IBM Offers to Send Laid-Off Staff to Other Countries 493
TheAmit writes to tell us that many recently laid off IBM employees have been offered jobs if they will only move somewhere it is cheap to employ them. IBM's new Project Match program offers some financial assistance for moving and immigration help for visas. "However, the move has not gone well with the IBM staff union. Slamming the offer, a union spokesperson said that not only were jobs being shipped overseas, but Big Blue was trying to export the people for peanuts too. He added that at a time of rising unemployment IBM should be looking to keep both the work and the workers in the United States. "
Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
on low pay and see how long that idea will last.
I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Back Home (Score:5, Insightful)
I know IBM must employ a lot of workers on visas. Are they targeting that group?
Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Americans workers would like to work in America for American wages. However, are they also willing to pay the prices of American made products?
Re:I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
You're right. They should just lay them off and hire new people overseas. That's a much better way to treat them.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe (Score:1, Insightful)
Management is openly admitting that their present American workforce has the skills they need; it is just a question of cheap labor. This is not the time for a company to be picking this sort of fight.
Should they let a real Indian company win the business on cheaper contract costs, and then lay off those people?
Nobody likes it when companies cut expenses, but everybody likes to buy stuff for cheap.
Re:Back Home (Score:5, Insightful)
Other companies have done it in the past. Told all their visa employees that they could either stay and risk getting laid off, or go back to their home countries for a fraction of the wages.
You know, that went well with everyone but the visa employees.
Americans felt that 'go home you towelhead' feeling swell up within them and were happy, partly because they were not the ones being touched. Managers felt happy because they could lay someone off this way and show some savings they were required to.
Govt had gotten the full taxes (including social security and medicare ) out of them, so the system was happy. They were liable for lease breakage fees, so the apartment owners were happy. They had bought stuff here and spent their salary here so the shops were happy.
The visa employees did not have any rights or votes, so no one really cared about them or their plans or inconveniences. Afterall, how dare they live any more comfortably than out of a suitcase? Who told them to lease an apartment? Who told them to buy a car? a home?
all the comany is required to do is buy them a return ticket on the slaveship (or return flight).
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
However, are they also willing to pay the prices of American made products?
Americans have grown to feel entitled to a certain standard of living that is disproportionate event to other Western nations. This is because we've been buying on credit. What Americans need to do is live with fewer toys. And, perhaps if we pay the price for American made toys, we will appreciate them more.
Re:Obviously (Score:3, Insightful)
As recent events tend to point out... no. People want cheaper stuff and that comes from overseas.
I know it's a bit off-topic but I feel that our own government is making this worse as time goes on. The only way to reverse the loss of jobs is to start cutting government agencies and military spending while giving tax breaks to all Americans. If I wasn't getting nearly 40% of my income taken out each month, I'd gladly take a 30% pay cut which would be more like a 10% pay raise in cost of living adjustment. (my math is probably all wrong, but it's not the point of the matter.) If American companies didn't have to pay all their employees 40% more than a country with less gouging taxes in order to maintain their quality of life, more jobs would stay here because it would cost the company less.
Sign here. (Score:5, Insightful)
Our culture has put such a premium on the price of goods, at the expense of quality, that it shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone when (like all other resources), labor also finds itself subjugated to this rule. You are now on the dollar menu, Citizen. Ah, but let us rail against our evil corporate overlords instead--it's so much easier to blame anyone but ourselves for this. Labor is dead in this country. You've got "at will" employment, anti-union legislation, and did you know we are the only industrialized country on the planet without a Labor party? Our entire culture has been split up and sold off piece by piece thanks to "intellectual property". You don't own your car, your home, or anything that costs more than about $5,000 these days, stuck paying student loans for the next thirty years, with debt-collection law changes now on the books that make starting over an impossible proposition. We call ourselves a "capitalist" society where the individual has the power and the choice, but tell me dear reader, when was the last time you bought something that didn't come with a contract or a legal document stating what you could and could not do? Want to watch a movie? Read the FBI warning. Use a computer? Read the End User Licensing Agreement. Drive a car? You'll need insurance and a car loan for that. Live in a house? An apartment? Sign here please. You can't even enter a building without "giving consent to search", no cameras or recording devices please (except for us, see the black globes?). Freedom? Where, pray tell, is your freedom?
