Yeah, its hard to turn back the clock in the case of either India or China, though we certainly can leverage the state of existing trade to resolve some of the issues. The Bush administration's "anything goes" policy is unacceptable IMO, though not surprising considering how much money he raises from multinationals come campaign season. And, from his perspective, why not... most of these issues are way above the heads of average citizens anyways.
Regarding the environment, its ironic that environmental organizations devote millions to altering the fate of spotted owls in the American wilderness while devoting relatively little energy to the devastation corporations cause when they move their heavy industry offshore. One could make the argument that many environmentalists ultimately cause more environmental damage than they prevent by adding incentive to relocate industry in locations with virtually no environmental protections in place... but that is an issue for a different message board.
Back to the original issue of programmers being offshored, probably the one saving grace in all of this is that most software is in the fact most software is not really a commodity. (Larry Ellison is a moron if he truly thinks it is... will let his company's plummeting stock price over the past 3 years speak for itself on that subject.) Developing good software takes more than a CSc degree and English language skills, and solid US software (i.e. those with the talent, experience, and focus required to make things happen) will ultimately pay for their exorbanent wages in the license revenue their software generates (which, I might add, is generally not a direct function of the production costs). Companies whose strategy is purely to shed talent until their costs match their continually-declining revenue streams are doomed no matter what shore they find themselves on.
Actually, EE's are a bit easier to farm out as (1) they don't have to speak English and (2) many of the fabs and electronics plants are already offshore. If you really want some job security, try nursing;).
Well, I'd say Dean has a chance if he could just lay off the Iraq war issues. The guy sounds like a broken record. *News flash* - the Iraqi war is a done deal... he needs to start talking more about what he would do as president and less about what he would have done.
The strange rhetoric we're hearing from the Democratic side largely has to do with attempts to build up early momentum in the New England states, where the opinions are well outside the mainstream. I think we'll get an idea on where they really stand on the issues of interest to most Americans once they get out of these states. Unless the Democrats want to get spanked again the way they were in 2002, they had best get on this with something better than the lip service Clinton and Bush gave it back when the economy appeared to be in reasonably good shape. My bet is they will.
Well, not meaning to get too caught up in semantics, will say the trade deficit does not include investments... the "current accounts deficit" does include investments and is also starting to slide down btw. The trade deficit has a lot to do with jobs, even more than one might think at first given that $1 gets a lot more for your production dollar in China and India than it does in the US. Hopefully both deficits will continue to weaken the dollar to the point a US developer costs merely as much as 4 Indians (in spite of the Indian government's currency devaluation efforts)... maybe then we'll have a fighting chance.
I would largely agree with your laissez faire free trade ideas if we were talking about the developed world. I think reducing trade barriers between ourselves and countries which observe similar standards to ourselves (e.g. Australia, Japan, South Korea, western Europe) is a good thing and will ultimately help out all parties involved. Trade of this sort has already done a lot to improve things IMHO.
However, countries like India, China, and Russia have some serious internal problems to tackle before we even think about given them trade status comparable to that we offer to Europe and Japan. Corruption, human rights abuse, environmental neglect, and very questionable international trade practices are but a few of the issues here. Some trade with these countries is inevitable, if for no other reason than to maintain some world order. However, opening up the floodgates of trade with these nations was just plain stupid. We're not playing our hand in these trade deals whatsoever, and we're all going to pay for it in the long run.
Well, few governments would let trade imbalances grow to the point where it does truly gut their economy. US politicians will wind up erecting the trade barriers again once the situation gets bad enough... they won't have a choice.
Free trade only works in the long run when it ultimately produces a reasonably-balanced level of trade in each direction and when there are rules in place to stem abuses. Our trade deficit has reached unprecidented levels, and technology is such that an astonishing number of jobs that once could only be done in the US can be exported like never before. Upward wage pressures in these countries are limited due to the sheer numbers of people looking for work, and underhanded tactics (e.g. pegging currencies to low dollar values) work to keep their labor costs artificially low relative to the developed world for some time to come. Corporations are not formed for the purpose of being stewards of the people or the environment, as indicated by the massive clouds of pollution hanging over the Pacific rim the past 10 years. Free trade works if you have pragmatic ways of addressing these kinds of problems, but we don't at the moment. We have to ask ourselves this: Will free trade with any country that will have it really help anyone in the end?
How realistic is it to think that a trade system where America consumes everything and produces nothing can survive?
Right now, the Bush administration and the Fed have pulled out all the stops in trying to get the American economy on track. We're 20 months past the last quarter of GDP decline, and US payrolls and capital spending are *still* dropping like a rock... that has not happened since the great depression. The explanation has a lot to do with offshoring... its not just for programmers and call center operators anymore. Accountants, financial analysts, scientists, engineers, HR, anyone that does not have a mandatory customer-facing role in their job description. This is not just happening in the US... its taking place all over western Europe and the rest of the developed world (and its pissing them off as well).
