Outsourcing is Good for You 963
gManZboy writes "Catherine Mann, from the Institute for International Economics, has a look at What Global Outsourcing Means for U.S. IT Workers up over at Queue. She's got an interesting argument: outsourcing means cheaper IT products, meaning businesses will buy more, meaning more products to make & manage = net gain of IT jobs in the US. Ummm, did you follow that?"
More IT jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe what she means to say is .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Since not all jobs can be efficiently outsourced, a company that raises their productivity by outsourcing the jobs that can be will have more resources to devote to those that can't be
I've heard this argument before... (Score:4, Insightful)
Admin jobs (Score:2, Insightful)
However for jobs that can be done remotely (like programming, call centre etc), it's still a bad sign.
So those who can identify this change of job demand and acquire a different trade quickly, they may still survive in this outsourcing trend.
CEOs (Score:4, Insightful)
I guess I am just a little bitter but since they have announced 'massive' layoffs mid-sept, I can't do nothing but rant...
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:2, Insightful)
Coding is manual labor? Please explain...
Executive Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
- The
.com bubble bursts, causing employees working for firms whose primary business is selling IT products to lose their jobs.
- Bigger IT companies that didn't actually fold outsource some work to reduce expenses.
- Due to public demand and reduced expenses, non-IT companies buy more computer crap.
- Non-IT companies have to hire the old IT employees to run the new computers.
Net result: Those employees eventually have jobs in computers, just not with computer companies.This actually makes sense, and I've seen it here locally. A lot of people I know who were laid off from startups are now working for their old customers. The problem is, this trend can take years. The number of businesses that totally went under put a ton of IT talent out of work. Compensating for that will take some time. That's not good news for the employees who haven't landed a job yet.
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Reganomics all over again (Score:0, Insightful)
What REALLY happens is that the owners/higher ups just get bigger bonus's and the rest of us are screwed.
Excuse me while I go get ready for my job at Burger King. You want fries with that?
In the long run, we will all benefit (Score:5, Insightful)
time frame? (Score:2, Insightful)
Yes, but how long? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
No they dont. They buy stuff made in India, China nad Taiwan.
"In the end, it will help our economy. Also, it is true that we do lose jobs to outsourcing. Like the article mentioned, however, we gain new skilled labor positions that are better paying than the manual labor positions that were eliminated."
Realy? Name them. If outsourcing jobs creates jobs, where are they? Why do we have such high levels of unemployment in the IT industry if all these jobs are being created?
Jobs in the right places, better jobs globally (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is a totally outrageous claim... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the concept of competitive advantage. The workers in India have a competitive advantage as they can do the IT jobs cheaper, and ostensibly at or near the same quality level. By allowing them to take that advantage they win (their economy grows), but they also begin producing products that out-compete the more expensive American products. This is the exact same cycle we saw with Japanese cars (which has come full circle with those companies opening up manufacturing plants in the United States).
When I Read This Argument... (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:More IT jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
The question is not if outsourcing creates more jobs than an isolated domestic economy would. The question is: Does outsourcing save the jobs which are hard to outsource? Pretending to be in a non-global economy would drive these jobs away too in the long run.
Outsourcing creates jobs? (Score:2, Insightful)
Oh, and did anyone read that USA Today article where people would rather pay $400 for local tech support than pay $20 for an offshore call?
Re:CEOs (Score:0, Insightful)
Take your excellent diction, rhetoric, and ability to reason, couple it with your driving work ethic, and your scamtastic signature, and I am certain you will have no trouble finding your next job.
Do you want fries with that?
Re:One more time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe what she means to say is .. (Score:5, Insightful)
First, they get bigger raises, expense accounts, golden parachutes for reducing the company payroll. Second, the stock exchanges usually reward the newly productive company with an increase in share price, making those executive stock options more valuable.
It's win-win if you have the key to the big boys' bathroom.
Re:One more time (Score:5, Insightful)
If they export our jobs, they'll get what they pay for (and usually do -- witness the failure that is outsourcing).
The only bad part of that situation is that it takes CEOs and boards a few years to figure out that they're not getting what they pay for when they outsource (shoddy code, slow response time, lack of understanding of American business, ad nauseum).
The reason outsourcing fails is that you can't easily just cut off one part of an organization and throw it across the world. To make that really work, you'd need to move the entire organization to that country -- and now you've just outsourced everyone except the board. Oops.
sounds like..... (Score:3, Insightful)
ya, know, not at all.
How can you compete with $9.60/hour? (Score:3, Insightful)
Some of these guys are charging $0.16/minute for programming help ( $9.60/hour). Hell, the 976-HOTT girls make much more than that.
I should have gone into the sex-talk business instead of programming.
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
Outsourcing = wages go down for you, up for execs (Score:3, Insightful)
That is what outsourcing gives us. So get to the top while you still can, you're either at the top outsourcing or you are outsourced.
Re:bah (Score:2, Insightful)
Trickle-down Reaganomics? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah..just great...bash the economists. (Score:3, Insightful)
You guys sound as pathetic as the steel workers and miners where I grew up, compaining about how the corporate "man" keeps you down. Get with the times: many IT people were the first to say that to the "old economy" manufacturing employees back when getting an IT degree meant a paycheck that was completely outsized compared to your actual skills.
Now that you're not making mad money right out of college, you're all more than willing to join up with the Union and be protectionists.
It's a known economic fact that lower labor costs translate to lower finished goods costs. You think you'd be able to afford the latest graphics hardware and a new box everytime the next killer FPS came out if they weren't being manufactured overseas for way less than they could be made in the U.S.? You all benefit from outsourcing and globalization, but you're too fixated on your own careers to see the benefits.
Of Course, I Follow It... (Score:5, Insightful)
But the job goes elsewhere because someone else can do it cheaper.
It happens all the time. Sooner or later, all those guys in India will price themselves out of the market and lose their jobs to people in China or Africa.
I have sympathy for people who lose their jobs. I have no sympathy for people who want government to distort economics.
Inevitable (Score:5, Insightful)
There are masses of very poor people out there now able to afford a computer and internet access. Their disadvantages are many, their only advantage is that they're poor. So of course they will work for less. Suck-it-up dept is right.
I don't support the exploitation of workers in poor countries, but it's hardly exploitation if these people are making a living doing what they do.
Re:Outsourcing your own job. (Score:1, Insightful)
I have noticed a trend in those firms for which I have provided tech-temporary help.
Namely, the outsourced call centers are having a problem solving anything above the most rudimentary and carefully dialoged/scripted problems
2) As wireless architectures begin to enter the technical and casual/retail business sectors, the need for IT personnel who can handle a mobile environment means that adding a new employee for example, is nearly automatic. Outsourcing is not needed!