One Nation, Under Contract. Please sign on the dotted line.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Obviously (Score:1, Insightful)
If certain employees' salaries weren't so outrageously high, would American-made products really be that much more expensive ?
I'm sorry, I don't see the relationship. I think you're under the mistaken impression that we still make things here in the US. Certainly we create technology, we manipulate money, we have a service industry, but make things? Very few things that come from Asia can be replaced with American products, even more expensive ones.
Who is IBM competing with? (Score:4, Insightful)
IBM is gaming their stock price not competing. If they wanted o compete they would want a highly paid domestic workforce that would buy their customers products thus making their customers flush with cash and wanting to buy some more IBM consulting.
Has IBM announced consulting price-cuts to go along with their now lower wages? If not then they're really not competing. They're just trying to get a larger profit margin out of their current pricing scheme. We should start calling bull on this sort of thing. Let's change the headline to:
"IBM hopes to raise stock price by sending laid-off staff to other countries where the can rehire them for cheaper thus boosting their profit margins."
Making the best of a bad situation? (Score:5, Insightful)
The general reaction seems to be that IBM is in the wrong here.
I think it's also possible to interpret this as a sign that IBM recognizes that the people it's laying off are both a valuable resource that it doesn't want to lose as well as a resource that it cannot afford to keep paying. The union's reaction, of course, is hardly surprising of course -- it has its own interests in mind.
Naturally, this offer isn't one that will appeal to everyone. Obviously laid-off employees with families probably aren't in a position that they can just uproot and move to another country. For others, though, I can see this being an intriguing opportunity.
I know that if I were in this position -- laid-off, facing unemployment, and offered the chance to go live overseas and stay in the company, I'd seriously consider it.
TFA calls it an "innovative" solution. That seems about right. It's not perfect and it's clearly not motivated by altruism, but it might actually work out for some people.
Re:I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope that was sarcasm. Speaking for myself, I'd rather accept a job overseas than be sitting on my ass (like I'm doing now). You can always continue the U.S. job search from India, and then when you find a U.S. job (if you find a U.S. job), you quit India and come back home.
Sure if your single and you rent and your life fits in a cardboard box, go for it, its little more than a plane ticket. Try doing it when you own a home and have a family. The financial costs alone, never mind the stress...
Last time I moved it cost over 20k. (And that's not with an expensive moving company... that's just all the hits from real estate fees, lawyers fees, inspections, etc ad nauseum.) To move with a moving company, probably would have been closer to 40k+. Do that twice in a couple years... you'd probably be further ahead not moving and spending the time unemployed.
Re:Same situation (Score:2, Insightful)
These jobs were already moving overseas. Now IBM's offering their existing employees a chance to keep their jobs, plus assistance with travel, visas, etc., provided they're willing to move with the jobs and accept local wages (along with a corresponding decrease in cost-of-living). This can only be seen as an improvement for their American engineers compared to the original plan.
Obviously IBM is also benefiting from the arrangement, since they manage to keep some of their trained employees, but they had already committed to relocating the jobs -- and hiring local engineers to fill them -- at the time the offer was made.
Re:I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
To be fair countries that have lower wages also have lower costs of living so it balances out.
No it doesn't. When you come back home, you'll be totally broke, because the money you earned overseas is almost worthless.
This is why Polish people can come to the UK and live and send what would be considered a decent amount of cash back home.
You've just described the opposite situation! Of course it makes sense for people from poorer countries to go work in wealthier countries. But that's not the situation being discussed here.
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
The US has the lowest effective tax rates in the world among developed countries, mostly because of the lack of nationalized health care.
