Well, since Microsoft actually hasn't made any real money to date in China and has lost quite a bit of money (and presumably will continue to lose - as the Chinese government has passed laws that every PC sold in in their country must have Chinese software - plus they've started chip manufacturing with the stated goal of supplanting any and all M$ and Intel products) in that country. Their (supposedly) major savings comes from offshoring so many jobs there!
Genius cannot be improved upon! The only additional remark I might add to this remarkable post is that every falsehood possible is being perpetrated upon the "educated" American citizenry (and many other countries). Our jobs abe being offshored under the guise of "corporations staying competitive" or "global competition" - funny thing, I can't recall the last time I was given the opportunity to compete for anything.
Exactly right - but the major flaw in the original post presupposes that such lower-paying jobs exist in quantity - many people become impoverished - as the competition has grown dramtically over the preceding 4 year for those very few lower-paying jobs - and those are pretty much the only jobs being "created" today, albeit mostly temp and part-time jobs.
I've never heard such irrational, unstable drivel in my life - while I am a despiser of neoconservatives and neoliberals who are ruining what's left of America - the Soviets represented the worst police state imaginable. As one who was there back in the early '70s - be advised that it still exists over in Castro's Cuba - with a "minder" on every block.....
Extremely well articulated - the major industrial motivator - many engineering historians believe - was the demise of slavery. [Note the number of countries with backward cultures that still had slavery well into the 20th (and 21st) century.]
Slave labor is still alive and well in Amerika! People once were at least able to get a measely 4 hours of temp work, the last bastion of employment - now they are lucky to get 2 hours of temp work (when once it was mandatory to have at least 4 hours by various agencies...).
I just heard this on the news, so am still unsure as to the details - but didn't Congress just pass a bill pretty much killing overtime pay for the 98% group that receives it - namely, earners between $23,000 to $65,800 per year? But they claim they will now pay overtime to people making under $23,000 per year. (Yeah, right, so why didn't this group receive overtime pay before?? Was it because this is the group most statistically unlikely to receive OT?) WELCOME TO THE NEW DARK AGES!!!!!!
I believe HP CEO Carly Fiorina said something similar to your post: "Americans don't have a God-given right to a job (but workers in CHina and India have a God-given right to an American job!)."
Yeah...yeah...I remember Carly Fiorina (a k a Suzy Spacecadet) - she's the one who said "It's not an American's God-given right to have a job." Then she said, but it is a God-given right for a Chinese or Indian to have an American's job. Gee, maybe medieval history WAS THE RIGHT MAJOR for her after all. She's really gone MEDIEVAL on the American worker, alright!
AMEN, BROTHER!!!! Rashid is continuing the "Ballmer agenda" - trying to persuade ignoramuses to continue going into computer science while M$ ships ever more jobs out of the country - thus lower the wages of the few remaining CS jobs here.
English, German, Scottish and Swedish are not races, but nationalities. Can't anyone in this country speak proper American English anymore???? One's nationality is American, one's ancestry is decidedly otherwise. I used to think of women as persons, but was sadly disappointed so I went back to thinking of them as sexual objects (they are much more pleasant that way and won't be forever disappointing you). As for culture, there is no longer any culture which exists in the USA today since the corporations have pretty much destroyed it and any values....
I'm so sorry - but women who work "twice as hard" in the workplace are simply not to be found. I have had to carry soooo many super-incompetent women (only competent woman in IT I've ever met was an IBM systems engineer). They spend 90% of their time complaining about having to work "twice as hard" as the men, and the other 10% planning their lunches. There's always something missing in all discussions of this type and it's called COMPETITIVE HIRING. We used to have so very long ago - now it is only a dim memory....
Right now I'm sitting in the Seattle Central (downtown) library while two (attractive) females SCREAM across the library floor at one another (not in anger - just as to where they'll be meeting each other later). Perhaps they are both far too stupid - far too ignorant - to realize they are in a library. One just happens to be a computer science major at UW (a k a Dumb Dub). Fortunately, I didn't run into many of these lowbrows when I was first starting out.....