3) When there is the regular worm or virus that crushes windows, or the massive service pack that actually forces the need for more memory to be placed in the computer, or a larger hard drive all together, or a reformatting of the drive to fix the worm damage - outsourcing is a waste of money. Why? They, the help staff in India, is sitting there collecting money and producing no product(not helping)!
4) Programmers and engineers who are making the cell phones and PDAs and the code that goes into these things, are useless when a spamm flood rushes across the cellphone network and the Verizons of the world are inundated with complaints and bad press. That part of the communications world is TOTALLY unprepared for the kind of trouble the Internet sees daily.
we end up loaning a lot of these firms engineers and programmers just to fix what got broke - this is the point I am making.
As the world becomes more complicated, designs and ideas spawned in India, do not work as well as hoped in a dynamic western geopolitical environment.
I see at least a fifty per cent increase in the number of programmers and techies of ALL types we will need in 3-6 months, probably more than that!
Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
I am a custom programmer, I bill $50/hr.
I get lots of work, I hire someone to help me.
I pay them less then I charge, I make money on their work as well as mine.
I provide the work to them, and supervise, this is how I justify my cut.
This is how many small business grow, it is called organic growth, and is very common.
Since programmers don't need to be physically close, why not hire the cheapest capable person? If you only pay $10/hr, you make $40/their hour, of course minus your management work.
What about this doesn't make sense, when I was 14, I worked for a guy cutting lawns doing almost exactly this.
Re:bah (Score:3, Insightful)
The amazing thing is that people think they can be right about anything but the most basic. Economics is at least as complex as the weather, which we know we get wrong much of the time, except with all the added predictability of being a social science...
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:5, Insightful)
But consider when industrialization became big in the 19th century (at least where I live). It was hell on the little people then. Mass unemployment and lots of suffering.
It was a good thing in the long run, though. The world is much better for it:
Infancy/child death rates where around 20-30% before industrialization. The rest of our quality of living has been raised similarly; to be able to study is half of life's meaning to me. Lots of people had brain damage because of bad harvests when they were children. Etc, etc.
This outsorcing trend will (almost) certainly be a Good Thing for the third world and all humanity in a few decades.
It just sucks to be us -- that has to live through the changes in the wrong place. Like the unemployed and workers of the early industrialization.
I find this whoring by spokespeople to claim otherwise disgusting.
Re:Hello Catharine. (Score:3, Insightful)
Yeah, I follow that arguement (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I follow that arguement...all the way to the unemployment line.
First, all tech is crap. Let me repeat that. Our careers are based on crap. First, for any non-tech company, computers are a support accounting item. This means that computers are not in the business of making money for the company, they are an expense. (Get over it, I'm not done yet, so hold the flames til you see where I'm going.)
Let's look at the grocery store. It's full of tech in my area. PCs on the check out lines. PCs to weigh and print tickets for fruit and veggies, computers to check the temps in the coolers, computers to do the accounting, timeclocks that are really T104 form factor motherboards with full computers, hell, almost every isle has a computer. (I understand that some stores are replacing the security camera VCRs with computers now.)
Second, when these devices are first installed, there is some sort of cost/benifit study, both before and after they buy it. (If they are a cluefull company. Uncluefull don't do them, simi-clued do one before. Only fully clued do both.)
Third, after a few years, these productivity gaining devices stop being seen as something that saved them money, but just another expense. They forget they replaced things that cost even more, or the savings they got from installing them.
Now comes the down cycle (remember when all the wall street anaylists said we beat the down cycle markets? Cheap talk, and while I never believed it, many did.) and busineses have to cut expenses.
Gee, where do we cut? Almost always the answer is IT, because IT is seen as an expense. They almost always forget the productivity gains they get from the use of technology, they only see that line item cost IT people are on the balance sheet.
As for tech companies, very clued know that IT keeps the plates spinning and productivity high. They may cut a few in IT, but mostly by quietly asking "who are the bottom 10% we can do without best?" and those hit the bricks.
Simiclued tech companies just cut the last hired.
Unclued cut a lot of IT, regardless of why.
Likewise, consertives say "outsourcing is GOOD for jobs!". Look at thier reasoning, folks. If you believe it, then outsourcing is good all the way up the chain of command, yet you don't see CFOs and CEOs being outsourced. Oh, no! What you do see is that they get multi-million dollar bonuses and raises for cutting 2,000 jobs here, 5,000 there.
This is why I say IT workers are the modern black gang of the world. We stoke the boilers, fire the engines, make the computers run. But are we asked our opinions on all the jimcrack geegaws PHBs demand? Hell no! Most of the time we are accused of "slacking off", "being uncooperative", "geeks" with a roll of the eyes and shake of the head, and the only respect we get is when we save their ass and the empty mouthings of praise during those "all hands" meetings where the bosses give each other awards.
(OK, so I'm bitter right now. I'm miffed because I just came from one of those all hands meetings, and it was a complete waste of THREE FREAKIN' HOURS.)
But let the pager go off at two in the morning, and we are there. Someone has spyware on their system? We are there. Virus? Ditto, gritting our teeth all the while they regale us with how smart they are about technology or how absolutely they can't do a thing with a computer. Thinking how this person makes twice what I do, with an IQ measured in irrational numbers....
But what really gets me is the number of times when the very people that depend on IT to get their computers working bypass IT, and go spec out and order servers and software and then expect us to keep it running, or second guess us the rare times we are asked our opinion.
You know, I'd never dream of tryi
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:4, Insightful)
Wait, so you're saying that if we fire people they'll go find better jobs.
I'm sorry, it still doesn't make any sense. If there really were better jobs, people would already have them.
Re:Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
"Since programmers don't need to be physically close, why not hire the cheapest capable person? If you only pay $10/hr, you make $40/their hour, of course minus your management work."
Works fine until people wonder why they're paying the middleman $50 at all when they can turn around and hire the $10/hour worker directly. And that is exactly the situation here.
IT staff aren't getting magically "promoted" into "higher value added positions" when their jobs are outsourced. Their actual job is leaving the country, and they're being laid off. Whether that's better or worse is a relative viewpoint. Regardless, there aren't any equal-paying (much less better-paying) jobs replacing them.
" What about this doesn't make sense, when I was 14, I worked for a guy cutting lawns doing almost exactly this."
Yeah that's great, except you can't offshore outsource lawn mowing. Going offshore you can exploit a completely different tier of societies that aren't tied to the ecomonic regulations and expenses of the corporation's home country. You can't live on $3/day here in the States.
Completely different situations.
Re:Outsourcing your own job. (Score:3, Insightful)
When there is the regular worm or virus that crushes windows, or the massive service pack that actually forces the need for more memory to be placed in the computer, or a larger hard drive all together, or a reformatting of the drive to fix the worm damage - outsourcing is a waste of money. Why? They, the help staff in India, is sitting there collecting money and producing no product(not helping)!
