Posted on 06/04/2003 10:38:59 AM PDT by Willie Green
It's closer to $4/day. Offshoring sends American jobs to the Third World, and brings Third World poverty to America.
Silly and unfair.
TopQuark (note spelling) says something else: (i) get a pay cut and don't loos the job, and (ii) stop suing everyone in sight and demand a tort reform that makes our jobs costly to employers.
Aaaah, but you want your cake and eat it too. And you want others to pay for it.
Now, sir/madam: there is nothing right about a high school dropout at a Detroit conveyor belt --- which is the slowest in the world due to the powerful unions --- getting $30/hour. Nor is there anything right about the high school graduates unable to read (in contrast to the previous generations) and yet demanding the standard of living that their parents achieved by the end of their lives.
These 200,000 jobs, from the companies you list, were worldwide losses, not exclusively from the Dallas area.
How much fiber can be put in the ground? With market saturation, how many cell phones can Ericsson and Nokia build? The replacement market will take off again when number portability is approved, by the FCC.
Of course, that will force a further shake-out in the market as plans get more competitive.
You don't understand. When a company offshores jobs, they typically don't give people the option of taking a pay cut. They simply lay them off. Typically entire groups or offices are wiped out. There's no discussion or negotiation involved. One minute you're employed, and the next, you aren't.
Why aren't you "overpaid"? because my job is not being moved elsewhere.
Indian IT workers work for 8 to 10k per year. Know any Americans who support families on 8 to 10k per year without welfare?
That computation is incorrect (see an example in the previous post). You are not overpaid if you get more money than an Indian worker does --- you are more productive than he is. But if you are three times more productive and he makes $10,000 per year, then you should get $30,000 --- but not $40,000. If the latter is the case, the job moves overseas.
Yes.
This is because (i) offering a paycut is unacceptable in our culture, and (ii) insurance is too expensive.
I have been suggesting for some time different ways of instituting a pay cut, and I begin to see that happening. One large company in Midwest has asked ALL of the employees in a particular department to reapply for their jobs, while concurrently advertising these openings to the outside. I gurantee you that in the end: (i) the department will be smaller, (ii) average pay will be smaller as well, (iii) teh jobs will stay in the U.S.
That doesn't mean you aren't overpaid. That means your job isn't being moved elsewhere ... yet.
You are not overpaid if you get more money than an Indian worker does --- you are more productive than he is.
This falsely assumes that management can measure productivity. In IT, they typically can't (or won't).
All management looks at is headcount and cost. The assumption is made that an Indian engineer is equivalent to an American engineer, only at 10% of the cost.
At this rate, there won't be an American software industry left in 25 years, or at any rate not one staffed by Americans. My kids already know that they would be foolish to follow Dad's career path. (I hope they all become lawyers and executives, so they can be the shafters rather than the shaftees.)
How well do you think America can be defended with smart weapons imported from India and China?
Not if you're trying to compete with it.
You are absolutely correct that any particular management team cannot do that. Even if it could, the process is way too expensive. But collectively management of the sector know that --- that's what economics is about. People can be silly individually but the market is wise.
In the case of IT, however, even the individual managers see the differences because the disparities have become so huge. If the American contract programmer (consultant, as they prefer to call themselves) say "I'll do it by 10 June" and submits a cost itemization listing his services at $75/hour, and an Indian team says "We'll do it by 20 June" and itemizes costs at $10/hour, the manager's response is, "I can live with 10 days of delay." That is one act of measuring productivity.
We all subsidize overpaid workers, when we pay more for them, and get less, than we would elsewhere.
Or should my standard of living go down (less money to spend), because I should support the higher paid guy, who does less?
That is called socialism.
Marxism, actually.
I guess, nowadays, if one dislikes something like immigration, he feels that he is conservative.
But the market doesn't act in a vacuum. How competitive do you think Americans can be when the government forces up the cost of hiring Americans every day, while encouraging offshoring in the name of "free trade"?
And, long term, don't you realize that these "overpaid" people whose unemployment you seem to applaud are your customers, too? Or, at least, they were your customers ... when they could afford to be.
I still want to know how you're going to defend the US with smart weapons built around software imported from Indian and Chinese software sweatshops.
See my post #35. It's capitalism, perhaps, but a capitalism overlaid with government rules, regulations, taxes, and litigation threats. All of those drive up the price of American labor, and make foreign labor more attractive.
And if you think that's cool, you're the one who isn't a conservative.
I've lived it, brother. You haven't.
You have not a clue of what I have lived through, but I am not going to compare misfortunes.
Most importantly, you do not understand the value of education: it's biggest gift is that you acquires something that you did NOT live through. Anyone can learn from his own experience, but education enrices you with the experiocen of the millions that live concurrently with you and have preceded you.
See, if education were required for someone to become a software "engineer," you would've known that without me saying so.
Buy a book. And make sure it's not on Java.
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