Posted on 02/04/2002 6:15:27 PM PST by JoeMomma
Even assuming they do, and I doubt it, how do you explain the grinding poverty? You say it's because they're protectionist, but during our history as a nation until recently, mostly since NAFTA and the end of the cold war, so were we. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned on it.
Maybe part of India's problem is overpopulation. They have upwards of 700 million people. If we keep listening to the voices of the WSJ, we're going to have that many here soon, possibly by the end of the century. If we had eyes, we would see the danger of that prospect by looking at countries like India and China. Not everyone is employable, and those that aren't have to be taken care of by the state.
BTW, I didn't mean to imply Indian people aren't smart or resourceful, only that bad policies do have consequences.
That doesn't follow. Without the coding experience or having led a team of such, how does one become a project manager? You know damn well what this means to our kids. This model follows that of the assemmbly worker, the maintenance tech, the machinist, the manufacturing engineer, the CAD designer, and now the coder. Even a large number of CEOs are from overseas.
Hollowing out is real. You are papering over your profit on selling out domestic producers.
It has more people than I thought.
Even in our Capitalist system, we have enormous poverty. Some would say do away with the welfare state, and while it sounds good it's never going to happen. Politicians barely have the spine to cut back on the increases. I think at the very least though, we should not give illegal aliens anything but a one-way ticket back home. What would be even worse is if WE were a country of a billion. There's no way we could sustain a population of that size and keep a welfare state.
I'm not against immigration, just that right now it's lacking in common sense. You don't import people while Americans are being laid off, and you DON'T let millions of illegals pour in here with no enforcement.
No. We insist on shooting ourselves in the foot--the minimum wage defines not only the minimum price of labor, it defines the minimum JOB that can be done--specifically, the anticipated return on hiring someone for the job must exceed the artificially inflated price of that person's labor.
Do company employees get health benefits?
Not automatically. It IS worth noting, however, that when a party other than the end consumer of health care (the patient) pays for all bills, the price of health care climbs at a rate far exceeding inflation. Hmm. Interesting. Ya think there MIGHT be some sort of cause and effect there? Or am I just one of those crazy Friedmanite economists?
Do they have the same kind of wage scale we have?
No. And that is why so many companies are looking at moving their coding work offshore--because the return on investment is higher.
Even assuming they do, and I doubt it, how do you explain the grinding poverty?
They started out with less per capita wealth, a lower level of educational achievement, and then compounded their problems by making some amazingly stupid decisions from 1947 to about 1975 or so, and those decisions are only NOW getting reversed. One of the policies they engaged in was to frequently seize foreign-owned assets. The government then sold these assets off at sweetheart prices to folks with better political connections than business sense, the assets would be driven straight into the dirt, and other foreigners would quickly repatriate their capital OUT of India.
You say it's because they're protectionist, but during our history as a nation until recently, mostly since NAFTA and the end of the cold war, so were we. Theodore Roosevelt campaigned on it.
Actually, we began moving to a free trade environment during and after World War II. It makes some sense to temporarily protect immature American industries, but as a long-term policy, it acts as a disincentive to necessary reinvestment and modernization, and we will wind up with, for example, the 1970 & 1980s-era American auto industry. Are you REALLY that desperate for the quality, reliability, and quality of the AMC Pacer or the Ford Pinto?
Maybe part of India's problem is overpopulation.
Go get a book by P.J. O'Rourke called All the Trouble in the World, and read the chapter on "Overpopulation: Too Much of You, Not Enough of Me." That should disabuse you of that notion. Heck, read the whole damn book.
They have upwards of 700 million people. If we keep listening to the voices of the WSJ, we're going to have that many here soon, possibly by the end of the century.
Actually, they have close to 900 million. We should be looking covetuously at Indian markets instead of China--it's almost as big, it is a stable parliamentary democracy, and that nation HAS learned from its bone-headed economic decisions and are embracing capitalism, unlike China.
If we had eyes, we would see the danger of that prospect by looking at countries like India and China. Not everyone is employable, and those that aren't have to be taken care of by the state.
"Work or starve" does a LOT to correct the problem of people not being employable. The unemployable STAY unemployable when the state subsidizes that condition. Gee, maybe there's a lesson in there, huh?
BTW, I didn't mean to imply Indian people aren't smart or resourceful, only that bad policies do have consequences.
And they are suffering those consequences, and learning from them. They are correcting their policies slowly, painfully, and messily. They exemplify Churchill's dictum that liberal democracy (and he meant liberal in the classical sense) is the worst form of governance in the world, with the exception of everything else.
America has worked overtime to get rid of Adam Smith's "invisible hand." Well, that hand is now giving us the invisible middle finger.
Then the point is academic, even if you completely closed immigration--our home-grown leeches will sooner or later consume more than the entire American economy COULD produce, no matter how much it was protected, and then we would have two options: demand tribute from every other nation on Earth, and eventually start a global war, or experience an economic collapse.
The welfare state is the root of our problems. It takes from the productive and rewards the unproductive. This has two pernicious effects: it keeps the unproductive in that state because it doesn't give them any incentive to become productive, and it lowers the productivity of those who ARE productive, because they receive less reward than they otherwise would receive for being more productive.
There is rampant unemployment in the computer programming field. Hundreds of thousands of jobs have been lost, yet the H-1B program continues. Note to our elected officials, we know who you are and will be glad to return the favor.
We spoke about this in prior threads, my conclusion is that India continues to maintain the caste system.
The caste system forces people into a predisposed economic and social class. I may be mistaken, but I thought your background came from that regime.
Yeah, I know some people who are unemployed as programmers.
The unemployed code-bashers I know all refuse to develop new skills unless a sugar daddy (read: employer) pays them to go back to school. So they look for FORTRAN and COBOL jobs that pay more than anyone's willing to fork over--essentially, they make it cheaper to completely replace legacy applications.
Price yourself out of the market, and you'll find yourself unemployed.
I've sent out well over a hundred resumes, since my last employer went bankrupt, and have had only three responses, two interviews and no job.
My background is C/C++ coding for Microsoft Windows, including ActiveX and ATL, ISAPI, TCP/IP, four years as a project lead on three different efforts. I am currently studying Java, HTML, XML, SOAP, SQL on the Windows 2000 Professional platform using Enhydra as a Web server.
The hitech sector in Washington state has been devastated.
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.