Posted on 08/20/2013 10:19:19 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
If you call the customer service line of a major business or corporation these days, there’s a good chance you’ll end up talking to someone thousands of miles away (or to a computer, if the company is really trying to cut costs). If you go shopping for new clothes, it’s likely that some of shirts and dresses you try on were made by people who are also thousands of miles away, in shops far less glamorous than the ones in which the finished products end up.
Outsourcing is so commonplace in certain industries, we don’t even think twice about it anymore. But over the past few years, the trend has spread to practices far beyond call centers and apparel manufacturing. In fact, you might be surprised at the industries that rely on outsourcing now.
Running Errands
We could all use personal assistants to return calls and emails, pay the bills, and shop for presents, but how many of us can afford to hire them? That’s why India-based companies like GetFriday and Brickwork offer a team of assistants who take care of the little tasks you don’t have the time or energy for—and do it for a much lower fee than what you’d pay an in-person assistant. Writer A.J. Jacobs wrote about using Brickwork in a 2005 Esquire story and expressed much satisfaction with how his hired assistants, Honey and Asha, researched his stories, dealt with the phone company, and even honored bizarre requests, like emailing Michael Jackson jokes to him and intervening in a fight with his wife.
Drive-Through Order Taking
When you imagine the person taking your order at a fast-food drive-through, you probably assume he or she is behind the counter in the restaurant. But that’s no longer the case in some establishments; instead, the people who take your order might be located in call centers in entirely different states. For example, a 2006 New York Times story reporting on the new practice found that an employee at a California-based McDonald’s call center took orders from Hawaii, Mississippi, and Wyoming in just two minutes. The orders are then sent to the stores’ computers. Chains like Wendy’s and Jack in the Box also have been testing out this approach. The goal is to help other employees focus their attention on in-store matters and to keep the drive-through line moving as quickly as possible.
Drug Trial Testing
Drug makers have to host clinical trials for any new drugs they want to put out on the market to ensure that they’re safe. Increasingly, they’re moving these trials to lower-income countries and regions like India and parts of Eastern Europe. Researchers who published an article on the subject in a 2009 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that the number of countries that are hosting trials outside of the United States doubled between 1995 and 2005, while the number of U.S.-based trials went down. Part of the reason for this has to do with decreased labor and testing-site costs at places outside of the United States; another factor might be a bigger pool of humans in these locales who are willing and able to be tested.
Unfortunately, it’s not always done with explicit permission. The BBC reported in 2006 about an experimental drug being tested in India on people with cancer without their consent. Because the tests are done abroad, language barriers and cultural differences might get in the way of the test subjects’ comprehending the risks or benefits. As S.P. Kalantri, a doctor who runs such trials in India, told Wired magazine’s Jennifer Kahn in 2006, “Ninety percent of patients being recruited in India are poor … Trials enroll very few patients who are rich, literate, and capable of asking awkward questions.”
Video Gaming
People generally fall into one of two opinion camps when it comes to video games: they either think they’re a waste of time and a contributor to childhood obesity, or they find them a fun and mentally stimulating way to spend one’s leisure time. But both camps would probably look down on the fact that you can pay someone to play the lower levels of games like World of Warcraft so that you can effortlessly ascend to the more challenging stuff. There are also players (known in some circles as “gold farmers”) in Chinese gaming factories whose sole purpose is to accrue points and game currency so that others can buy it off of them with real money. The buyers then use that game money to buy weapons and other items necessary to play the game as successfully and lazily as possible.
Blogging/Tweeting
Ever wonder how some power bloggers manage to update their pages so frequently and post new content throughout the day and night? It’s possible they get a little help from organizations like Rent A Blogger, which hires people to do everything from set up blogs to research and write about new topics for them. Even Tweeters can pay others to send tweets throughout the day and find Twitter directories to join. There’s a lot of controversy in the online world as to whether this is ethical, since blogs and profiles are supposed to be personal, so many users keep the practice on the down-low. They’re more open about outsourcing for things like page redesigns and traffic generation, though.
Unfortunately, having everything done out of eyesight has also created a great deal of unethical situations beyond the blogosphere, like the drug trials in India or the apparel sweatshops in Asian countries. Even McDonald’s outsourcing was described as “bizarre” by one consumer interviewed in the 2006 New York Times story. What we gain in productivity and profit, we lose in personal touch and a feeling of connectedness. But as long as there are businesses interesting in saving money and potential employees willing to work for less, it will continue to be a major part of our economy and culture.
Lucky you.
There are laws on the books that actively seek to destroy mine. Successfully, I might add.
...worked... ...were...
What happened?
In part. There's also minimum wage laws that remove the first few rungs from the success ladder, and excessive child labor laws, together they help prevent a growing youth from developing a work ethic.
There's the H-1B, L-1, J-1 and related visa programs that exclude some Americans from jobs and depress the wages of those lucky enough to find one.
And if the wage and indentured servitude provisions of the worker visa programs aren't enough the visa workers are exempt from ObamaCare expenses!
Then there is the vast thicket of regulations where no detail of a business is too petty, no penalty too great...
Ultimately the system will will collapse.
The question is whether it will be a smoking crater, or a very hard landing.
We need a transition system that doesn't cheat the people who have paid their entire lives and planned their retirement around the certainty of getting back what they put in, while assuring the current payers that they will be getting back what they are currently putting in.