The reason wages are higher in the US vs. other countries has much more to do with worker productivity and demand for labor than anything to do with tax rates.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
If they wanted to avoid criminal charges for treason, they should be forced to do that. Unfortunately it's not defined that way in the US, although perhaps "aid and comfort to our enemies" might entail employing them and moving our industrial base to their countries.
This country is an expensive place to live and work because, as a democratic society, we've voted ourselves a lot of cruft. Some of it is good, some of it is excess. There is a price however, and the price is wages.
Corporations want to circumvent this cruft by simply moving away from the problem (while simultaneously leeching the benefits of it, by maintaining themselves in the US). They leech on our society, using it to protect them while they grow their businesses, taking full advantage of what the country has to offer...while simultaneously selling it out. If it isn't stopped, we'll bleed dry.
Hopefully people will look at this statement from IBM and say "I don't want to live in China, there's no bill of rights, their legal system doesn't work well [for us], there is no personal freedom, and it's barely a democracy."
s/China/wherever/g
Then ask why it is that IBM, who is based in Armonk, NY, should be able to make a profit by undermining our democracy - bypassing laws our government created to benefit us, because they don't really want to pay for it.
I may agree with them that there's a lot of inefficiencies and excess in some of the things that drive our wages up. But the proper solution is to work within the system, not erode it.
we all want highest quality for lowest price (Score:5, Insightful)
why does that instinct require moral validation?
that is an instinct which has driven the entire history of human innovation and technological progress
the guy who goes "say, i could make a mechanical loom powered by a waterwheel, and sell yarn at $1/ yard rather than $10/ yard" does you a service. of course, he also puts 5 human yarnspinners out of work
but based on some sort of "moral validation" argument, we should not pursue technological progress. we shouldn't, in order to continue employing the human yarnspinners, and to continue paying $10/ yard for yarn
no, sorry, not going to happen
this "moral validation" argument is hollow, and is really just an argument for luddites, and an absurd one at that, since we are both sitting at computer keyboards, arguing over fiber optic cables: innovations that would otherwise be impossible, innovations that, ironically, some of which happened at ibm
innovation is something that flows directly from human laziness and cheapness. we want more for less. and our minds are such that we can actually dream up ways to make that happen with novel organizational structures, energy sources, and bizarre new materials
so i say, fuck "moral validation", fuck the yarnspinners, and fuck the out of work american ibmers
progress isn't all fun and games, and is often cruel. but one of those laid off ibmers will innovate the next big thing that will employ the children of those laid off ibmers, and none of them will question the principle of creative destruction, and they will look at their father's mode of employment the way we look at blacksmithing jobs and chimney sweeping
Re:Goodbye union (Score:1, Insightful)
Odd logic you seem to use, isn't it.
That almost all the outsourced labor is non-union labor would not imply to me that the cause was unionization. Could you explain that to me?
Virtually all the textile work was non-union before it went to India and Bangladesh. Literally all the programming jobs that were outsourced over the last 15 years have been non-union (the very few union programmers had healthy jobs until Boeing started having trouble). And tech support, let me think, I don't know of any company that had unionized tech support, and that's one area that seems 100% outsourced these days.
Of course, fast food is an area that's non-union and not outsourced. And it's no wonder - how can you do that long distance?
[Posted anonymously, since I'm an "at will" employee and not interested in a career change.]
Re:I can't believe (Score:3, Insightful)
They aren't against Union wages, they are against American wages. They can pay about 10% of what they do in a major US city if they move operations to India. It's not so much about what they are supposed to do. IBM is acting as expected, in accordance with their institutional goals of profit above all else. I think a better question is what WE'RE supposed to do, and how long we're going to put up with their behavior. The first thing we should do is demand that they give the 140 million in tax incentives back. The incentives were given to them for the explicit purpose of keeping workers in the US.