Friend, you're living in la-la land if you think any American executive thinks that long-term, i.e., beyond the end of their nose. To put it another way, I'd like some of whatever you're smoking.
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
Exactly, which is why despite all its rabid proponents it has as little credible real world evidence to support its validity as an economic theory.
Re:Of Course, I Follow It... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering that economics is poorly-understood to start with, I find it hard to imagine how governments can distort economics worse than corporations distort economics.
The "free market" concept which is so prevalent among libertarians and corporatists is based upon an ideal model, in which everyone in the model is a free agent. Unfortunately, that's not a true model.
In the corporate model, a select few in charge get to make up the wages paid. Now, this is somewhat constrained by the market availability, but as we discovered with outsourcing, there is no lack of people willing to work at pretty much anything, for almost nothing (comparatively speaking). Meanwhile, those who fix the game (upper management) ensure their own positions are not outsourced, while paying very little to everyone else.
Meanwhile, those with the money are able to influence government policy to a much greater degree than those without much money. This also shifts the balance of power just a little more to those running corporations. Whether the DMCA, the INDUCE act, or the consolidation of giant media, the individual loses out, while the corporations gain.
Economics in the US is warped. There is no such thing as a free market. Nor is there any indication that the free market is a good model to start with, let alone the best model. The only thing we've discovered so far is that empirically is better than fuedalism, socialism, monocracies (including monarchies, dictatorships, etc), hegemonies, and bozocracies (in which clowns run the show, like in the US).
Sour Grapes (Score:4, Insightful)
However, I must say, as I am currently looking for alternate employment, I have had several opprotunities for job interviews (about 10). And these jobs range from technical support at 30k/yr through Sr Network Engineer and Security Analysts at 100k/yr and more.
The jobs are out there, people... however (here's the troll) whether you're qualified for them is another thing altogether. Whether you want to be a tech support guy is yet another... It also depends on where you live (I happen to live in the NYC area and there are plenty of IT jobs around). Yes, my current company is outsourcing to India, but we're still hiring IT people... just not the same group of IT people.
Oh and one other thing... most of the people that were laid off here in the US due to my company's outsourcing have been Indians who are here on work visas.... so if you're going to get the same people at 1/2 the price because they are 6000 miles away, then why wouldn't a company do that?
"Economic" == science of screwing the serfs (Score:3, Insightful)
" No, her basic premise is sound economics.
Economics is nothing more than a science of how to fuck over the working citizen and benefit the investor. Anytime I hear someone talk about "economics", I know they are either callow and ignorant or an evil greedhead. Guess which one I think you are....
you also wrote:
What outsourcing really does is grow the economies of those other countries.
WHo cares? America is my business. I own it jointly with all my fellow citizens. They are my partners. I aint looking to fuck them over so I can unduly benefit myself and some foreigners. I call that treason....
The money going into those economies results in higher economic spending power among the outsourcees. They in turn buy more goods, which employs more people in their local economy. This causes economic growth... at the same time it provides the ability for people in these countries to start their own business, utilizing cheaper local professionals, to produce products and outcompete the American companies. That sounds scary... but the net gain is cheaper goods and services for US as well.
OK...that scenario MIGHT come true, at some point in the future, maybe 50 years or 100 years. But I and my fellow citizen-partners are gonna get mighty skinny waiting for your free-trade, lasseiz faire, cornucopia-religion, rapture-prophesy crap to come to fruition. I say fuck that, and put up steep trade barriers. You know, things CHANGE from time to time in this ol' world. What works OK at some time N, does necessarily work well at some time N+K. Reality is like that.
You wrote:
It's the concept of competitive advantage. The workers in India have a competitive advantage as they can do the IT jobs cheaper, and ostensibly at or near the same quality level. By allowing them to take that advantage they win (their economy grows), but they also begin producing products that out-compete the more expensive American products. This is the exact same cycle we saw with Japanese cars (which has come full circle with those companies opening up manufacturing plants in the United States).
Here is an analogy for you: I and a bunch of people own an office building together. Each of us owners uses one of the offices to ply our trade. I am a lawyer; Joe down the hall is a dentist, Mike is an accountant, etc.
Then we hire an office manager. This office manager finds out that the office building on the down the street is not doing so well. The lawyers, accountants, dentists working there do not have much business. They charge much less than we owners in our office building do, but the problem is that their location is not as "prime"as ours. So that office manager conspires with the owners of the other building: whenever someone comes in looking to hire a lawyer, get dental or accounting work, etc., he just sends them down the street. He gets a kickback.
When we catch onto what he is doing he just says basically what you have just said: "it will grow their economy, it will keep prices down, yadda yadda yadda...."
Now, what do you think of that office manager?
With regard to manufacturing and japan and the USA, you might wanna read this.... [pushhamburger.com]
Re:More IT jobs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yep. And the cheapest labor is that of a slave or prisoner who is being given barely enough to eat. Once you know that, you know that's exactly where the global job market is headed, as long as those countries that use slave/prison labor (China?) are allowed to participate in the competition.
That is why offshoring must be limited: the competition doesn't have to follow the same rules you do, and that inherently makes for a tilted playing field. The competition has no incentive to change their ways (they're more "competitive" than you, after all), so you're forced to adopt their ways. That means other countries that wish to compete in the global market must start making use of slave/prison labor, and that puts pressure on the governments to increase the size of their prison labor pool, which puts pressure on them to put more people in prison.
No, offshoring is acceptable only when the target countries have the same labor laws on the books that you have. Otherwise you may as well throw out 100+ years of economic and labor progress (what, you think the middle class just magically appeared? It came about as a direct result of sane labor laws, because the use of automation virtually guarantees that there is more human labor available than work to do).
Middle man (Score:4, Insightful)
Supervision, hiring good people, project management, ensure quality, provide customer support, all those things customers want.
You know all that stuff Redhat is doing with Linux.
insecure (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, I knew a lot of Chinese folks who wanted to get their educations overseas.
For the moment, at least, the west has a good lead in terms of R&D and education.
Of course, we'd be more competitive if we copied China's lead and forced some farmers to produce food for our country for near-slave wages.
Re:Inevitable (Score:2, Insightful)
But the conditions in China are improving - primarily because we are sending money there in exchage for goods and services. Economic conditions do not improve in a country that is not allowed to participate in the world economy.
limited distortion is good (Score:3, Insightful)
to feed, so I can't just go back to school. I made
my investment in education. Somebody going into IT
today would be stupid of course, but some of us
started long ago. We're stuck. I need to keep this
career until I die.
The feds muck with interest rates all the time.
Sometimes they break up monopolies. They dish out
artificial monopolies to your local phone company,
patent holders, copyright holders, TV stations,
and so on. Market distortion is the norm.