I can't say I can really blame IBM for looking offshore... its their duty to shareholders to keep labor costs down and their bottom line up. Free trade, in principle, ultimately works to help everyone in the long run. However, China, India, and other new "trading partners" have adopted some rather underhanded policies, including ones to peg their currencies to low values on the dollar (a big part of the reason why an Indian salary costs 1/5 of a comparable American salary and the Chinese even less). Their human rights and quality-of-life records are far from admirable, and yet we're so eager to bring China into the WTO and wipe out the trade barriers standing between us and the third world. Unless we all want to share the quality-of-life of an average Chinese citizen, we probably should be re-thinking our current international trade policy, not to mention the administration responsible for implementing it.
I don't know of many IT workers that do. With a big company like IBM, why the hell not. Too many programmers give in to the pressure, training their soon-to-be replacements and resigning themselves to their fate. At least use the leverage you have while you still have it.
Regarding tax breaks, they couldn't hurt. Cracking down on countries that keep their currency values low for export purposes I think would help out more. Our wide-open trade policy over the past three decades doesn't seem to have done much for the American people. Its kind of funny that our nation's leaders don't have the balls to take on the WTO and other trade organizations when we're funding most of the trade they oversee. What are India and China going to do?... God forbid these "trading partners" should become self-sufficient.
The only problem with this argument is that the list of professions not susceptible to exportation is growing perilously short. Accountants, scientists, architects, engineers, financial analysts, and all the HR and other support staff that go with them are now vulnerable. What we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg... any career without a mandatory customer-facing component is looking to face the offshoring axe sooner or later. It will gut the US economy, and, in what little justice emerges from this, Bush in '04 as well... his free-trade trips across the globe won't look so hot when unemployment is still rising late next year.
The real question we should ask is whether the kind of free trade that has emerged since the early 70's really in our best interests? Will reducing trade barriers with countries offering labor at levels 1/5 or less than ours improve our quality of life? Countries such as India and China are engaging in some rather questionable practices, not the least of which is pegging their currencies at artificially-low levels relative to the dollar. This parasitic trade arrangement is destroying our industrial and intellectual base. It can't last forever... we can't consume indefinitely while continually gutting our production capacity and going ever deeper into debt. While some sort of correction down the road is inevitable, I just hope its one we all can live with.
BTW... don't let the recent rise in the stock market fool you. The correlation between the Dow/S&P and the state of the American economy is thin given these are *multinational* organizations we're talking about here, not sure if they really even qualify as American companies anymore.
Why hire a US manager for an Indian development center? IT execs are getting the shaft too, at least the mid-level ones. (Not that I'm breaking out a crying towel for them any time soon.)
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Regarding the environment, its ironic that environmental organizations devote millions to altering the fate of spotted owls in the American wilderness while devoting relatively little energy to the devastation corporations cause when they move their heavy industry offshore. One could make the argument that many environmentalists ultimately cause more environmental damage than they prevent by adding incentive to relocate industry in locations with virtually no environmental protections in place ... but that is an issue for a different message board.
Back to the original issue of programmers being offshored, probably the one saving grace in all of this is that most software is in the fact most software is not really a commodity. (Larry Ellison is a moron if he truly thinks it is ... will let his company's plummeting stock price over the past 3 years speak for itself on that subject.) Developing good software takes more than a CSc degree and English language skills, and solid US software (i.e. those with the talent, experience, and focus required to make things happen) will ultimately pay for their exorbanent wages in the license revenue their software generates (which, I might add, is generally not a direct function of the production costs). Companies whose strategy is purely to shed talent until their costs match their continually-declining revenue streams are doomed no matter what shore they find themselves on.
- http://www.ieeeusa.org/releases/2003/042803pr.htm
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Actually, EE's are a bit easier to farm out as (1) they don't have to speak English and (2) many of the fabs and electronics plants are already offshore. If you really want some job security, try nursingWell, I'd say Dean has a chance if he could just lay off the Iraq war issues. The guy sounds like a broken record. *News flash* - the Iraqi war is a done deal ... he needs to start talking more about what he would do as president and less about what he would have done.
The strange rhetoric we're hearing from the Democratic side largely has to do with attempts to build up early momentum in the New England states, where the opinions are well outside the mainstream. I think we'll get an idea on where they really stand on the issues of interest to most Americans once they get out of these states. Unless the Democrats want to get spanked again the way they were in 2002, they had best get on this with something better than the lip service Clinton and Bush gave it back when the economy appeared to be in reasonably good shape. My bet is they will.