Re:Just one question from me (Score:2, Insightful)
Nobody is forcing you, the self-importance filled "American Citizen", to move abroad, work abroad, or take any job less than what You the Great want to make. IBM is moving the position overseas; you have the option to follow it, not the requirement. It's hard to fault IBM; the cost of employing people in the US is egregiously high compared to other countries, and the international business laws offer no strong disincentive for doing so. Regardless, though, nobody will be forcing You to take a job paying less than you want; there may just not be many jobs up to Your standards soon, though.
Re:Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Except that protectionism has never fucking worked and was one of the biggest reasons the Great Depression lasted as long as it did, but that's OK.
Re:I can't believe (Score:3, Insightful)
They can pay about 10% of what they do in a major US city if they move operations to India.
Yeah right. Find me an Indian engineer worth his keep willing to work for $10k year. You can't because they don't exist.
Re:I can't believe (Score:1, Insightful)
You may be called upon to fight for freedom right here at home.
Re:I can't believe (Score:4, Insightful)
So it's not like you're losing out by doing a stint in India
Yeah, unless you're one of those crazy people who wants to build up savings/retirement funds, and you want this to be a 'stint' not a permanent relocation. In which case you'll find that when you return the savings you built up is worth much less than if you had been employed here.
Lower cost of living mitigates the effect of lower wages. It does not eliminate the loss. Unless you're living check to check today, and want to continue to do so, in which case yes cost of living wherever you happen to be living at the moment is all you need consider.
Re:I can't believe (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I can't believe (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't like the idea of Federal involvement on how businesses operate, but I have a hard time convincing myself that a Laissez-Faire environment will encourage easily outsourced jobs to remain in the States. I especially have a hard time agreeing with handing out taxpayer dollars to businesses without any assurances or oversight on how it will be spent. I feel the issues with the economy comes from the CEO and Executive level, and now the Gov is trying to legislate ethics to force businesses to behave like they should have for the past few decades.
It's too late, the retirement money is blown, the national deficit is too great to create a ponzi scheme like Social Security. Fiscal security is lost for Baby Boomer generation and now it's up to the X and the Why generations to rebuild the American economy. This comes with education, hard work, and time--not legislature and government rebate coupons.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
"I don't want to live in China, there's no bill of rights, their legal system doesn't work well [for us], there is no personal freedom, and it's barely a democracy." ... but we sure do LOVE the shit they are selling us!
Re:Obviously (Score:5, Insightful)
Unionized workers, of course. Haven't you heard about the troubles of American auto makers?
Yes, I have, and it has nothing to do with unionized workers. It has to do with mismanagement and less than compelling products.
As for your original question, the cost of American-produced goods involves many more factors than the cost of labor. So, even if you "got rid of the unions", American goods would still cost significantly more than Chinese.
Here's a thought: we get rid of the union
So, you propose to eliminate freedom of assembly?
and let's see if America looks like a good place to build a productive workforce.
It would certainly look a lot more like fascism.
Re:Obviously (Score:1, Insightful)
Um, Ok I make nothing right now. How much does that tax break put back in my pocket tomorrow?
We tried the tax breaks for the last 8 years and well here we are.
Moron republicans!
I'd rather we start rebuilding our bridges and cleaning up the trash all over the place and hiring people to do it than get a tax break. Tax breaks unless you totally eliminate them will not give anything to the current economy.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:2, Insightful)
Lets extend this brilliant and well thought out idea.
Cleaners: See how long the CEOs enjoy cleaning toilets. Result:No more cleaners.
Support: See how long the CEOs enjoy answering phones: Result: No more Support.
I am sorry, on the basis of how long a CEO would last at something, it is not a great measure of anything.
Now this is a silly idea, i mean if they were sending them somewhere nice, like Australia or the Bahamas, then I could understand. But India? Brazil? But, this is not a silly idea because of the idiotic reason you stated.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:3, Insightful)
Insightful?
I'm sick and tired of all this populist bull that is everywhere these days. Populism has a point, but the variety that seems popular right now is just empty rabble rousing based not on logic but emotion. Yes, it's all the CEO's fault, those fat cats are the ones who put us in this situation.
