[The Old Hoosier]

when they leave to start their own companies who do you think they'll be competing with?

You're being very short-sighted. The competition will, again, help American businesses by cutting their costs. You are viewing the American economy as something static and unchanging, which does not develop to meet the circumstances, thus improving our standard of living constantly over time. You are wrong to do so.

We don't need to have a monopoly on programmers in order to compete globally. Besides, we would not be able to have such a monopoly even if we wanted one. What are you going to do, erect tariffs against programs e-mailed back to the U.S.?

[Mamzelle]

re: What are you going to do, erect tariffs against programs e-mailed back to the U.S.?)))

Well, we could put a nice surcharge on the money going out of the country to India.

[oceanview]

no, all you need to do is tax IBM's US profits at a higher rate based of their use of offshore labor. If they profit in the US, and contribute nothing to the tax base in the form of US employment, then they should pay US taxes another way.

[RockyMtnMan]

So when competing internationally IBM is going to be happy about losing contracts to Indian firms they trained? Isn't this what offshoring is supposed to help IBM with? What about Chinese companies copying source code, relabeling it ChiComSoft and selling it to US companies for a tenth the cost?

What's wrong with the US owning a monopoly on the world stage? We could maintain a monopoly for a long time based on our current technological lead. Every developing country in the world would have to come to us for their business productivity software or face defeat due to poorly run business units.

Training turd-worlders on the latest and greatest methodologies and practices is inviting them to compete against us on the world stage at a tenth the cost.

The worst thing a large corporation can do to itself is create a highly efficient hungry competitor that is familiar with their business practices. Now combine those points with dirt cheap labor and contacts carried over from their "IBM days" and IBM will have it's worst nightmare to deal with soon enough. Once they start losing contracts they will have to cut back until they are able to compete once again (when salaries equalize).