generally, Federal IT contracts specify all workers on the contract to be either US Citizens or Permanent Residents.
Fixed that for you.
Two points:
1. Salaries for IT jobs in India have shot up in the last 10 years - you're not going to find experienced software professionals for that sort of money.
2. I know from my own experience that US (federal and state) government contracts generally have a provision that the majority of the work must be performed by citizens/residents of the constituency in question.
As such, this is an interesting piece of alarmist speculation, but also utter claptrap.
Modding "-1, Troll" is not a proper response if you disagree with me. Try reason.
I happen to be one of those people who hates to be in debt as a result I own my home. My property taxes on my house are more than $4,400/year. I know, I just wrote the checks for my taxes last year. Rent for a small apartment within 20 miles of here is about twice what I pay in taxes. Even at the $15,000 mentioned as the startingr salary for coders in India I can't pay my taxes, pay for water, gas, and electricity, still be able to eat. I could live here, pay my taxes, and eat if I steal wood and cook over a fire in my back yard. There is no public transport so I would have to walk everywhere until I was able to get a peddle cart. The nearest grocery store is three miles away and other stores are 5 or more miles away. There is a hospital only half a mile away :-)
What I am trying to say is that where I live in central Texas our entire society is designed around the assumption that you own a car and can pay $600++/month for housing. Just to live you need about $30,000/year. Which is about twice what a full time worker makes at minimum wage. That $30,000 doesn't get you much of a life. Central Texas is not expensive compared to a lot of place in the US.
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout the problem and start solving it? In the past Americans have been pretty good about banding together and solving problems. Where is the spirit that created credit unions as an alternative to corrupt and failed banks? Where the is the spirit that create the labor unions that gave us the standard of living we currently have? Where is the will to just say "NO MORE" and forced a corrupt racist government to end Jim Crowe. (OK, that is still ending, but from my point of view we have come a looooooooong way in the right direction.)
OK, before someone points it out... yes, I guilty of not doing anything too. At least I'm asklng the question.
Stonewolf
P.S.
I don't know how true this is but I'm hearing that families in Mexico have started sending money to their relatives in the US to help them survive the recession.
When it comes down to it, the slaves have a choice - revolt, or continue being a slave.
You make it sound so easy. :) If it were, there would be no tyranny. BTW, enriching the tyrants makes it even harder.
I guess all I'm saying is, slave owners, and their trading partners, are the ones who have an easy choice. The slaves themselves can only chose violence and, very likely, futility, death.
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How is it over in one, but Godwin'd in three?
I am saddened to think that "we" did not consider outsourcing our banking industry to India and China. Had we let AIG and other US banks fail, there would have been opportunities for foreign banks to compete in the USA. Better yet, if non-US banks ran into problems, there would be far less of an incentative by our "elected officials" to bail out those capitalistic institutions. We could have stuck China with a $700B gamble. I am sure that executives of Chinese banks are willing to work for much cheaper than their American counterparts and have a higher rate of solvency and integrity.
We should work on ways to allow foreign banks to compete in the USA. After all, BoA and Citicorp compete worldwide.
You are right. But, I think you missed a major point about the overall lack of professionalism among programmers.
I have an MSCS and have worked as a software engineer. My wife has a BSME. To graduate she had to pass the EIT. If she didn't pass the test she couldn't graduate. No matter that she earned honors at graduation. No EIT no degree. Ten years later she took and passed the Professional Engineer exam. She has a little stamp that lets her give the legal ability to approval designs. She is legally liable for what she approves. I didn't have to pass any kind of professional exam to get the job title "engineer". I have no little stamp. I can not approve designs.
What does tht mean? I can write software that is used to design a dam. Any programmer no mater what their training and experience could have been hired to write that software. Lets say my software as a bug that causes it to give wrong answers for very large dams (used float when I should have used long double...) OTOH, only a PE can legally design a dam. If my wife uses my software and the dam bursts she is legally responsible, but I am not. Why is that?