Fits with the Big Picture (Score:4, Insightful)
From 1999 to 2002 (last available data), the number of "programming" jobs in the U.S. earning on average $64,000 fell by some 71,000. But jobs held by application and system software engineers earning on average $74,000 increased by 115,000.
So, programmers overseas are now writing the programs that businesses depend on, and we're hiring more people (44,000 more people in 3 years) to try to implement / support that software. Makes sense to me.
There's been lots of discussion on
Therefore, it should be no suprise that it takes that much more work(ers) to crowbar this software into place & pound it into submission so that it does the job, and to keep it doing so every day. Additionally, when you consider that the personnel doing the implementation/support are that much further disconnected (language barriers & such) from those who actually built it, this becomes a no-brainer.
The real question is, is the trend of software requiring more and more maintenance & support year after year for myriad reasons a good thing? This article claims that it is in the short-term (more jobs), but what about when the whole card house tumbles?
Don't worry, CEOs are next (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
The employee protections and environmental standards we enjoy in the US will quickly be eroded. Have you ever tasted the air in places like Beijing?
Re:Of Course, I Follow It... (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes. I did tech support until my company decided that they could get cheaper support in India. And they were right: they got lower cost, lower quality support from people in India. They threw away about twenty years cumulative experience and institutional memory because people in India with no experience were willing to work for less. And now, if they're lucky, they're getting what they're willing to pay for: support that's making them a laughing-stock instead of the high reputation for quality support they had before.
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Suppose we can specify a software product to be produced. UML models, use cases etc. Now we can give that to a programmer and they can produce the actual product. The programmer doesn't need to know much about the actual business issues, just follow the spec, so we can get the cheapest programmer from the other side of the world who is capable of following the spec.
So there are fewer low level programming jobs in the US, great lets all become software architects, we are freed from the low level work and have higher valued jobs, Yippee a promotion.
Except you realise that you don't actually need as many software architects a you had programmers, and not all programmers are capable of becoming software architects, so we keep the best few and drop the rest.
A problem arises in a few years, where do you find good software architects. Usually you might start out as a programmer and after a few years experience on the job you can understand all the issues to take on the greater challenge. Well how do you get those years of experience if all the low level jobs have been shipped overseas?
The only people qualified to be software architects are the supposed low level programmers you outsourced the work to. Except now they have enough money to set up their own development shops and can undercut your business in providing software development services.
This has already happened with Clothing and Electronics, it could easily happen with software too.
The only jobs that remain here are those that require an on-site presence, cleaning, maintenance, services, shopping and the management who sent the jobs abroad.
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
The higher paying jobs don't exist yet. In the 80s when electronic manufacturing jobs were outsourced, it freed up capital and intellectual resources to pursue activities that used the more cheaply made components (software, networking, etc).
As software becomes cheaper it is reasonable to expect people to find ways to better utilize that software, thus creating new industries and expanding existing ones.
that might be rated +4 funny (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:3, Insightful)
Now... will there be a 1-1 or better ratio of bettery paying jobs created for every person who loses a crappy job? If so, great.
However, the more likely scenario is that a much larger employee base will be going after a slightly larger higher-paying job base. The result? Lower salaries for those same jobs.
Original computer problem... (Score:2, Insightful)
i certainly doubt computers would have ever reached such widespread price appeal if not for outsourcing their construction.
if televisions were manufactured in america, they would be expensive as hell. if this was cathodeslashtube.org and we all programmed tivo funcitonality for tv's and other related service industries i'm sure we'd be glad for our jobs. but of course, we wouldn't have them in any great number if televisions weren't commodotized. well, now computers are a commodity (boy were us mindful people grateful for that 5 years ago!) and so are many computer programming services! oh no!
so yeah, business sucks, lost jobs and all. but honestly, what if we stepped past our bias (we all want to be employed, just like those autoworkers who contributed to a net gain of something when their job loss meant more affordable cars) perhaps we can see a future (an unlikely one) where the benefits of cheaper software development trickle down like many other products that benefited our economy because of their cheap manufacture.
cheap computers begat a huge service industry. is it too farfetched that cheaper software development might trickle down into more feasible implementation of 'smart' products now that you don't have to pay a small towns worth of taxes and benefits to develop some measly software.
where this trickles down to....well...somewhere
assembly, not manufacturing... (Score:5, Insightful)
And how is it "all of us" when it's not "all of us" who can get these cheaper goods and services? Aren't you leaving out the ones displaced, out of work, rehired at less wages, etc? That means it's not "all" of us, correct? Seems like you are assuming two things at the same time, that outsourced jobs result in zero loss of jobs here, and that they make more jobs at the same time. Say whut? How are people who have now much less money or no money supposed to take advantage of just cheaper trinkets, when basic bills and utilities aren't even being met?
Sorry, it ain't working, been hearing this scam pushed for over 20 years now. Stuff in general costs more, and good well paying jobs are much harder to come by, you can't just pick and choose a few selected entries like CPU chips or something and call it the total economy. Got the personal memory, don't need an article to tell me that. Stuff costs more now, not less, generally speaking.Yes, there are new products on the market, but in general, nope, stuff costs more. Food, energy, housing,clothing, all costs more. People have lost purchaising power, not gained. Bankruptcies are at record levels-why if these games are making the economy so good? Why is that? Really, why? Savings at all time historic lows-why is that? if we are all so better off, wouldn't it be trivially easy to sock away more now? But it's not happening. House notes are now common at 30 years, I can remember when 10 was common. Why are they at 30 now, is it because houses cost more, or less? and yes, I even mean the same excact size houses in the same areas. And interest only loans? Excuse me? WTF is that noise? People are getting so desparate to hang onto their houses-just a place to live- they basically agree to rent them forever? That's simply...weird, but I'm seeing the ads now on Tv and such, never used to be that way. Car notes are at 60 months now, I remember 12 month loans, and any random middle of the road joe normal blue collar paycheck could pay them off to boot, let alone a white collar at 2x the average wage. And some people are being forced to a perpetual lease, they can never really own a car (that runs and ain't beat to snot) now, it's turned into an expected monthly utility bill because the lease is all that's affordable. I remember when leasing was extremely uncommon for joe sixpack, now they push those magic cheaper numbers because outright purchase is so hig-where's the cheaper cars at? I remember a ton of cars brand new at under 2 grand when I first started driving, where are they now?
Less people have jobs with full benefits now. More people have lost their primary jobs and have been forced to take lesser paying jobs with less or zero benefits, sometimes not even getting a full work week. They just screwed people over on overtime this week with that new law to boot. More households require two checks to function, when one used to cut it easily.
How is this "better"?