Thanks for your reply to that lame: "There's always work" post! I'd love the opportunity to compete with those galunks for a job - unfortunately competitive hiring has been out of vogue for way too many years. When corporations disingenuously deem one "unhireable" the struggle truly begins.....
Your wonderful reference was so perfectly on target it simply requires absolutely no elaboration whatsoever - assuming one is dealing with people capable of moderately-to-intelligent thought processes - but there are simply too many people around who are oblivious to the obvious!
So, if I understand the previous posts, Henry Ford's production line was terrific - but then he should have offshored all those factory jobs????
(Seriously though, super post, DavidTC!)
I hate to get too "technical" here - but there have been many posts here which refute the repetitive nature of GOOD programming - and I believe most repetition is taken care of by properly programmed code libraries and is also the fundamental reason for object-oriented programming......
You nailed it exactly! There are only a finite number (regardless of urban legends which proliferate) of really good coders - or code cowboys, if you will. Unfortunately, Corporate America can never get away from the idea that the American worker/employee is nothing but an easily replaceable module - and must constantly be replaced. REMEMBER THAT CLOWN, an economics prof at MIT, Lester Thurow, who only a short while ago proclaimed that "human capital" was the most important asset of a corporation. NOW THAT SAME CLOWN IS PROCLAIMING that offshoring as many American jobs as possible is the best way to go. Wonder what corporations endow that clown's chair at M.I.T.?????
Well said!!!! The post you are responding to infers two things: first, that there are enough consumers around still with disposable income to purchase all these new products and services, and secondly, the notion of the "free agent" economy - which should have expired among all right-thinking people along with all that old "new economy" gibberish! One cannot exist while ALWAYS hustling for the next job - many of us who existed as independent contractors for too many years certainly realize this. THAT is truly a zero-sum game.
Well, the article should be about all the disappearing American jobs. Only a finite number of jobs exist in this economy. Once critical mass is reached - the number of jobs which have been offshored - cascading unemployment results - even those/.ers whose grasp of math (and arithmetic) is pretty weak should be able to comprehend that! (Neocons and NeoJacobins who read this column will, of course, respond in the negative to this - using that silly nonsense that offshoring of jobs magically creates more jobs - neurons not included with remarks like those!)
Problem is those B.L.S. job "projections" are forever wrong and being revised downward.
The B.L.S. measures unemployment as those people receiving unemployment benefits - the number of jobs that allows for those benefits have been shrinking dramatically over the past 20 years. Other problem is the B.L.S. automatically marks people whose benefits run out as NOW BEING EMPLOYED! SORRY, it just means their benefits have run out - quite probably they still don't have a job or are now homeless.
If you are able to do arithmetic - just research the growing number of jobs being exported - the shrinking number of jobs being created - and the increasing number of people in this country.
As someone who was on the original development teams of the major components which make up the Internet, the Web, automated telephone systems, etc. (and the alpha test site for the PC) I find this type of resposne to be sophmoric at best! The cost for offshoring many jobs ends upf being anywhere from 2 to 4 times the cost of keeping the job in the USA! I've never seen corporate management (with but several exceptions) have the intellect to know to keep on the most intelligent and productive employees. There ain't no Fairy God Mother Department in Corporate America that recognizes indispensability, dude!!!!! GET REAL!
I greatly appreciate your pluck - having been in that type of situation - not once - but now more than a few times in my lifetime. But the crucial question is: will a job be there for you at the end of the line??? With the growing number of jobs being offshored - and the growing number of ways the government/corporatocracy think up to bring in more replacement workers (NAFTA, CAFTA, Singapore Accords, etc.) the future looks bleak...
Thanks for one of the 3 or 4 intelligent posts so far. Numbers show a mighty direct loss - unemployment figures only indicate the lucky few still receiving unemployment "benefits."
And you outlook for the future is exactly spot on! Jobs may be disappearing in America, but at least intelligence hasn't!
You are right on target and a sane voice in a sea of quirkiness. Anyone who thinks jobs are coming back into vogue hasn't been keeping with the either the numbers or current events.
The job market is shrinking dramatically, Ballmer at M$ is gurgling with excitement at the prospect of falling prices for all tech labor, and the long-term prospects for the US are dismal. Any questions?
