U.S. Suspends JEEP Aid

gManZboy writes "As noted last week, the USAID's JEEP (Job Enabling English Proficiency) program has been using U.S. taxpayer dollars to train students in the Philippines to work at outsourcing call centers. An update: After Congressman Tim Bishop and a colleague protested to USAID, USAID decided to suspend funding to the effort. 'In response to the concerns you have raised, the Agency is suspending its participation in the English language training project in Mindanao pending further review of the facts,' said USAID deputy assistant administrator Barbara Feinstein, in a letter Monday to Bishop. 'Furthermore, the Agency has established a high-level taskforce to review these matters.' Bishop says that USAID needs to find ways to assist developing regions without compromising the jobs of U.S. call center workers"

Comments

Why?

[Rouphis]

Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions. There are americans that would love call center work. It beats a lot of other bad jobs.

Re:Why?

[Fluffeh]

Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions. There are americans that would love call center work. It beats a lot of other bad jobs.

The problem you are missing is that lovely thing called capitalism. You see, if I own a call centre with 100 customers, and I employ 100 staff to operate the phones, I pay the going rate. Lets say it is $10 for nice round numbers. So, I pay $1000 a year in wages. Now, I work out that I can invest $200 and train some chaps in some cheap labour country - like the Phillipines - and then pay them $500 to do the same work. So, I invest that $200, get the training done and the following year, my wages have gone down and I can say that in the first year, I made an extra $300 profit, and every year after that, I make $500 extra profit.

Of course, that paints a pretty worrying picture from a wider view as that means that instead of $1000 being paid to local workers, $500 is being shipped out of the economy and into another country, but not many people want to look from that angle when it impacts their own profit margins.

This sort of thing only works long term if you can get that $500 back from the other country by getting them to buy your goods with the money you give them so that the cash stays local. How is the US Balance of Trade these days you ask? Take a look for yourself.

Re:Why?

[DragonWriter]

Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions.

Because when they fail at developing in a way that produces legitimate exports, they instead develop in a way that produces, for instance, narcotics and terrorists as their exports.

Which, humanitarian concerns aside, also has adverse effects on the US economy.

Re:Why?

[Jeeeb]

Tell me exactly why it is our responsibility to find ways to assist developing regions. There are americans that would love call center work. It beats a lot of other bad jobs.

Well in regards to the Philippines in particular there is the rather ugly history of America buying the islands of Spain and then invading them, crushing the Philippines independence movement and ruling them as a colonial power for about 50 years. So you could say there is some moral responsibility there.

For aid in general there are 3 good self interest arguments.

1. Economics: There are more people in Pakistan than Japan or Germany but wanna guess which ones America trades more with? Germany and Japan of course with trade volumes many times greater than American trade with Pakistan. The wealth of those two countries has created enormous new markets for American products. Yes trade involves job losses but the point is that the opportunities created outstrip the losses.

2. Security: Poor undeveloped countries cause security problems. Look at Somalia. If you can it's better to spend some money helping them develop rather than having to continuously deal with the security problems that you otherwise get.

3. Security 2: Aid is the act of buying allies. If the West isn't going to buy then others (China, Russia, Iran) might just step in.

Aside from self interest developed countries giving aid to developing countries has been a long standing principal. In terms of aid per capita the US gives quite generously but it is by no means the most generous. From memory the U.K is the biggest giver per capita. Aid programs like this are simply keeping the US in line with other developed countries in giving aid.

Re:Why?

[dreamchaser]

Except it isn't capitalism when the government is spending tax dollars on it, so your example is flawed. Yes, yes I know government is in the pocket of corporations but since you decided to talk economic theory I had to point that out. Real capitalism would have companies who wanted to outsource funding the training.

Re:Why?

[Fluffeh]

It we are talking theory, lets throw in some game theory. A clever capitalist would spend a fraction of the cost of all the training on lobbying and then have the government foot the bill while making use of the facility to train his new outsourced workers.

I called tech support.

[mrmeval]

I called tech support for black box router #5. I ended up talking to someone in a call center in the Bronx.

After about 5 minutes of not being able to understand them I asked to be transfered to India so I could understand them better and get my problem resolved.

Thank you I'll be here all this century.

Re:Boohoo

[Anonymous Coward]

No. It's Americans complaining that we are being taxed so that some local fatcat business owner can get an even sweeter deal offshoring jobs. The fatcat is welcome to save money by offshoring and anyone is welcome to compete for the jobs (even at insanely low wages), but neither is entitled to use taxpayer dollars to do so. Choosing to not send your money to your competitors is not racist -- it's common fucking sense.

I don't care

[Beardo the Bearded]

I don't care about your stupid JEEP program. I drive a Mazda.