Nope, the US did well when we pushed a full, completely diverse, vertically integrated and protected economy, the whole magilla, manufacturing, agriculture, energy production, etc, all of the above. It went downhill when they pushed swapping the cow-working- for the magic beans of get rich quick "investing" in whoknowswhereistan and making millionaires into billionaires. The only servicing I am seeing is the US middle class getting "serviced" right up the tuchus by the same old slick snakeoil guys.
The better era with a better styled economy would have been the 50's to late 60's. Since then, coincidentaly with allowing dumping of autos and the start of offshoring,and allowing huge tariff imbalances, and also giving TAX BREAKS to offshore, we've gone steadily down hill. Just because we have some shinier stuff now doesn't mean we have a bette
Re:Yeah..just great...bash the economists. (Score:1, Insightful)
When people said buy American, I did just that (exempting cars since American cars are shit) because for the most part American stuff is better quality and worth the extra cost. Didn't matter. Most of those union guys who said buy American still went to Wallmart and bought foreign goods anyway.
So now the manufactoring jobs are gone. Now what? You go to school and become a professional. Now THOSE jobs are outsourced. Now what? Oops, too bad for you the only opportunities are for those fat execs who were rich to begin with and had the silver spoon in their mouth all their lives. And sorry about all that debt you accumulated while going to college. Now that our nation continues to draw less taxes, with more unemployment, with an aging nation - we are fucked.
I mean seriously I just want a job that pays enough for me and my family, with a vacation or something nice every while. Nothing fancy, just a decent life. And more and more that is not looking like reality. Outsourcing in theory is a good thing, but the way it's been done recently, it's simply a tool for those at the top to regress our nation into the coal mining towns of the 1900's. I'm sure the fact that I can't buy good quality products anymore is good since I can now just buy 5 of the same crap to replace the 1 good item I could buy years ago in the mind of some people, but I'm having a hard time seeing that the benefits are outweighing the costs, and many of the REAL costs we won't see for years.
Numbers game. (Score:4, Insightful)
Now you have more total global employment, higher value US employment, and more productivity for everyone.
I know that is the rosy scenerio, the other (obvious) one is all the jobs go away and we're all unemployed.
Fighting against the second with protectionism doesn't work. Working towards the first scenerio can work.
I won't argue it is easy, or it will happen quickly, just that is how I think we should view this opportunity.
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work;" --Edison
Re:Outsourcing your own job. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More IT jobs? (Score:1, Insightful)
The economy is getting more and more global and nothing can stop that. Workers in other countries will do our jobs for less, nothing can stop that.
So whats an american software developer to do? Innovate. This has been the solution americans have come up with to outsourcing in every other industry. We come up with new ideas, complete new industries arise, we learn new skills. We do a better job than the competition, whatever. We cannot stop outsourcing, we shouldn't even try. We should keep working hard, keep innovating, keep spending on research, and things will turn out ok. Sure there may be a stretch of hard times, but those who know how to innovate are never down for long.
Re:Something Similar (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem with economists is that they try to be real scientists, when they're not. They're social scientists. Social scientists should study trends and events, over a long period of time, and make assessments based on those trends. There is no trend that even remotely relates to the current outsourcing of IT, as there has never been a situation where a country has sent high-paid, high-education jobs overseas! At best, you might be able to use the "outsourcing" of the Roman Legions to the barbarian hordes as a similar situation. At best.
There is no evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, that outsoucing tech jobs is helping anyone but the richest in America. That alone should be evidence enough for you that outsourcing is bad.
Re:This is a totally outrageous claim... (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with that example is that the Japanese originally started building their cars here to get around the unfair regulations about domestic content that were enacted to bail out the big three... who, by the way, build many of their cars in Canada and Mexico.
So... if we impose high tariffs and import quotas on foreign developed software, maybe Asian software firms will start outsourcing jobs back here so that they can compete for US sales. That way we can take advantage of our number one asset - the ability to consume more than everyone else combined.
Re:Yeah..just great...bash the economists. (Score:2, Insightful)
That's why outsourcing CEOs isn't worth it. In general, the US is very good at business management, and people believe in the ability of those like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. There aren't that many CEO names coming from other countries, which is why those jobs aren't going overseas.
Somebody gets it (Score:4, Insightful)
So, which company will succeed? Output of one man at $50 per hour, or output of three for $90 per hour?
There is a net benefit to society, the ex-programmer is making more money, and he's producing cheaper code. There's a net benefit to the offshore society, they are earning reasonable wages in context.
The loser, admittedly, is the competing on-shore programmer, who either has to drop his hourly rate to $30, or figure out how to become more productive, or go and find 3 dudes to write code for him. Any of those three is a viable strategy, I'd suggest option 2 is the least stressful and the most satisfying, since I don't enjoy management or poverty.
Re:Outsourcing Would Be Good If It Was Growth (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yeah..just great...bash the economists. (Score:2, Insightful)
I just love it when you IT people get all pompous about economists. Of course you're all the smartest people on the face of the earth, so people who've actually STUDIED economics can't possibly be right about anything, especially when you disagree with it on a visceral level.
I don't necessarily disagree with her, but it isn't a lot of comfort to know that my job will turn into some different other job that my experience has not qualified me for.
You guys sound as pathetic as the steel workers and miners where I grew up, compaining about how the corporate "man" keeps you down.
Yeah, I have seen places where the corporations have sucked the life from a city. Go through Detroit and look what happens to whole communities when corporate vampires are finished suckling.
It's a known economic fact that lower labor costs translate to lower finished goods costs. You think you'd be able to afford the latest graphics hardware and a new box everytime the next killer FPS came out if they weren't being manufactured overseas for way less than they could be made in the U.S.? You all benefit from outsourcing and globalization, but you're too fixated on your own careers to see the benefits.
Great, but if I don't have a job, how do I pay for that killer hardware?
I'm not an economist nor a meteorologist, but I give equal trust to both proffessions' particular brand of voodoo fortune telling...
W.E.P.Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:2, Insightful)
God, of all the people who are posting knee jerk, "the sky is falling, outsourcing is the greatest evil known to man", have ANY of you actually read the article? Because I haven't read a rebuttal which has any substance to it yet.
What makes you think you deserve the jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
Probably most of you whine about how we don't do enough to help the poor, and then here are some hardworking guys in foreign countries struggling to pull themselves out of their poverty, and you want to close the door on them.
Go read Adam Smith's "The Wealth of Nations [econlib.org], and you will discover how trade barriers simply impoverish both sides of the barrier.
Stop thinking of just your own greedy selves, and think of the welfare of mankind. Think about how it shouldn't have to matter what country a man is born in, he should have the same chance in life regardless.
Shame on you all.
Oh, and yes, I am biased, because hiring Russians allowed me to start my own company without any venture capital (Namesys [namesys.com]), and I am a perfect example on a small scale of how globalization is making the US into a corporate headquarters location for the globe.