What percent of the costs of IBM do you suppose are general labor, and what percent is upper management?
IBM is a publicly traded company. If you could gather enough people who actually put their money where their mouth is, and would either think that this savings on CEO salary would make this worth it, or are willing to forgo value in the company in order to deliberately get a less qualified executive to make a political statement, more power to you.
Alternatively, you could make your point in the marketplace by punishing companies that you disagree with. Are you personally willing to support American companies and high cost American workers by buying American whenever possible? No? Apparently most Americans don't like that idea much either.
Is it better to simply layoff the American workers and hire cheaper foreign labor? No? American companies attempting to become cost competitive with foreign companies are unpatriotic corporate fat cats!
Then is it better simply to let our corporations be out-competed by the Hyundais and Haiers of the world? In the end, the costs of most things boil down to labor. How are our businesses supposed to compete with higher costs across the board? Protectionist laws would work for a while, but in the end a country can only hide for so long from the fact that its business enterprises aren't competitive globally if the difference is too wide.
Western society has grown weak and spineless. We aren't willing to make any hard decisions anymore, because the ends never justify the means. We're not right or good, we're just nice. We can't crack an egg to make an omelet because what about the feelings of the egg shell? It's fine that a 3rd party starves now as a result, because we don't have to see them, so it doesn't make us feel bad.
Reminds me of a petulant child, who is given the choice between a cookie or candy, and refuses to make a decision and throws a tantrum because he wants both.
Re:we all want highest quality for lowest price (Score:5, Insightful)
If those out of work yarnspinners find a job payng half as much, but that number of dollars buys 10 times as much stuff because everything is now made in factories instead of being handcrafted, everyone wins. That's pretty much what happened, and a fundanmental flaw in Marx's reasoning about capitalism (he totally missed the fact that workers wages don't need to rise to improve their standard of living).
Technology trumps everything, standard-of-living wise. It's the reason that 99% of Americans have a higher standard of living than 95% of everyone who has ever lived. Now we Americans just need to stop buying toys on credit, suffer through the pain of that adjustment, and we'll be back on track.
The current pains are the result of finally having to pay for what we've been consuming. Nothing more. I went through that pain personally about 10 years ago, when I was nearly a year's pay in high-interest debt before I had my moment of clarity. My (now debt-free) standard of livig is higher now than then - just a temporary hardship, nothing fundamental.
Re:Obviously (Score:1, Insightful)
The automakers aren't struggling because they pay their workers too much. They're struggling because they mismanaged their companies and kept producing products that people didn't want to buy.
Now they're having trouble keeping their commitments to their employees and it's somehow the fault of the workers? Workers didn't make the decisions that led to the problems faced by the automotive industry (or the IT industry for that matter). That was management's fault.
Wages wouldn't be what they are in the west if it hadn't been for unions in the first place. You can try and say that it was all the free market and competition for skills, but denying the effects of unions is just stupid. Thanks to unions we have weekends, 8 hour work days, benefits etc. Even workers at companies without unions benefit from the employment laws unions lobby for.
That's not to say that unions are perfect. They have big problems of their own. But it's not the fault of a unionized workforce that some companies are failing. It's because of short sighted greed of executives and major investors.
Re:Obviously (Score:2, Insightful)
This is because we've been buying on credit.
You still are.
Re:I can't believe (Score:5, Insightful)
You said nothing to convince me that the thousands, if not millions of Americans that already go to poorer countries to work some how have it worse when coming back home.
Okay, then let me repeat it: Savings. Retirement. Please do not mentally replace these words with "Not living in a box", please?
The question is not "are they worse off when they come back, compared to when they left". That's the simple paycheck-to-paycheck mentality. The question is "are they worse off versus staying here and working" and the answer is undeniably yes.
A lot of people on the UK's rich list are foreigners and come from Asia.