I used to work for a Canadian PE. He had this little steel ring. The steel was from a bridge that fell down. Canadian engineers are all given (and I believe they are required to wear) a ring made from the steel of that fallen bridge so that their responsibility is always in their minds. There are many examples of people dying from software bugs. The failure of the patriot missiles during the first gulf war and the hundred+ dead soldier that resulted from and idiot not knowing that there is no such thing as 0.1 (one tenth) in binary. Why aren't programmer required to carry around a bit of the combat boot taken from one of those dead soldiers? Or, at least a vial of sand from where they died?
There are no professional standards for programmers or so called software engineers. There is no code of conduct or ethics for programmers. From the point of view of real engineers we are just a bunch of amateurs being allowed to play with dangerous toys.
Stonewolf
I've never smoked _anything_, nor done any illegal drug in my life and I'm in full support of legalizing marijuana. I believe I'm not the only one out there either.
Nope. I've smoked nicotine three or four times, and regret it in hindsight. I don't intend to ever smoke marijuana. But I hope marijuana (and other drugs) are legalized. Here's a few reasons, in no particular order, missing from your list:
Rule of law - The US Constitution doesn't give the federal government the power to ban drug use. It was briefly amended to add that power for ethanol, but even that amendment was repealed. Modern federal drug laws are based on political convenience, not natural rights or real authority. Allowing different states to independently experiment with different laws was a brilliant idea, and we ought to revisit it. Contrariwise, fighting the "War on X" seems to be a very popular excuse for further degradations of human rights and expansions of unconstitutional police state powers.
Reducing organized crime - One reason Prohibition was repealed is that we discovered that creating "black markets" that are a guaranteed source of profit for criminals is a very dangerous thing. Too dangerous to be worth it for victimless crimes.
Reducing unorganized crime - The money that goes to gangs selling overpriced drugs has to come from somewhere. Sometimes it's from thievery, with all those associated consequences. I suspect most illegal drug users aren't (real) criminals, but we're not making it easy on them. Sending them to prison to associate/train with real criminals can't be very helpful either.
Hurting addicts - What many of them need most isn't jail, it's medical treatment, but it's impossible to encourage someone to admit their problem to authorities as long as that problem is illegal.
Hurting other countries - "America needs to support horrible authoritarian group X because they're fighting against drug producers" is too common an excuse which backfires on us too often. "Drug farmers are enemies of America who might as well support the Taliban" is backfiring on us right now.
Human rights - I know, who am I to think that people should get to decide what does and doesn't go into their own bodies, or what they can buy and sell? Shouldn't we find some central planners, ask them to make the Right Decisions, and then lock up anyone who doesn't go along with the program?
That sounds like pothead hippie talk.
Please, the one insightful comment in this thread gets moderated flamebait? Give me a break.
You think this isn't true? Social control through the regulation of sex is the primary occupation of almost every religion. If you want to really control people, it's just one of the levers you have to pull. Note that the application of social control is not always towards purely negative ends - but it is social control nonetheless.
Westerners tend to be unable to comprehend their own "social norms" as part of this process, so it can help to look at foreign religions first. I mean, marriage is just a natural process by which a committed couple ask their priest for permission to have sex, right?
So let's pull out an illustrative example that will be less familiar to westerners.
Even the married followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon must ask the church for permission to have sex. When that permission is given, they must follow regulations about which sexual positions to use and when, and properly position the Reverend's picture within view while they are having sex. When the act is completed, they must wipe their genitals with a specially blessed holy jizz rag ("Holy Handkerchief"). Their religious doctrine includes instructions about how it is to be specially laundered.
Google it if you don't believe me.
As pointed out elsewhere, the parent post misinterpreted the figure for monthly salary as annual. According to the article, the _average_ worker earns US $13,800 annually - which is roughly in line with the per capita nominal GDP of US $17,000.
