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>>On a steamy Indian late afternoon in her air-conditioned cubicle here,<<

Man, this reporter is getting way way too detailed about this.

What I got out of that sentence is it is a modern, air-conditioned facility not unlike one you would fine in Sunnyvale, California or Omaha, Nebraska. We're not talking calcutta slum here. These are college educated young people who speak english and live in a modern society.

Second, just about any job you can imagine taking place in such a setting in America, can take place in India just as well, and a whole lot cheaper too. That would include about any insurance function except for claims adjustment, or any "high-tech" programming job. My company hires engineers from India on H1-B visas for programming jobs all the time. It just makes sense to hire them for even less and let them do the work in their own country.

A 41 year old programmer at the high end of the salary scale, like me, is not in a very secure position right now.

Why don't we save these companies huge amounts of money and ship ALL moveable jobs abroad? Surely a way can be made to do claims adjustment (maybe set up a satellite TV camera to look over the damage and have the claims adjuster in India take it from there).

Along the way we'll find that we've moved our economy abroad. We won't have to worry about boosting the GNP then; we won't have any. /sarcasm/

Moving information jobs overseas won't stop until we find a way to outsource lawyers and CFOs.

If there a way to outsource bureaucrats? India has them in scads, thanks to British Civil Service.

Seriesly, my biggest concern is identity theft. If it is easy to do it in the US, what happens when my personal data ends up in India, Pakistan or Russia?