And yes, I am sitting around in the US doing the menial labor of running tests on the code my guys write for my US customer at its site because I could not get visas for my guys to come here, when I could be designing the next product instead.
I don't see how Americans becoming specialized in being the entrepeneurs of the world is such a bad thing.
Re:"Economic" == science of screwing the serfs (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:One more time (Score:3, Insightful)
Very good point; I was speaking about the way the US is now, but I don't necessarily think it's for the best. The places that are more socialistic probably have a better living standard than we in the US (unless you're in that top rich 1%).
What Ayn Rand didn't understand is how power affects her equations: once a company (founded as it may have been by do-ers and accomplishers who make society go) accumulates enough power, it makes it difficult or impossible for other do-ers and accomplishers to do or accomplish -- or for their acts to amount to anything.
Because once the company has power, it's no longer in the business of doing and accomplishing; it's in the business of preserving, protecting, defending, and increasing its power, Amen and Amen. And outside do-ers and accomplishers are now threats to that power. Witness Microsoft.
Re:bah (Score:4, Insightful)
This is actually a much better metaphor than it appears.
Economics is a lot like meteorology. Meteorology is far from random...it's very, very complex, and it's often easy to look back and say 'this is why that happened.' You can come up with general principles...how certain things are likely to interact. And then you go to apply it...and you're still wrong 60% (number pulled out of my ass) of the time. Does that mean that meteorology is complete junk and worthless, and that all those principles they found were completely wrong? No, it just means that the influencing factors are so numerous that it's hard to make a solid prediction.
Is economics perfect? Of course not, especially when it comes to trying to influence change on a major economy. But that doesn't make it worthless. That just means that it's damn hard to make a prediction about how any system that complex is going to behave.
That said, most slashdotters would be well-served by pulling their heads out of their asses, and actually learning something about business and economics before shooting their mouths off about it. (??? PROFIT! HAHA THOSE BUSINESS GUYS ARE SO DUMB) The article is really, really basic market economics. Just laughing at it and declaring it bullshit without understanding it is about equivilent to if an MBA started arguing with a compsci guy about how all the computers in a company should be running some flavor of Windows because 'so many people run it, it must be the best, right?' It just reveals him as a retard when it comes to computers, just like the sort of reactions I'm seeing in this article reveal the average slashdotter to be a retard when it comes to economics.
Re:Trickle-down Reaganomics? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:One more time (Score:3, Insightful)
Each country represents a society where we share collective interests, and where we help each other meet our collective interests... outsourcing occurs when one section of the society we live in (the CEOs) decide they don't care to participate in the meeting of collective interests and will instead persue their individual interests ahead of the collective ones.
And if you think it's so much horseshit a society regarding its job market as something to protect you might care to perform a search on "American Subsidies" on Google. The difference between America and a broad swathe of other countries is you took on the bullshit rhetoric the corporate execs fed you. If you listen carefully that's the sound of them laughing at you in the background as they outsource your job.
Now one could argue a collective interest in a global society, and one might believe your altruistic argument if you weren't about to move your outsourcing away from India to a cheaper country as soon as one presented itself. It also requires that you ignore a bond of interest between your company and the country in which it was nurtured while it grew.... whether you be American, British, German, Indian or Russian.
The core issue being faced here which starts getting tangental is the multinational company which is a transgenerational, transnational entity rather than one which is limited by a charter of incorporation that limits scope of business and has a period of review. We've experience of transgenerational, transnational entities in history with the noble families of feudal Europe... the point? They used serfs interchangably as units of labour too.
Do some Googling on the history of charters of incorporation. It's quite an eye openner.
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it's the logical conclusion and would be the eventual result: the republican heaven where no-one works but lives off their company stock. Of course, at some point a wall will be hit and this will never be realized. Instead, a part of the nation will continue doing the high-level management jobs and the rest will work in the service sector (retail of all sorts) that has to be done locally.
It's all pretty sad, but hey, if you're one of the high-level managers, why would you care?
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It IS good for us. (Score:3, Insightful)
I see this one quite a bit. The primary motivation of a corporation is providing *value* for its shareholders, not profit.
If you train a group of people to make widgets, you are adding value to your company. If you outsource to a foreign company and teach them how to build widgets, you are increasing value of a group of people who may provide the same service to your competitors.
It is very hard to quantify value, but I find it hard to believe that short-term cost savings is worth the lost value in having the expertise in-house. There are a lot of mediocre companies out there that don't realize people are their greatest asset. There always have been and that's not really going to change.
There is of course a big difference between outsourcing and offshoring. Offshoring is old. Intel setting up shop in India is very different from joe little dot com contracting out development of their core product to India. In this cause, Intel is adding value and saving money.
One of the problems with offshoring is that the world isn't a level playing field. In the US to do business you have to abide by worker's rights, EPA restrictions, etc. Then there are the serious trade restrictions and games certain countries play with their currency (China for instance keeps their currency artificially low)..
Re:More IT jobs? (Score:3, Insightful)
And the cheapest labor is that of a slave or prisoner who is being given barely enough to eat.
It is ludicrous to suggest that there are slaves or prisoners in China doing software development. Please present a shred of evidence.
The competition has no incentive to change their ways (they're more "competitive" than you, after all), so you're forced to adopt their ways.
That's just silly. In a society that is even marginally capitalist, the end goal of each player is to make a comfortable life for themselves. This means that employers have to compete for talent just as employees compete for jobs. According to your theory of economics, McDonald's and Burger King would be in a race to the bottom that would price their value meals at a penny each. Otherwise "how would they compete?" Well at the point where McDonald's and Burger King realize that they can no longer price their meals profitably they shift their resources where they can make money.
Employees do that too. When they realize that gardeners do not make much money they become computer programmers. When they can't make enough money there, they move on to something else. Nobody ever gets to $0.00. This is exactly what is happening in India and China.
Otherwise you may as well throw out 100+ years of economic and labor progress (what, you think the middle class just magically appeared? It came about as a direct result of sane labor laws,
What: you think labor laws just magically appeared? Perhaps they came about as a direct result of a burgeoning middle class that thought that it might be more comfortable to have weekends and evenings off. Perhaps their relative prosperity gave them some levels to control the political process and the interest to do so.
because the use of automation virtually guarantees that there is more human labor available than work to do).
Ridiculous. Labour expands to fill the vacuum. That's why there are "personal trainers" where there once were none. And "stock brokers" and "real estate agents" and "wedding planners" and "computer programmers" and "technical architects" and ... Automation is irrelevant. Automation creates demand for new products and services(e.g. system administrator, phone banking clerk, Slashdot editor) just as it destroys old ones (buggy whip creator, telephone operator, ...)
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
A more logical assertion would be that without outsourcing, instead of having gained (again, dubitable) 11500 - 71000 = 40500 jobs, we would have gained 71000 + 11500 = 186000 jobs. (Yes, I'm aware that it's not that simple but my assertion is realistically more accurate.)