Re:Boohoo

[NetNed]

Is it me or is the race card becoming like the boy that cried wolf? Really, 9 times out of 10 now I instantly discount anyone that brings race as either a flamebaiter or someone that uses it as a crutch for their own short comings. It's like every forum has to have a person that stretches as far as they can to inject racism in to a topic.

Nice that they feel so strongly about it that they posted anonymous.

Re:wtf

[girlintraining]

Oh, and just 'P.S.', the philipines right now is experiencing a rise in extremism amongst its muslim population due to high unemployment and low literacy; this program was enacted specifically to address that problem as an informal 'thank you' to that country for being a major supporter of our anti-terrorism efforts after 9/11, particularly in Iraq. So you could say with a straight face that Bishop is supporting terrorism in order to garner more votes in this election. Sick, isn't it?

What crud:

[Hartree]

This just means that more of the work will go to Luzon where they have more english speakers and better infrastructure.

Creating jobs in Mindanao to help with many of the endemic problems there is a good thing (tm).

It's unlikely that any jobs that would have been outsourced to Mindanao would have stayed in the US anyway. They would have ended up in other places in the Philipines or in Bangalore India or $english_capable_low_cost_location.

(Engage rant mode:)

Bishop is a Democrat and Jones is a Republican, so this is a bipartisan shortsightedness. But it'll get them votes in the short run and that's the truly important thing.

Hey, I'm sure the Moro Islamic Liberation Front approves. Poverty and ignorance is great for maintaining low level wars.

Better not teach them any other skills either. They might do something that would compete with the US in areas that wouldn't be outsourced. We could just make the spreading of ignorance the cornerstone of our foreign policy. What a concept.

Slashdotters are great at talking about how little others know about world politics and how the problems facing other societies end up on your own doorstep. Maybe some of them should take their own advice.

Re:wtf

[Tofof]

Your version of the Philippines' history is laughably wrong. We gained ownership of the islands around the turn of the century, not by the war as you imply. It's true that despite initially supporting the Philippines independence movement from Spain, we waged our own war against a rebelling populace after we received the islands in the Treaty of Manila (ending the Spanish-American War). The destroyed infrastructure was of the same pre-Industrial-Revolution kind that was largely being willfully destroyed elsewhere in the world. In the interrim, the Philippines prospered alongside the US - we established a modern health care system rivaling our own at the time, ended slavery, formed a national education system and civil bureaucracy. Throughout the 1930s efforts toward releasing the Philippines as a free and independent nation were well underway, with the first independent government elected in 1935 and the transition to be gradual to full independence a decade later. In WWII, the Japanese conquered the Philippines despite American and Phillipine attempts to defend it. Philippine and US troops alike died in the Bataan Death March. We of course hosted the legitimate citizen-elected government as a government-in-exile. After the official withdrawal of US troops, the Philippine Army )with large participation from underground movements) waged a guerilla war with support from what US remnants remained - against the unpopular Japanese-puppet regime. When we reinvaded in 1944, the civilian president Osmena literally accompanied MacArthur onto Leyte Island. We ceded the Philipines as scheduled before the war, in July 1946 - a mere 10 months (nearly to the day) after Japan's formal surrender. You paint a picture of an invading US army laying waste to the country and then holding onto it during and after WWII, when the exact opposite is far closer to the truth.

Re:Really Reads:

[PopeRatzo]

I am not saying that he did a bad thing in trying to put a stop to it, I am just doubting the motives behind it.

My mistake. However, I am inclined, when presented with a US politician who is doing the right thing, to be purely supportive and not question motives. I think that approach is more productive. It happens so rarely, that I would hate to ever dissuade a politician from doing the right thing.

It turns out this congressman, Tim Bishop, is a pretty good egg. He's been consistent about pro-peace, pro-human rights, pro-gay rights, pro-women's rights and pro-prosperity and pro-worker positions. As sleazeball politicians go, he's about as good as it gets (I get all that from his Wikipedia page plus his ratings from certain good government groups). He does not accept corporate campaign funding in any form, his website claims.

You gots to be grateful when you come across one of these guys, know what I mean? Hey, good luck down there. You've got your work cut out for you too. I see Australia is trying to avoid some of the worst mistakes the US has made regarding deregulation, etc. I am glad to hear you support the Pirate Party. I do too, but not many of them run for office here in the States.

Re:rising tide floats all boats

[coredog64]

I was considering out-sourcing some work to the Philippines (from a non-American territory, for an international aid organization) and ISTR the going rate for educated Filipinos was ~ $1300/month. It was more expensive than India (again, going by memory, $1000/month) but the Philippines were closer and they have much better infrastructure and English skills.