Perils of Outsourcing

should be "without a huge inheritience"

Most Indian firms only hire Indians for their US based operations. I'm still waiting for the massive discrimination lawsuits against them.

No, it was a large corporate bureaucracy.

The project was considered highly successful, because the users liked the end product--after the US guys changed everything.

Luddite? All I've every said on the subject is I want a government that, when it does get involved in economics, does so with all of our interests in mind (and in the scope originally envisioned by the framers), not only the monied ones.

His dad did the same thing with the ADA.

We're called luddites, yet where is the machinery we are smashing? Importing workers and/or exporting work is technological advance? I guess you would have to call the the old slave plantations technologically advanced as well.

This article was summed up perfectly in an episode of South Park:

Steal underwear
?
Profit

A good analogy to that would be a manufacturer that does design and engineering in the USA and the production in China.

You're exactly right. That's the paradigm being followed.

But in software development, there is emerging awareness that that paradigm doesn't apply. In traditional engineering, 85-90% of the cost of a project is in construction. In software that is reveresed, with 85 - 90% (at least) being spent in design.

Lots of implications of that realization, not least among them is that separating design from construction is inefficient at best.

People, listen please; the reason this outsourcing thing is growing is mainly because there is no strong union to fight that unjust practice. The US has 90 million people who are earning $8/hour or less. The US is allowing 16 million illegals to fight with the poor workers over that low $8/hr.

A VP goes to a meeting and announces to the board, hey if I saved this company $5 millions/year, would you give me $1millon bonus. They say OK, and Einstein goes and fires 150 employees and gives their duties to India. Wow, how smart is this SOB? If this company had a good union, and the union was in a position to help cut expenses, may be Einstein would be fired himself. After all, what does a VP do? He does little if any.

As we become a service and consuming nation, as we keep letting China and Japan purchase our bonds to keep us afloat, do you suppose that we are going to reach a point where the US produces nothing and consumes 1/4 of all the world production, and owe the bond holders 100 trillion dollars? If the bond holders would require their money one day, we will go bankrupt overnight - a la Argentina.

labor is becoming a global commodity, high cost US labor is losing to low cost Chinese, Indian and Mexican labor.

We will see this trend accelerate and more and more jobs that are being done by hight cost US labor will move to labor cost nations.

Tax preparation, book keeping, accounting, market trading, website development, software development, Xray reading, etc.

Why would anyone want to build something in the US when they could build it for must less someplace else? Why would anyone hire expensive US labor when they could hire equally skilled far less expensive Chinese or India labor? yall like to talk about the comparative advantage, or some other theory, but the facts are that capital will seek the lowest cost and that the USA does not enjoy any kind of comparative advantage over the rest of the world in a global economy, other then in things like the building trade that must be done here.

Additionally we will lose or tech advantage very quickly to. Since it will be cheaper to do Science and RnD in the cheap labor nations too.

It's funny that yall call us Luddites, when yall are the one destroying US manufacturing and US economic power, not us.

It's funny that yall call us Luddites . .

Perhaps it's too strong a term, but the principle is the same.

Luddites, IIRC, destroyed the looms because they feared the more productive methods being employed would put them out of work. They couldn't compete with "machines."

In an ironic twist, the east Indians are now accused of "stealing" American IT jobs.

India may be loosening up from its socialist straightjacket. If so, it could be poised for an economic take-off. We should be pleased, as increasing wealth in one country makes us all better off, even if it's on the other side of the world.

You might be interested in how India got to where it is.

Milton Friedman's Free to Choose, written in 1980, has a few pages about India and Japan's different approaches to home-loom weaving after modern processes were brought in in the 19th century.

This was also a segment of the PBS series as I recall. It gave Dr. Friedman a chance to visit India courtesy of the taxpayers. Or at least the PBS "contributors."

Since I suspect you might not have a copy of that particular book, and are unlikely to go out and buy one, maybe you'll accept Amazon.com's generous offer to read five pages of it on-line (after you've logged in -- you do patronize Amazon, don't you?).

I've tracked down the pertinent pages for you here.

Think, while you're reading about the Indian hand-loomers, about what subsidizing that industry cost India in terms of economic development and, ultimately, wealth. Japan became an economic powerhouse; India is still impoverished, even though it has a well-educated population.

Which way would you rather see the United States go?

Regards,