If you're already rich then none of this matters. The people at IBM who may have to move to India aren't rich, and they certainly aren't going to get rich on 1/3rd the pay.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sick and tired of all this populist bull that is everywhere these days. Populism has a point, but the variety that seems popular right now is just empty rabble rousing based not on logic but emotion. Yes, it's all the CEO's fault, those fat cats are the ones who put us in this situation.
High-flying CxOs have been insisting for *years* that their insultingly high remuneration packages are justified because they are the ones responsible for success.
Well, that means they must also be responsible for the failures. They are reaping what they have sown. Given that the average person could live in luxury for the rest of their lives on the annual income of some of these people and, well, you're not going to see a whole lot of sympathy from the common man.
Fuck 'em. They were the ones running the show. How are the bad times not their fault, if the good times were supposedly their achievement ?
Re:der takin oar jorbs (Score:5, Insightful)
The downside is that you cannot simply demand that a company create jobs or bow to your demands that they pay for your society.
Yes we can. The privilege of a corporate charter, and all the benefits that come from that are granted by the people of the United States. It is NOT a RIGHT. The trend over the past hundred years has been for corporations to take more and more while giving less. The expectation that a corporation will exist to serve the public good is all but gone now and pretty much anyone with the requisite fees can become incorporated.
Maybe allowing that to happen was a mistake, but, the ultimate authority in this country, the People, have been misinformed, lied to, and manipulated by the same people who own and run these corporations. It is not impossible in these 'connected' times that enough people will become fed up and start revoking charters.
The wage earners of this country are the engine that drives everything in our present economy, not the stock market, not the capitalists. A strong and healthy middle class is needed to support YOUR standard of living. Take care of it or you too will suffer.
Regarding your insult to the poor and uneducated in this country (der takin oar jorbs): Your place in society is not at all secure, and if you continue to speak and behave as if it is, you will be the one responsible for your children or grandchildren becoming one of the same people you ridicule. The number of upper middle class 'slots' is becoming fewer and fewer every year and there might not be a chair for you the next time the music stops. The way things are going, it could even happen in your lifetime -people don't always get what they deserve, but you just might.
Re:I can't believe (Score:3, Insightful)
>This is not the time for a company to be picking this sort of fight.
Naah, it's exactly the right time to be picking such a fight.
When the job market is tight, pretty much any employer can lay off 10% of the workforce, and tell the rest to work harder. If you don't like it, leave.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Eventually things will break, because while you can do more with less to some extent, keep cutting and eventually things WILL break. The workers left haven't the resources to do it right, they're cutting corners, running on luck, a wing, and a prayer. Of course when it does break, blame the workers, lay them all off, reset the schedule with a new team overseas. Assuming all of your competitors are pulling similar stunts, the resulting delays won't even set you that far behind, because it's happening to everyone.
I look at corporate stupidity around here, and realize that a truly well-run company could mop the floor with them, assuming it could get well-launched. There must be some sort of systemic barriers to entry, or self-stultifying aspect to a growing company, that this hasn't already happened.
So many people rail against government stupidity. I won't argue that there isn't plenty of it to go around, I'll just argue that the government has no monopoly whatsoever on stupidity - there's plenty of it in the corporate world.
buying American.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Protectionism, in the forms of high taxes and tariffs, has given many European countries a very comfortable lifestyle. Why not the same for us?
What else is new? (Score:1, Insightful)
"Merchants have no country. The mere spot they stand on does not constitute so strong an attachment as that from which they draw their gains." --Thomas Jefferson
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:It's not just India... (Score:4, Insightful)
Vancouver to DC is a little different than say Poughkeepsie, NY to Bangalore.
Not from a Canadian perspective...
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
Great thinking. Why don't we create a blanket law when you can charge anyone, any company on vague reasons as "aiding and comforting enemies"?
It's "democracy" now that has to do with the wage differentials. A company will hire someone if the wage they pay is less than the benefit to the company. Here it was the case since the our engineers were the best and the workers the most productive. When did that change?
Yes, vague patriotic remarks, booming us and them rhetoric and "bleed us dry", a physical pain equivalent. Don't let realism get in the way of all that.