Slashdot Mirror
Well, since Microsoft actually hasn't made any real money to date in China and has lost quite a bit of money (and presumably will continue to lose - as the Chinese government has passed laws that every PC sold in in their country must have Chinese software - plus they've started chip manufacturing with the stated goal of supplanting any and all M$ and Intel products) in that country. Their (supposedly) major savings comes from offshoring so many jobs there!
Genius cannot be improved upon! The only additional remark I might add to this remarkable post is that every falsehood possible is being perpetrated upon the "educated" American citizenry (and many other countries). Our jobs abe being offshored under the guise of "corporations staying competitive" or "global competition" - funny thing, I can't recall the last time I was given the opportunity to compete for anything.
Exactly right - but the major flaw in the original post presupposes that such lower-paying jobs exist in quantity - many people become impoverished - as the competition has grown dramtically over the preceding 4 year for those very few lower-paying jobs - and those are pretty much the only jobs being "created" today, albeit mostly temp and part-time jobs.
I've never heard such irrational, unstable drivel in my life - while I am a despiser of neoconservatives and neoliberals who are ruining what's left of America - the Soviets represented the worst police state imaginable. As one who was there back in the early '70s - be advised that it still exists over in Castro's Cuba - with a "minder" on every block.....
Extremely well articulated - the major industrial motivator - many engineering historians believe - was the demise of slavery. [Note the number of countries with backward cultures that still had slavery well into the 20th (and 21st) century.]
Slave labor is still alive and well in Amerika! People once were at least able to get a measely 4 hours of temp work, the last bastion of employment - now they are lucky to get 2 hours of temp work (when once it was mandatory to have at least 4 hours by various agencies...).
I just heard this on the news, so am still unsure as to the details - but didn't Congress just pass a bill pretty much killing overtime pay for the 98% group that receives it - namely, earners between $23,000 to $65,800 per year? But they claim they will now pay overtime to people making under $23,000 per year. (Yeah, right, so why didn't this group receive overtime pay before?? Was it because this is the group most statistically unlikely to receive OT?) WELCOME TO THE NEW DARK AGES!!!!!!
I believe HP CEO Carly Fiorina said something similar to your post: "Americans don't have a God-given right to a job (but workers in CHina and India have a God-given right to an American job!)."
Yeah...yeah...I remember Carly Fiorina (a k a Suzy Spacecadet) - she's the one who said "It's not an American's God-given right to have a job." Then she said, but it is a God-given right for a Chinese or Indian to have an American's job. Gee, maybe medieval history WAS THE RIGHT MAJOR for her after all. She's really gone MEDIEVAL on the American worker, alright!
AMEN, BROTHER!!!! Rashid is continuing the "Ballmer agenda" - trying to persuade ignoramuses to continue going into computer science while M$ ships ever more jobs out of the country - thus lower the wages of the few remaining CS jobs here.
English, German, Scottish and Swedish are not races, but nationalities. Can't anyone in this country speak proper American English anymore???? One's nationality is American, one's ancestry is decidedly otherwise. I used to think of women as persons, but was sadly disappointed so I went back to thinking of them as sexual objects (they are much more pleasant that way and won't be forever disappointing you). As for culture, there is no longer any culture which exists in the USA today since the corporations have pretty much destroyed it and any values....
I'm so sorry - but women who work "twice as hard" in the workplace are simply not to be found. I have had to carry soooo many super-incompetent women (only competent woman in IT I've ever met was an IBM systems engineer). They spend 90% of their time complaining about having to work "twice as hard" as the men, and the other 10% planning their lunches. There's always something missing in all discussions of this type and it's called COMPETITIVE HIRING. We used to have so very long ago - now it is only a dim memory....
Right now I'm sitting in the Seattle Central (downtown) library while two (attractive) females SCREAM across the library floor at one another (not in anger - just as to where they'll be meeting each other later). Perhaps they are both far too stupid - far too ignorant - to realize they are in a library. One just happens to be a computer science major at UW (a k a Dumb Dub). Fortunately, I didn't run into many of these lowbrows when I was first starting out.....
