Posted on 02/17/2004 5:35:48 PM PST by phil_will1
Your statement implies that there are fields that are stable. I have yet to see anyone tell us just what the stable jobs are. Everyone who thinks outsourcing is good has no clue what the next jobs will be. You're taking on faith that they (the new jobs that is) will appear.
I know that in my own life and work, and better I can point to the one industry which has revamped itself to use such teams almost exclusively -- Hollywood! The movies.
Goof and great films poured out of the wholly captured and owned stables of talent banks the Studios had up through the early 60's. Yet they paled in comparison to the market and quality of films out of the US once we went to a complete cobbler's model of throwing together independents and independent teams on high-turnaround projects. Amazing leaps in quality in all except script character and plot development, where by my view, the quality mix has been more-or-less constant.
BUT HEY! Don't be confusing the issue! That example is a side-issue -- the pertinant issue is wholesale looting of techonological capability from our shores and also ravenous and homosexual sex-lke (buggering) models of "trade", of imports without balanced tariffs.
And shows us wrecked and near wrecked on the shoals. That indicator is interest rates. Just as like that when the lighthouse beacon beams in the Captain's cabin bright enough to read by is a sign of immediate and happening danger, so to are these low interest rates.
My experience (I'm in the IT industry) is that US developers are far superior to those from India, etc. But maybe it's just because I'm good and have good co-workers, and our development team in India is sub-par....
Yes, a few weeks ago this was a topic here. David Lazarus of the San Francisco Chronicle has written about threats to both medical and financial personal data.
"A tough lesson on medical privacy/Pakistani transcriber threatens UCSF over back pay" and "PRIVACY TAKES A BACKSEAT," David Lazarus, San Francisco Chronicle
Links to both are at http://www.privacy.org/archives/001191.html
in case you have not seen Lazarus' work. Or google, "David Lazarus" "PRIVACY TAKES A BACKSEAT"
I can see lawyers going after Big Finance soon. Big Tobacco had mere billions. Banks, insurance, etc. have trillions.
Also if you eliminate entry level jobs - no more people will enter the field.
So if irresistable economic forces push all the software and chip fab technology etc out to the low wage countries, I am not sure what all the displaced tech workers will be "retrained" to do. Perhaps this is all part of the "great circle of life", hakuna matata and all. Perhaps the US is cycling back towards a time in which we will largely work in retail and service industries, grow food for the rest of the world, and buy our technology from them. I wonder what kind of license fees China and India will demand for keeping my PC running? Maybe it will become too expensive to support the Indian IT workers lavish lifestyle and Chinese companies will sub the work out to us?
/rant off
Actually, Brucie boy, it's called labor arbitrage, which has everything to do with profits and nothing whatsoever to do with "specialization."
Bartlett's argument fails: there is NO "special" labor which can be done only in China or India.
However, it IS done cheaper.
Let's call a spade a spade, Bruce.
Well, that certainly explains American dominance of exporting from 1950-1985. Catch a course on econ history, AC.
Bingo!
I don't believe that you can prove this contention.
I had to laugh at this quotation. Truth be told, our high schools produce kids who are ready for...nothing. Our colleges aren't much better at the Freshman and Sophomore level. The simplest math (i.e., basic algebra) is well beyond them. Basic English exceeds their capabilities, even with all the tools that Microsoft Word provides. And they are so very satisfied with their profound ignorance.
Foreign students studying in US schools generally work a lot harder than our US students. A further point - US based BS. and BA degrees are generally perceived as being of less value than a great many offshore degrees.
The problem is that we've decided to do a lot of social work with education that does nothing to prepare the students for working in a global marketplace. Affirmative action is one small element. The idea that everyone should have the opportunity for higher education is another. The distribution curve dictates that most people are not capable to master advanced concepts - one winds up wasting limited resources on them, or lowers standards so that anyone who can convert oxygen to carbon dioxide can succeed. We're doing both. So on the one hand, we need to promote fair trade instead of free trade - but on the other hand, we need to realize that some children WILL be left behind.
That's true. But you are getting the cause/effect backwards. The trade deficit does not cause a higher standard of living in this country -- it is the result of a higher standard of living in this country.
Japan's recent history offers an excellent case in point, because it progressed from an "outsourcing destination" to a "high standard of living" in a very short period of time. It wasn't all that long ago (the late 1980s, to be specific) that people were complaining that Japan was going to "own the U.S." because so many of our manufacturing jobs had been sent there. The implicit assumption, of course, was that the economic advantages Japan enjoyed at the time would remain in place for a long period of time.
And yet it wasn't very long at all. Japan's status as an "outsourcing destination" pretty much ended when their standard of living (and hence, the cost of doing business there) began to approach that of the U.S.
It's utterly ironic that the one area where Japan competes on what is close to a level playing field with the U.S. is auto manufacturing, and Toyota is poised to surpass Ford as the #2 auto manufacturer in the world at the same time they are bulding record numbers of their vehicles in the U.S.
An honest tariff rate of 15% now -- the historically fair rate -- might keep us from calamity.
Phil, that's a myth.
Read the book "Re-Engineering the Corporation" in which it is flatly stated (and truly stated) that most jobs in the USA were designed for high-school graduates. Not ALL jobs--but MOST jobs.
There's no "higher-skill" level in China or India; they are just plain CHEAPER.
And yes, taxes and regs impose significant costs here which are not imposed elsewhere.
That's because the pointy-heads at Commerce don't understand industry, at all.
It's hard to do so when the closest you've been to manufacturing is looking at a factory several miles from Yale.
Tariffing steel, but NOT fabricated steel, gave every fabricator in this country an enormous disadvantage. Offshore fabricators bought the steel cheap, fabricated it, and sent it here--cheap.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.