Get those and compete!
Posted on 07/16/2003 10:42:49 AM PDT by IonInsights
LAS VEGAS: When a former US secretary of state of the stature of Dr Henry Kissinger walks into a technology conference, 10,000 techies filling up the Ballroom at Mandarin Bay stand and applaud, even before he says anything. When he answers a question about outsourcing of economic activity, his reply draws a bigger applause from the largely American audience.
“If outsourcing would continue to the point of stripping the United States of its industrial base, and of the act of getting out its own technology, then it requires really careful thought of national policy and probably create incentives to prevent it from happening.”
It was Mr Sanjay Kumar, chairman and CEO of Computer Associates (CA) who put the question to him. Mr Kumar mentioned the increased outsourcing of technology related work, from insurance claims, airline reservations, computer programming to countries like India and China and asked Dr Kissinger whether this would erode middle class power bases in Europe and the US.
Dr Kissinger’s answer: “I don’t look at this from an economic point of view but the political and social points of view. The question really is whether America can remain a great power or a dominant power if it becomes a primarily service economy, and I doubt that. A country has to have an industrial base in order to play a significant role in the world. And I am concerned from that point of view.” The mood was unambiguous — American jobs must not be lost.
Mr Kumar also reminded him about his acceptance speech after winning the Nobel Peace prize where he had voiced concerns about the rise of technology, and asked whether he had changed his mind about technology since then. Dr Kissinger said, “My concerns have mounted since then. I am of a generation that grew up on books. It helps you develop concepts. With computers, you don’t have to remember things because the information is all there.” He worries that despite the fact that there is an explosion of information, the problem is how to transform information into knowledge and knowledge into wisdom.
“I worked with leaders who had an intuitive sense of the future although they didn’t have so much information. Statesmen have progressively more information but they have progressively more insecurity because they have no sense of the evolution of the system,” he said. The role of technology should be to bridge the gap between availability of information and the ability to use it, Dr Kissinger said. An idea that the IT industry will have to mull over.
Check your "six" on this bud.
This thread primarily is aimded at the Technology Industry.
This industry was prior to the last ten years primarily staffed by Americans born, raised, and educated in the United States.
That has all changed in the past ten years (as this thread amply demonstrates).
Swing over to the "low-tech" workers - the grunts who have to put bread on their table via cold, hard sweat and labor.
THAT segment has changed exponentially greater than the technology industry in the past ten years.
I'm talking farming, steel, carpentry, roads, meat processing, textiles, restaurant, hospitality, and other manual labor-based industries.
Have you been outside lately?
Can you say Mexican?
Get those and compete!
Nope, there is still lots more that would have to be given up.
I rarely agree with Kissinger, but on this he is dead right. He might also have said that a country needs this industrial capacity to properly defend it'self. Even though we already know how to produce materiel, having sent most of our strategic production base to other countries, will allow an antagonist to create havoc with us on both an economic and social scale.
We can rebuild our industrial base, but the lead time will be the killer in any real conflict.
I have nothing against the Mexicans. I have dug trenches with them (when I had a job), and observed their habits on a number of work sites. I could speak un poco Espanol, and we got along well.
They show up every day (unlike the gringos), they work hard (unlike the gringos), they don't take breaks (unlike the gringos) and they work for $10 per hour (unlike the gringos). They have good attitudes. They are, to make it simple, good employees.
If I were an employer, I would hire them in a minute over some tatooed jailbird derelict with no driver's license.
The other way to stop it is to get the govt to stop micro managing industry, and relieve industry of the shadow/sword of the legal trades.
We really don't need more ill-considered legislation, foisted on business by those who hardly worked a real job in their lives.
Our current leadership, for the most part, wouldn't know 'capitalism' if it smacked them between the eyes.
The foks at OSHA should really be subjected to their own regulations, and then outsourced.
Boy, you had better get over your idea of 'fairness', and realize who the 'enemy' is. The offshore cheap labor, will have no such compunction when it comes to your livelyhood.
Currently the US consumer is driving the economies of these offshore corps, but what happens when US consumers no longer have the means to buy anything due to a wholesale reduction in the living standard?
I'll tell you what: bloodshed.
Yes, of course. This guy is ready to compete:
To those I pinged many of you are already on this thread. I had to be out this afternoon.
Here is the problem: American work ethics have been eroded to almost nothing - zilch! Consequently, the American worker's image has been eroded as has the dignity of "An Honest Day's Work For An Honest Day's Wages."
I have no ought against the Mexican worker either, but they are singularly the most visible and tangible evidence that the "American Dream" is a rapidly deteriorating phenomenon perhaps sooner rather than later to be relegated to the dustbin of history.
Take away morality and ethics from the fiber and core of a great society or nation and that nation's greatness will cease to be within one or two generations.
History is loaded with such glorious ruins: Rome, Greece, China.
The whole world wants to come to America. By the time they get here, there won't be much left.
We be hurtin' toads, my friend.
I joked that the only reason the boss hired me was because I had a driver's license, which, as I learned later, may have been true. The other five guys I worked with all had theirs pulled for DUI. Two of them just got out of the joint. So I drove the van.
Whether or not the other guys would show up for work or not was an open question each day. Mostly they were a bunch of drunks. One guy was "gone" for two weeks, then mysteriously showed up for work. The boss never said squat. They slept on the job. They smoked dope on the job. They stole from customers. They took two hour lunch breaks on company time.
I, on the other hand, showed up early every day, never took any breaks, never used the company truck for personal business and stayed late. I didn't miss a day of work for an entire year.
The boss never even noticed the difference between me and the other guys.
It ended when I had just made him $120,000 pure profit (this is not a joke. I know what he was paid and what my labor cost him) by wiring two mansions over a period of four months. I asked him for a $500 bonus - meager by any standards - and instead he fired me from my $15/hour job, and spent six months trying to contest my award of unemployment insurance. Appealed it all the way to the state capitol.
It seems that being a good employee labels one as a sap these days. I know I sure felt like one...
If this jobless "recovery" is all that GW can show to American workers by the 2004, the Repub's can kiss the White House goodbye!
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.