I'm not wise enough to solve the problem here, but perhaps the portion of your social security you pay that goes to a personal account vs to the current recipients varies with time? This year, status quo, next year, 2%/98%, the year after, 4%/96%, etc. By the time a 20 year old gets to retirement everything in his account is actually his (plus interest!).
And we need to keep a future JFK from raiding it!
“We need a transition system that doesn’t cheat the people who have paid their entire lives and planned their retirement around the certainty of getting back what they put in, while assuring the current payers that they will be getting back what they are currently putting in.”
There’s no way to do this without stealing money from current workers.
Like I said. There are two options - boomers take the hit now or the system collapses. A ‘middle ground’ that fully funds boomers while locking their kids out is what some pensions have done. It’s not fair, but it’s probably what will happen because it gives the Boomers what they want (money), at the expense of not boomers and best of all ‘fixes’ the problem.
In Illinois. Resigned from my greatly rewarding job there because I pioneered use of computers in manufacturing and engineering in that outfit. I was offered a cushy job by a government funded outfit with very cushy benefits and I could not resist. It was boring, not challenging, no pioneering accomplishments there, but was a good way to slide into retirement :-)
Those H1B visa people are for most part programmers from India. There are 50 million programmers floating around in the world. Do not expect high wages in that field.
Nor are a majority programers. They have moved into every facet of manufacturing, semiconductor processing, biotech, energy, and elsewhere.
Employers love 'em. They work for significantly less than their American counterparts (Yeah, I know the law requires they be paid the prevailing wage. Guess who sets the prevailing wage.) They live in mortal terror that they will lose their job and be sent back to whatever 3rd word cesspit they hale from, and therefore can easily be abused both on a personal level and on a business level. They can be fired and deported if they even look for a better job. What's not to love?
Sidebar, one H-1B I worked with was deported the day after he got laid off. They shipped him of back to the Ayatollah's Iran. No one has heard from him since. No one.On my last paid job I was replaced by three H-1Bs. One Chinese, one Vietnamese, and one Indian. The Indian and the Vietnamese are still there. The employer is challenging to work for. I doubt anyone who could find other employment would have lasted as long.
Yes.
We are a wealthier country if the poor stay on welfare, than we would be if they were doing a menial job, like programming, or engineering, or sweeping floors, or flipping burgers, or customer support, or data entry.
Got it.
Maybe we can outsource the taxes needed to fund EBT cards and Section 8 as well?
Many to China.
I've attended more than one auction to buy used fab equipment only to have the event start off with, "Thank you all for showing up, but the entire factory has been purchased by a Chinese company, there will be no auction today"
Have you ever heard of the economic theory of comparative advantage?
And when the standard of living rises enough in India and China, that the workers there are no longer content with living in huts and foraging for food but demand and get more pay—what will happen to your cheap imported stuff?
Who will vote to stop the government from the endless printing of money to pay its runaway budget when the people aren’t experiencing the pain of higher prices because of cheap imported stuff?
Then who will sell us stuff at any price when the dollar is all but worthless and foreign workers expect to be paid enough to live like Americans lived when America was prosperous?
And when the third world is fully industrialized and prosperous, they will no longer be living in huts and spearing fish, but will be COMPETING WITH US BY BIDDING UP THE COST FOR RAW MATERIALS AND ENERGY. WHAT WILL THAT DO TO THE COST OF ANYTHING WHEREVER IT’S MADE???
Mujibar of India was trying to get a job.
The Personnel Manager said, ‘Mujibar,
You have passed all the tests, except one.
It is a simple test of your English language skills
Unless you pass it,you cannot qualify for this job.’
Mujibar said, ‘I am ready.’
The manager said,
You must make a sentence using the words
Yellow, Pink, and Green.’
Mujibar thought for a few minutes and said,
‘Mister manager, I am ready.’
The manager said, ‘Go ahead.’
Mujibar said,
‘The telephone goes green, green,
And I pink it up, and say,
Yellow, this is Mujibar.’
Mujibar now works at a call center.
It will be 50-75 years before wages in China & India catch up to USA levels all around. Only isolated skills in short supply get USA style wages in those countries.
Dollar is already worthless but not because of outsourcing but by printing Trillions of excess dollars to pay for the monstrous deficit spending. Try traveling in Europe, Japan, and large cities in Asia to find out first hand how worthless US dollar has become.
There is no civilization, kingdom, empire, country, etc in the history of world has stayed on top for ever. India and China had highest GDP in the world for over thousand years ending around 1700. United States no longer has the monopoly on manufacturing it once had after factories in Germany and Japan were leveled. Our standard of living will keep going down while the poorer countries of WWII will get richer.
If you are still under 50, try to switch to a line of work which is in demand. I am now retired and do not have a list of currently in demand professions. During my working years Numerical control programmers were highly sought after. Not sure if they still are. High tech manufacturing companies such as Boeing need them by the hundreds.
May be so but high value items I buy such as cars, washers & dryers, refrigerators, dish washers etc are made mostly in unionized outfits.
You should research that, cars are made all over the south by non union works - a lot of them.
“Nor am I, and since no law protects my income against global competition, no law should protect anyone else’s. “
So, you don’t believe in countries. Got it. A GenWhyMe globalist type.
Congress recognized the critical nature of my industry and the existing zero unemployment rate here in Silicon Valley (and the vast campaign bribes contributions) and jacked up the number of low paid indentured servants I have to compete with for a job.
Any way I can get back under 50 that you know would be appreciated...
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.