However, to get a better feel for what that really means in terms of quality of life there the Purchasing Power Parity (PPP) adjusted per capita GDP is US $30,881 which puts it between Japan and South Korea.
Regards,
Spock_NPA
Spot on, and so is the other AC. I feel you have an excellent shot at the exceedingly rare "(Score:5, Flamebait)".
- T
Rs. 200,000 to 300,000 ($44,000 to $6,600 US)
That is one volatile currency.
Karma fed to this user will be promptly burnt. Be warned; be wary.
How do we make US workers competitive in a world where there are billions of people who can live on so much less? Seriously, do you have any suggestions? Can we stop bitching dlbout [sic] the problem and start solving it?
I think you are looking at the wrong problem. The problem is our standard of living. We want to have more leisure time and/or more control of our working conditions. We need better health-care and education and secure place to live without working to death in order to earn it.
We DON't need to be competing with foreign workers. You mentioned Jim Crow. It's a racist jingoism that has convinced Americans that they deserve to profit off of the wages of those in the developing world. We can have a better standard of living when we realize that the Indian programmer has the same interests that we do, and that the Indian's boss and our boss have more in common with each other than with us.
You mentioned the high cost of taxes and of commuting. We need to start living in cities again. Suburban sprawl has cost us both in commuting costs and by atomizing us and keeping us from having a real community. It's simply more efficient to live near more people. With a real community, we wouldn't need the state to provide services. With real community, we wouldn't be duped into funding the terror war and the drug war. The suburbs tend to be the more reactionary conservative parts of the nation, while the urban areas are the more progressive.
You mentioned the labor movement. Real democratic radical unions are the only way workers can gain more power. Imagine if both you and the workers in the developing world were in the same union. International solidarity could prevent corporations from constantly moving production to whichever nation has the worst labor and human rights records. We need democratic accountable unions. Not the AFL/CIO or SEIU or the Teamsters. We need unions like the UE and the IWW.
The ultimate goal should be workers self management of all industry. Wall Street speculators and bosses are in it to make money for themselves in the short term, while workers interests are in creating sustainable jobs with good wages, benefits, and working conditions.
------ Take away the right to say fuck and you take away the right to say fuck the government.
I understand the hardware-does-it-all-the-time argument, but one of the "promises" of the free-trade movement was that even though manufacturing jobs are leaving, service-oriented jobs are replacing them.
However, that may be flat wrong. It appears that nobody knows what is "safe" from outsourcing anymore. Remote-controlled robot proxies/avatars operated from Timbuktu may one day serve fries or even run companies.
What "free trade" is doing is narrowing the variety of jobs available. What is remaining is "face-to-face" jobs, which tend to be marketing, sales, and management. That's fine if you are inclined that way, but not everybody is.
And further, lopsided trade creates other sorts of problems, such as credit bubbles. The "free trade" math tends to focus on long-term averages. However, if you factor in risk, instability (both individual and and national), and bubbles, then the math doesn't look so nice any more.
It's the more "leveraged" option, meaning high average returns, but via a bumpy road. In personal and business investing, one has to factor in risk/instability when picking investment options. We are not doing that with our trade policy, instead picking the high-return-but-high-risk option; the "derivatives" of trade choices. The lopsided trade issue needs a serious national rethinking.
Table-ized A.I.
http://econ-ecoff.blogspot.com/
... but then there are similar ones about skirting US labor laws by outsourcing..
Dood, I already had this conversation about thirty years ago, and I realize you exist in a chronic state of mental obliviousness and befuddlement, so I'll take it slowly: sizable number of jobs are offshored, decreasing the tax base, whereby all those F/W taxes onced flowed into. Now, the multiplier effect kicks in, and numerous other jobs disappear because they depended upon not only the direct money flows from once-employed American workers, but those indirect tax flows from those once-employed American workers' F/W taxes.
