[A2J]

But its funding problem has not deterred the Bush administration from drafting a treaty with Mexico that will give the Mexican government $345 billion in Social Security payments for Mexicans who have worked legally and illegally in the United States.

If Bush succeeds in doing this, he can kiss my vote goodbye in 2004.

[Mortimer Snavely]

"Before the United States can reconstruct the world, it must cease deconstructing itself. For that task, the country will need a champion."

ka-PING!

[sourcery]

Protectionist trade policies will be the next big trend, here and elsewhere. That's locked in: you can take it to the bank. Whether or not it will be good policy is irrlevant: it's going to happen. It's as predictable as the Sun rising tomorrow.

[El Conservador]

This country has tried make itself as a nation of investors, but, hey, I don't feed off stock bonds!!!

They taste bad...

[vishnu2]

So we just lie down and turn the country over to Hillary Clinton and the Deomcrats?

[nightdriver]

Roberts didn't even mention the wholesale giving away of our military secrets like the nuclear developments and the missile guidance systems that we developed over the years.

It's not difficult giving our country away, any liberal can do that, but it's going to be very difficult getting it back!

[fourdeuce82d]

Phillipino engineers working for American firms at salaries of $3,000 annually, and Chinese and Indians working for $5,000 to $10,000 annually are unbeatable competition.

Yes and no- my girlfriend runs staffing for one of the major US engineering companies, both internal and external. She says that when they bid on jobs in foreign countries, even asian/middle eastern countries will demand the jobs be staffed with American/British engineers.

I think *some* jobs will migrate over seas and stay, other jobs will turn out to require native fluency in English, an American work ethic, and the ability to have face to face contact- not tele/video-conferencing.

[fporretto]

The outsourcing of American IT jobs is not quite the disaster Dr. Roberts thinks.

A software engineer doesn't sell "code," or "programs." He sells encapsulated domain knowledge, expressed in a form a computer can act on. That knowledge is difficult to come by, requires intimacy with the customer, and dictates an ongoing support relationship that few non-American IT firms can sustain. In belated recognition of this, many outsourced IT projects are coming home to these shores. More will follow.

Edward Yourdon, who knows IT better than just about anyone, predicted the same dire fate for American IT in his book The Decline And Fall Of The American Programmer. It took him a decade or so to admit he'd been wrong. when he did, he wrote another book: The Rise And Renewal Of The American Programmer. And I daresay he has learned from his earlier, unrealistically static view of our technology and our world not to shoot from the hip a second time.

Freedom, Wealth, and Peace,
Francis W. Porretto
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