Dissecting the article a bit:
Nice spin. One has to have read Orwell's 'Dictionary' for this one. The fact, of course, is that IT jobs increased because there was more IT to go around. Her causality is (intentionally) skewed.
This is what is known as an assertion. Realistically, there is nothing that indicates that these potential jobs, too, couldn't be outsourced -quite the contrary: the capitalist principle of maximising profit is a strong argument for outsourcing, one that she has not one of a comparable magnitude for.
Hope that's enough of a rebuttal.
Re:bah (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, factory workers have generally not found "higher paying" jobs to replace those they lost. They usually move into the service sector, such as cash register clerks. Maybe offshoring creates jobs for OTHER industries, but not theirs. If it didn't help factory workers, why should it help IT workers?
* I will try to find the link
Re:Numbers game. (Score:3, Insightful)
Because your market is not large enough to pay for 3x more of a product. You always start from what you can sell, and work down from there.
This is exactly why Joe does not take $1M loan to expand his 10 seat eatery into a huge restaurant for 10,000 tables... there would never be enough customers in his middle of nowhere.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:3, Insightful)
And if few people would be willing to become rich anymore, what exactly would motivate people to go beyond "just enough to meet their needs?"
The problem with the whole "Punish the rich" thing is that it inhibits the desire to produce more.
Using your example, if you step up the taxes like that at the $40000 a year level, then you've just caged in a person at sub-$40000/year income; you've just limited their usefulness.
And worse, if they so much as "Dare" go past $100000, then they're probably not going to be there for long; certainly not long enough to create jobs for anyone else.
Re:Executive Summary (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:5, Insightful)
Everything you utiize EVERY DAY is paid for by all of us collectively to give you the opportunity to drive to work and make a living. Your argument is the quintessential reduction of what is wrong with libertarian philosopy -- what was ultimately wrong with my favorite philosopher, Heinelin's, line of reasoning -- the idea that the individual alone is responsible for and should be the sole beneficiary of his labors. Even Heinlein understood that no man existed as an island -- "Conventry" should be the example here, not the silly far-rightism of his later years -- and that every aspect of your existence as the lone hero is dependent on the close cooperation and contributed taxes of those who maintain your universe. Semantic nonsense: "penailized" for making money. You're putting money into the kitty for the society and the world which makes it possible for you to get out of bed alive every day.
The sad thing is that this concept resonates so well amongst Americans. It's why we're drowning in Federal debt payments, paying the highest health prices in the world and getting worse care than those paying half what we do elsewhere, and killing our public school systems -- which will ultimately reduce us to a joke among nations, broke, sickly, and fucking stupid.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:5, Insightful)
And it did not work, unless you think charging up 4 trillion in debt on a credit card to finance a "boom" is success. Any dingo can be rich for a few years if he doesn't pay cash for his binges.
Reagan was lucky. As is true today, our economy depends entirely on the price of oil, and in 1982, OPEC's iron control of crude prices collapsed, removing the true cause of our national malaise since 1973 -- high oil prices. In SPITE of Reagan's catastrophic spending and tax cut combination, we got to keep enough of our national wealth in-country to enable a magnificent boom.
Today, oil prices are rising because there is no way to increase oil production worldwide to keep up with the growth in demand by asia and the US combined. There is no spare capacity. It's three decades too late to switch to alternative sources. We're screwed. There will be no Bush miracle. Bush assumes that Reagan's cuts caused the 80's boom -- this is why he was a C student -- and he is still ideologically unable to figure out that his assumption is wrong. He's supply-siding us into the grave. His only hope will be a Kerry victory, for his supporters can then blame the successor for the back-ended fiscal disaster caused by Genius Boy.
In a way, I hope Kerry loses. Then the Reaganauts, Cheney and Rice and Bush, will finally, after all these decades, have to face the steaming pile of dung they've created with no one else to blame. Okay, maybe Iran.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:4, Insightful)
I make around 55K a year (USD) and consider myself very fortunate. However, I'm more than a little tired of watching a huge chunk of my work, IE my money, vaporize in taxes each month.
I didn't always make this money and even though I knew taxes were high when you got to this point, it's still a shock to be loosing 19,000/year in taxes.
Raise taxes? I can't believe people put up with taxes as high as they are!!
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:5, Insightful)
One misconception you seem to have is that somebody might avoid making more money for fear of being pushed into a higher tax bracket. That's not the way our current tax system works. If you make $36,900 or less, you are taxed at the lowest rate of 15%. The next higher rate is 28%, but if you make $36,901, only $1 of income is taxed at the 28% mark, with the rest being taxed at the lower rate. So at no point does anyone have to fear that an increase in earnings will lead to a reduction in actual take home pay.
See http://www.fourmilab.ch/ustax/www/t26-A-1-A-I-1.h
I've never gotten this "disincentive to produce" thing. Who wouldn't rather have 60% of $10,000,000 a year than 85% of $30,000/year? But the way blowhards like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly talk, you would think that if the tax rate is brought back up to pre-Bush levels for the top 2% of earners, they're just going to have to close up shop and start collecting welfare checks.
If I were in charge, I would add a new tax bracket: 100% tax on every dollar over $100M. The people affected would still have plenty of money to buy Lear jets and politicians.
But.... (Score:3, Insightful)
2. Outsourcing means the software will be made overseas. If it generates IT jobs it will not be high quality jobs like programming/development. It means getting paid $9 an hour by AOL to tell someone how to find google with their browser.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:1, Insightful)
Were you born a complete nitwit or did you have to have part of your brain surgically removed to qualify? Most of what you list has little or nothing to do with FEDERAL INCOME TAXES, fuckwit.
Re:So you actually *made* money in Amway? (Score:1, Insightful)
Positive feedback!
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:1, Insightful)
Everyone in this subthread seems to be missing something:
This is not like all the other moves of manufacturing overseas. Always before it was a case of some low level being stripped out of the economy and moving to emerging countries where they were ready to take on that level of new industry. Quite a few industries were lost to cheaper labor areas in the South and all eventually to overseas, but each one could be viewed as an industry that the U.S. had outgrown in favor of newer, higher-tech, more vigorous industries. The areas, including emerging coutries, that stepped up to take on those industries were perfectly suited to do so, as it was an improvement in their lot. And so there was a certain natural evolution and progression in the most industrialized countries throwing off their lesser industries to the rest of the world.
Now, though, skilled jobs are being stripped out of the economy vertically,, without regard to the level of skill or technology.
This means that all limits are off. We are entering into an age of direct labor competition on a global scale. Some jobs will be sent overseas while others will be filled with imported workers. Anyone who is a resident or Citizen of the U.S. will be at a severe disadvantage.
IT is just one of the more visible job areas affected. This is going on all through the economy.