I would largely agree with your laissez faire free trade ideas if we were talking about the developed world. I think reducing trade barriers between ourselves and countries which observe similar standards to ourselves (e.g. Australia, Japan, South Korea, western Europe) is a good thing and will ultimately help out all parties involved. Trade of this sort has already done a lot to improve things IMHO.
However, countries like India, China, and Russia have some serious internal problems to tackle before we even think about given them trade status comparable to that we offer to Europe and Japan. Corruption, human rights abuse, environmental neglect, and very questionable international trade practices are but a few of the issues here. Some trade with these countries is inevitable, if for no other reason than to maintain some world order. However, opening up the floodgates of trade with these nations was just plain stupid. We're not playing our hand in these trade deals whatsoever, and we're all going to pay for it in the long run.
Free trade only works in the long run when it ultimately produces a reasonably-balanced level of trade in each direction and when there are rules in place to stem abuses. Our trade deficit has reached unprecidented levels, and technology is such that an astonishing number of jobs that once could only be done in the US can be exported like never before. Upward wage pressures in these countries are limited due to the sheer numbers of people looking for work, and underhanded tactics (e.g. pegging currencies to low dollar values) work to keep their labor costs artificially low relative to the developed world for some time to come. Corporations are not formed for the purpose of being stewards of the people or the environment, as indicated by the massive clouds of pollution hanging over the Pacific rim the past 10 years. Free trade works if you have pragmatic ways of addressing these kinds of problems, but we don't at the moment. We have to ask ourselves this: Will free trade with any country that will have it really help anyone in the end?
Right now, the Bush administration and the Fed have pulled out all the stops in trying to get the American economy on track. We're 20 months past the last quarter of GDP decline, and US payrolls and capital spending are *still* dropping like a rock ... that has not happened since the great depression. The explanation has a lot to do with offshoring ... its not just for programmers and call center operators anymore. Accountants, financial analysts, scientists, engineers, HR, anyone that does not have a mandatory customer-facing role in their job description. This is not just happening in the US ... its taking place all over western Europe and the rest of the developed world (and its pissing them off as well).
I can't say I can really blame IBM for looking offshore ... its their duty to shareholders to keep labor costs down and their bottom line up. Free trade, in principle, ultimately works to help everyone in the long run. However, China, India, and other new "trading partners" have adopted some rather underhanded policies, including ones to peg their currencies to low values on the dollar (a big part of the reason why an Indian salary costs 1/5 of a comparable American salary and the Chinese even less). Their human rights and quality-of-life records are far from admirable, and yet we're so eager to bring China into the WTO and wipe out the trade barriers standing between us and the third world. Unless we all want to share the quality-of-life of an average Chinese citizen, we probably should be re-thinking our current international trade policy, not to mention the administration responsible for implementing it.
Regarding tax breaks, they couldn't hurt. Cracking down on countries that keep their currency values low for export purposes I think would help out more. Our wide-open trade policy over the past three decades doesn't seem to have done much for the American people. Its kind of funny that our nation's leaders don't have the balls to take on the WTO and other trade organizations when we're funding most of the trade they oversee. What are India and China going to do? ... God forbid these "trading partners" should become self-sufficient.
The only problem with this argument is that the list of professions not susceptible to exportation is growing perilously short. Accountants, scientists, architects, engineers, financial analysts, and all the HR and other support staff that go with them are now vulnerable. What we're seeing now is just the tip of the iceberg ... any career without a mandatory customer-facing component is looking to face the offshoring axe sooner or later. It will gut the US economy, and, in what little justice emerges from this, Bush in '04 as well ... his free-trade trips across the globe won't look so hot when unemployment is still rising late next year.
The real question we should ask is whether the kind of free trade that has emerged since the early 70's really in our best interests? Will reducing trade barriers with countries offering labor at levels 1/5 or less than ours improve our quality of life? Countries such as India and China are engaging in some rather questionable practices, not the least of which is pegging their currencies at artificially-low levels relative to the dollar. This parasitic trade arrangement is destroying our industrial and intellectual base. It can't last forever ... we can't consume indefinitely while continually gutting our production capacity and going ever deeper into debt. While some sort of correction down the road is inevitable, I just hope its one we all can live with.
BTW ... don't let the recent rise in the stock market fool you. The correlation between the Dow/S&P and the state of the American economy is thin given these are *multinational* organizations we're talking about here, not sure if they really even qualify as American companies anymore.
Why hire a US manager for an Indian development center? IT execs are getting the shaft too, at least the mid-level ones. (Not that I'm breaking out a crying towel for them any time soon.)