Now, with those decreasing taxes into the American decreasing tax base, calculate all those decreasting taxes of corporations which refuse to pay fed taxes by utilizing various forms of "profit laundering" (read GAO-08-957 report). NO MORE TAX BASE.....really, ever heard that tiresome phrase "Do the math"???
Now, that recent BLS report of a few months back, which crunched those private sector job creation numbers (Ha...ha!) and found out that effectively there was ZERO job creation in the private sector over the past ten years. This is a direct result of having reached critical mass in the category of jobs offshoring and FDI. Get the picture, amigo???
The current system only soldiers on because, workers just have no choice. If they had one, labor might elect to find a more favorable set of laws to live under, which would somewhat mitigate management's ability to shop for the most cheap-but-labor-unfriendly shit-where-you-sleep laws they can find.
The entire world cannot live as people do in Europe and the United States, there are simply too many people and not enough resources or productivity to make that possible. Billions of people presently living on this planet have little or no formal education and insufficient skills to contribute productively in an advanced first world economy. Simply moving these people to the United States or Europe is not going to change their present circumstances. Oh sure, you could bring a few here and set them up in government paid-for housing with government paid-for jobs and equip them with all of the trappings of a first world lifestyle, but to do that is to engage in charity and as I have already said we do not have the resources to help everyone presently living on less than $2 per day in this way.
Really, the best that we can do is to provide advice and limited assistance to those looking to grasp the first rungs on the long ladder of economic growth, but it is difficult to be patient and work towards a goal that you personally will never realize for the sake of your children's children; especially when others living on this earth already have all of the "good things". I will grant you that certain policies of first world governments, namely farm subsidies, don't help matters in Africa and other poor countries (i.e. the so-called "aid dilemma"), but then again neither to improperly developed governments, laws and institutions. This difficulty is compounded by the suspicions of third world countries that any advice on "how to run things", no matter how good and well-intentioned, is "colonialism" and "telling us what to do".
You won't change anything by letting "everyone move to wherever they want", even if that were possible. You would simply have the sort of problems that we currently see in the third world transplanted to the United States and Europe (i.e. poverty, slums, crime, etc).
You won't change anything by letting "everyone move to wherever they want", even if that were possible. You would simply have the sort of problems that we currently see in the third world transplanted to the United States and Europe (i.e. poverty, slums, crime, etc).
Oh, it's certainly possible.
Racism and xenophobia and a terrible fear of losing one's material advantages make it unlikely today.
I'm not sure I follow you on the causes of poverty, slums and crime, there and here. But leaving that aside for the moment, I like that you raise the issue of responsibility for one's own government. I take your thesis to be that people from the third world have created their own mess, and would recreate it in the first world if they were given the opportunity.
I think you are also saying that an ignorant, uneducated third-worlder could not become a productive citizen of i.e. the United States, and it seems as if you've illustrated the point by saying an attempt would only end up as a Potemkin Village of welfare and services provided by educated, hard-working Americans.
Do I have it right?
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Do I have it right?
No.
I think you are also saying that an ignorant, uneducated third-worlder could not become a productive citizen of i.e. the United States, and it seems as if you've illustrated the point by saying an attempt would only end up as a Potemkin Village of welfare and services provided by educated, hard-working Americans.
Is it possible to take an individual from the third world, particularly a young person (under the age of 18 say), and pour resources into them to educate, train and produce a productive American or European citizen? Yes, that is possible. However, it is neither practical nor possible to do this for every young person presently living in poverty in Africa, never mind the older people. There are simply too many of them and they would require too much education and training to advance all of them so quickly in less than a single generation.
Oh, it's certainly possible.
No, it is not. IMHO, a valid solution must present a viable route to improving individual circumstances for every person willing to undertake the effort; wherever they start. Simply allowing anyone to live anywhere is not enough to effect that sort of change. Otherwise we are deciding who gets help and how much or who deserves help and how much and that is not a game that has any happy outcomes.