No real ties to the theory (Score:2, Insightful)
"Going forward, the global sourcing of software and IT services will further reduce the price of these products, yielding a further increase in jobs demanding IT knowledge and skills."
Little evidence is given for the reduction of the price of IT products and the reducing of price due to outsourcing. It can be argued that IT products are reducing due to cheaper production methods and competition. Most IT hardware is manufactured in the East and has for a long time, so with hardware in particular, this really doesn't fit with the outsourcing theory.
The increase in services and software does not mean a tenfold increase in purchases. It would interesting to see if the purchases were made by companies or by the public. Additionally, since service jobs, such as tech support are outsourced, it is likely this will only generate revenue for the company overseas. Whereas 50 thousand more copies of a major software package could be purchased without the guarantee of an additional job being created. I believe the increase in computer use, the increase in population and the increased use of the internet and other technologies are down to these increases.
The statistics showing an increase in jobs, could be down to many factors. However, due to her mentioning that 64% of IT jobs were not in the IT sector, it also means that many of these jobs are transparent and it is harder to determine how many jobs IT jobs are lost, yet the figures can be conveniently skewed when IT jobs are created or skewed by IT sector losses.
The statistics showing an increased number of programming jobs based on outsourcing is speculation. Since many programming jobs are now outsourced regardless.
I think any attributing of an increase in jobs due to outsourcing is speculation at best and at worst a potentially harmful attempt at creating governmental policy to support her wild theories. Once jobs are outsourced, they don't come back and suggesting it should be government policy shows a detemined lack of consideration.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I'm sure you will win him over to you point of view calling him names like that. Also, The example you give to back up you claim is flawed. By your own admission you father scaled back his work so as not to reduce his social security payments. That's hardly the same as scaling back your work hours to avoid being put in a higher tax bracket.
It's a real tragedy that people as ignorant and/or destructively oriented as you are allowed to vote.
neocon == neofascist ?!
Re:Chewbacca Economic Theory (Score:1, Insightful)
JFW (Score:3, Insightful)
If so you deserve to live on unemployment or enjoy your obvious career as a lawn care engineer.
The good people who work for me have a productivity at least 4 times that of the average guy. I see no sign that the offshore staff are that good.
Pull your finger out and stop whingeing. Yah whinger. Whiney whiney whiney.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:3, Insightful)
Would you prefer to keep the money, and see the things it pays for vaporize? Police, fire departments, hospitals, roads, the justice system, etc....
I can't stand ridiculous government waste as much as the next guy, but I do consider it an honor and a privilege to live in a part of the world where I don't need to deal with frontier justice and nonexistent infrastructure.
This is why it's so crucial to VOTE: YOU have the right to decide where that money goes.
Tell it to the steel workers (Score:3, Insightful)
The promised 'retraining' didn't happen - manufacturing workers were lucky to get jobs flipping burgers or stocking shelves in Wal-Mart. The U.S. paid for those lower priced manufactured goods - with poverty, divorce, higher crime rates, and devastated communities. But free trade advocates won't tell you about those. Now they're trying to do it again. Move those high-tech development and R&D jobs overseas! Look at all the money the companies will save. Look at the big bonuses the senior managers will get! Don't worry - the jobs will be replaced with
So, if you're an American programmer. If you live in a high-tech center like the bay area or Austin. If you want to see into the future - just visit places like Youngstown Ohio. Drive past the moldering closed factories and steel mills. Drive past the boarded up stores. Take a good long look - cause that's your future.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:3, Insightful)
The point of my ranting was that there is no point at which the tax system makes it so that incrementally more gross income leads to less net income. So it's silly to talk of people being "trapped" in sub-40K jobs by the tax system.
Sure, each additional dollar you earn above $36,900 is less valuable to the earner than the dollars below. But that's not just because we tax those dollars at a higher rate. Even if we did away with income taxes altogether, the more money you make the less valuable each additional dollar is to you. For example, if I get $100, I might blow it over the course of five or six dates, or upgrade my hard drive. But someone below the poverty level could put it towards something that would do more to increase her quality of life, such as paying the heating bill or making rent. If someone who makes $100K a year after taxes gets the same money, it won't significantly change his quality of life. There is little the new money enables him to do that he couldn't have done already.
Now I'll put myself in the government's shoes. I think I need an additional dollar to put towards John Ashcroft's Playboy subscription. It comes in a plain brown envelope marked "TOP SECRET", but that's not a relevant detail. Now, who am I going to take that additional dollar from? The person for whom a few dollars makes the difference between having money to pay basic expenses? Or the person who will not be significantly impacted by the loss of the dollar?
The correct answer, of course, is to take the dollar from the guy who didn't already use a bunch of dollars to buy legislation to keep the government from taking his dollars. But the point stands that it's more equitable to take more from the rich than the poor.
Here, educate yourself [wikipedia.org].
I was aware that there once was a 90% tax rate for the super-rich. Yet somehow, people managed to carry on. I don't remember those days, but I miss them.
It seems to me that your arguments in favor of protecting the rich from "punitive" tax rates rest on the assumption that it is either unfair to the rich, or damaging to the economy as a whole. I think the principle of marginal utility would indicate that there may be very little use in additional compensation beyond the billion dollar mark (a somewhat arbitrary, but also very large and round, number).
To the second possibility, all I can say is that there is no simple service anyone can provide that entitles them to billions in compensation. There are two ways of earning money are 1) things you do, and 2) things you own. I think there are very real limits to the amount you can earn doing the former, and I don't see why anyone deserves unlimited compensation for the latter.
"Cluless [sic] fuckwit"? I must say, I admire your commitment to raising the level of intellectual political discourse.
Re:Perpetual Employment! (Score:2, Insightful)
If all the government collected taxes for was things like what you just mentioned, out taxes would be vastly lower than what they are now. But every congressman wants money for their favorite hometown pork project, and it all adds up to serious money.
Another interesting thing is that most of the government services you just mentioned are not paid for by the income tax, but are already paid for by local and state sales tax and property tax. So where in hell is all of my federal income tax money going? Iraq I guess.
The only way people are going stop the government from robbing us year after year is for them to start voting Libertarian now!
Forget Bush and Kerry. Both of them want to spend your money, and their disciples want to spend your money. And tell us how to live our lives. Time to put a stop to it.
My statistics can beat up your statistics (Score:2, Insightful)
And, losing programmers to India is not going to make significantly more because it is a roughly 3-to-1 ratio of programmers to architects/SE/etc. Are there going to be 3 times more applications now? I don't think so. The total savings from offshoring is only like 20% if you factor in everything. 20% is not going to create 3 times as many applications.
Plus, those stats contridict some recent stats I beleive came from the IRS that fewer people filed as "information technology specialists" or some other generic term for computer worker.