IBM should look to be as profitable as possible, as innovative as possible and as much a market leader as possible without breaking any laws. If the government wants to be protectionist and say no import of labor for production of IBM products, I'm sure they'll agree. It might mean that foreign companies will then be able to produce the items that IBM produces for a fraction of the price and kill IBM. (*example the auto industry and the UAW*)
See this is part of the problem with people on slashdot. We want protectionism when it comes to our jobs. We want to be paid highly and all foreign competition that would potentially lower wages should be taken off the market. But, we don't care when all the factories move overseas where we can potentially buy a dozen computer off each paycheck, or buy all sorts of "toys". We want protectionism in what we produce and free market in what we consume.
I say let the wages be worth it. If a third world person in a third world university with the crippling infrastructure and education system can get a good enough education to do the same work at the same quality, then it's kinda silly to ask the government to protect my job. I'd like to think that I'm worth every penny that I'm being paid.
I know people are scared and I felt scared a lot. But, I just feel we have to be worth it and IBM will have no problems hiring Americans since they're worth every penny they pay. We have first worth infrastructure - fast internet, great libraries, great pool of engineers, scientists etc and to be threatened by a foreigner who has to study in an under-funded university with inept professors and out of date hardware and knowledge is crazy.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact is that for 20 years the US has been bringing the smartest and brightest internationals to work in the US: other governments paid for the first 12 to 15 year of educating these people, but in a global economy, they go to where they add the most value. I bet a lot of IBM's US patents have significant contributions from foreigners who live in the US. The same economic forces that attract PhDs means lower skilled jobs get exported. We can all except that manually harvesting wheat or hand-making horse shoes are low-skilled jobs that long ago got swept aside by technology. Perhaps it's hard to accept that this process never stopped happening.
Sorry for any typos, but the typing pool that I normally use to take my dictation seems to have disappeared in the past 50 years.
Re:Let the CEO's work from India (Score:5, Insightful)
There are quite a few states without open container laws. Ditto for fireworks.
As for building your home without deed restrictions, that will depend on the place you are living. I imagine that rural Mississippi has many less requirements than say, San Francisco.
Actually, Mississippi meets all of your requirements. No open container law, no prohibition of fireworks, and few deed restrictions. In addition, you can vote, and your property can't be taken away without compensation.
Also, in Mississippi, you can do other stuff that you cannot in China, like own an handgun. Or vote.
Re:IBM Union Strike! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:der takin oar jorbs (Score:1, Insightful)
Ah, I see you are the proud owner of a Wal-Mart franchise! Welcome to slashdot.
I'd recommend taking a Basic Economics course, and not one of the ones you took for your MBA, because they deliberately skip certain topics. Specifically, pay careful attention to the lectures on "inferior goods."
I'll be glad to work for 80% less money... when my cost of living is 80% less. I know, as a society, we'd probably have to forgo things like cutting-edge medicine, government programs that attempt to reduce some of the unfairness in daily life, police forces that cut down on mob and gang rule, scholarships for higher education for the middle and lower classes, courtrooms that strive to uphold the Constitution and fight corruption, the ability to launch and maintain communications satellites, the R&D budgets that have given us the technologies we use to post on this very forum, retirement plans, proper nutrition and adequate food supply, and all those other pesky features of a first-world country.
Re:Back Home (Score:3, Insightful)
Correct me if i'm wrong, but I would assume that most visa workers are there with the preconception of it being a temporary stay - you know, because visas are temporary. The people I know who have taken the route of living overseas on visas know this, and act accordingly: they live for the moment, enjoy the culture, and sack away as much money as they can.
Anyone who is in a foreign country, buying property and possessions for personal consumption, is a fool to expect to not have to leave it all behind: your very existence in the country is determined by whether or not your employer wants you anymore.
If you move to a country to work on a visa, especially one such as the US where citizenship is trivial to acquire, and want to stay, why not become a citizen? A visa holder certainly has that out.