I'm not sure I follow you on the causes of poverty, slums and crime, there and here
For the vast majority of recorded human history (about 10,000 years now give or take a few centuries) the majority of people, with the exception of nobility and royalty numbering less than 1% of the population, essentially lived as subsistence dirt farmers. There were isolated places and brief periods during which some progress was made (the ancient city state of Athens or the golden age of Rome), but it was not sustained for long before wars, barbarians or other disasters hit the reset button and dragged everyone back into the mud. Obviously, this is NOT the current state of affairs for a substantial number (although not the majority) of people living in the first world today; so the question becomes, "What changed"? Well, to put it very bluntly and simply:
Beginning in Europe from roughly 500 years ago and continuing (not linearly) until the present day, a substantial and sustainable group of people began their long ascent of ladder of economic growth. The result, 500 years on, is that some societies have standards of living which are hundreds or even thousands of times better than those still living as subsistence dirt farmers or now in slums living off the scraps and discards of modern society. Unfortunately, not everyone came along for the ride from the start and we now see a greater difference in living standards between the poorest and the richest than at just about any other time in human history. Does this explain everything? No, but IMHO it is a key insight.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Ring
The department set up to get Americans working again is actually getting people laid off. No wonder the US is imploding.
.
Awww, look, the stoners don't like the truth.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
I'll take this out of order, because it's so interesting.
Unfortunately, not everyone came along for the ride from the start and we now see a greater difference in living standards between the poorest and the richest than at just about any other time in human history. Does this explain everything? No, but IMHO it is a key insight.
I found this to be a very lucid and interesting perspective on the situation. And I would argue nothing from those foregoing two paragraphs. Very well put, sir.
The key question is, how should we view our current policies, in light of all this? What's wrong, and what could we do better?
The antebellum south decided that it was actually acceptable to leverage this massive difference in living standards to foster human slavery.
We did not simply realize our mistake and "get it right" after this period in history. We are doing things today that will be seen as similarly barbaric (if not worse) in a century's time.
There is an issue here of tribalism and human social instinct. We can dehumanize and victimize those of far shores who don't have the means to resist. We will do it for profit, or potentially even for sport. I would say, we are on a trajectory of moderating and increasing the sophistication of this exploitation. I dare you to suggest it has somehow ended.
A southern plantation owner's arguments against treatment of African and North American natives as equals of Europeans sound different from your arguments only in degree.
You don't seem willing to commit that a genetic difference exists - instead what I understand so far (and I continue to look forward to your clarifications on this) - only that the momentum of culture and education is so great that we lack the resources to overcome it and treat Chinese laborers as equals to American laborers.
it is neither practical nor possible to do this for every young person presently living in poverty in Africa, never mind the older people. There are simply too many of them and they would require too much education and training to advance all of them so quickly in less than a single generation.
Neither practical nor possible? :)
Sorry, nitpicking is unbecoming. In any case I prefer to have a little more imagination than that. People thought the American civil rights movement equally impractical and impossible, until it largely succeeded. Whether you consider that success to be the work of a generation or the culmination of 10,000 years (or 1,000,000 years) of human history, the question is, do you want to be headed in the right direction, or the wrong one?
Is free trade with border fences the right direction? Really?
Or is the better answer found elsewhere? Please forgive me for being melodramatic, but:
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”
This always worked for us before. Why abandon it? :)
Oh, it's certainly possible.
No, it is not.
Impossible to pass a law liberalizing immigration with any "free trade" partner? Really?
I say again: "Racism and xenophobia and a terrible fear of losing one's material advantages make it unlikely today." Unlikely, that's very different from impossible. We could do it tomorrow if we wanted.
If you fear the results - imagine how many denizens of the so-called 3rd world fear the status quo?
You could go so far as to say, the reason we would resist such a law is that we know, quite specifically, that we want to actively profit from the squalor and depravity of a foreign trading partner. If not their people, why their toasters?
Please don't suggest that it benefits the slaves when their masters sell their labors cheap. I can more easily argue
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