Thanks for your reply to that lame: "There's always work" post! I'd love the opportunity to compete with those galunks for a job - unfortunately competitive hiring has been out of vogue for way too many years. When corporations disingenuously deem one "unhireable" the struggle truly begins.....
Your wonderful reference was so perfectly on target it simply requires absolutely no elaboration whatsoever - assuming one is dealing with people capable of moderately-to-intelligent thought processes - but there are simply too many people around who are oblivious to the obvious!
So, if I understand the previous posts, Henry Ford's production line was terrific - but then he should have offshored all those factory jobs???? (Seriously though, super post, DavidTC!)
I hate to get too "technical" here - but there have been many posts here which refute the repetitive nature of GOOD programming - and I believe most repetition is taken care of by properly programmed code libraries and is also the fundamental reason for object-oriented programming......
You nailed it exactly! There are only a finite number (regardless of urban legends which proliferate) of really good coders - or code cowboys, if you will. Unfortunately, Corporate America can never get away from the idea that the American worker/employee is nothing but an easily replaceable module - and must constantly be replaced. REMEMBER THAT CLOWN, an economics prof at MIT, Lester Thurow, who only a short while ago proclaimed that "human capital" was the most important asset of a corporation. NOW THAT SAME CLOWN IS PROCLAIMING that offshoring as many American jobs as possible is the best way to go. Wonder what corporations endow that clown's chair at M.I.T.?????
Well said!!!! The post you are responding to infers two things: first, that there are enough consumers around still with disposable income to purchase all these new products and services, and secondly, the notion of the "free agent" economy - which should have expired among all right-thinking people along with all that old "new economy" gibberish! One cannot exist while ALWAYS hustling for the next job - many of us who existed as independent contractors for too many years certainly realize this. THAT is truly a zero-sum game.
Well, the article should be about all the disappearing American jobs. Only a finite number of jobs exist in this economy. Once critical mass is reached - the number of jobs which have been offshored - cascading unemployment results - even those /.ers whose grasp of math (and arithmetic) is pretty weak should be able to comprehend that! (Neocons and NeoJacobins who read this column will, of course, respond in the negative to this - using that silly nonsense that offshoring of jobs magically creates more jobs - neurons not included with remarks like those!)
Problem is those B.L.S. job "projections" are forever wrong and being revised downward.
The B.L.S. measures unemployment as those people receiving unemployment benefits - the number of jobs that allows for those benefits have been shrinking dramatically over the past 20 years. Other problem is the B.L.S. automatically marks people whose benefits run out as NOW BEING EMPLOYED! SORRY, it just means their benefits have run out - quite probably they still don't have a job or are now homeless.
If you are able to do arithmetic - just research the growing number of jobs being exported - the shrinking number of jobs being created - and the increasing number of people in this country.
The real numbers don't lie......
As someone who was on the original development teams of the major components which make up the Internet, the Web, automated telephone systems, etc. (and the alpha test site for the PC) I find this type of resposne to be sophmoric at best! The cost for offshoring many jobs ends upf being anywhere from 2 to 4 times the cost of keeping the job in the USA! I've never seen corporate management (with but several exceptions) have the intellect to know to keep on the most intelligent and productive employees. There ain't no Fairy God Mother Department in Corporate America that recognizes indispensability, dude!!!!! GET REAL!
I greatly appreciate your pluck - having been in that type of situation - not once - but now more than a few times in my lifetime. But the crucial question is: will a job be there for you at the end of the line??? With the growing number of jobs being offshored - and the growing number of ways the government/corporatocracy think up to bring in more replacement workers (NAFTA, CAFTA, Singapore Accords, etc.) the future looks bleak...
Thanks for one of the 3 or 4 intelligent posts so far. Numbers show a mighty direct loss - unemployment figures only indicate the lucky few still receiving unemployment "benefits." And you outlook for the future is exactly spot on! Jobs may be disappearing in America, but at least intelligence hasn't!
You are right on target and a sane voice in a sea of quirkiness. Anyone who thinks jobs are coming back into vogue hasn't been keeping with the either the numbers or current events. The job market is shrinking dramatically, Ballmer at M$ is gurgling with excitement at the prospect of falling prices for all tech labor, and the long-term prospects for the US are dismal. Any questions?