Posted on 07/31/2003 11:53:32 AM PDT by Florida_Irish
During a Wednesday morning (July 30th) press conference, President Bush was asked a question about jobs going overseas as a result of technological innovation. His response was:
"I fully understand what you're saying. In other words, as technology races through the economy, a lot of times worker skills don't keep up with technological change."
Many people have taken his response to mean that unemployment in the high-tech sector is the result of American workers who allowed their skills to become obsolete. This is an unacceptable explanation.
(Excerpt) Read more at capwiz.com ...
As much as it sucks to say it, many of the tasks associated with information technology ("normal" programming, testing, data base administration) have become commoditized. We can talk about an IBM or Perot Systems outsourcing jobs overseas but this is also customer driven. On any large IT project today, one of the first things the client says is "I want overseas rates". Try not putting in in your proposal and you lose. You didn't save any American jobs, you just lost your own. Yes, there are lots of problem associated with using overseas labor but they charge less for a day's work than we charge for an hour's. It sucks - there's no simple answer.
Why don't all you superprofessional productivity machines log off of Free Republic during weekdays and perhaps overhaul your knowledge, skillsets and marketable talents to a level where some guy with a 5th Grade education and flies in his nose in Burkina Faso isn't better qualified for employment than you? Maybe you shouldn't be posting to the internet during time-critical weekdays when you might actually be expected to perform your daytime jobs? For the 95% here who are "unemployed/I gotta bad back", use this time to learn something, or do something, that that plucky go-getter in East Africa doesn't know, or do, better.posted on 07/25/2003 by ArneFufkin
He was not talking about the tech sector. He was talking about training unemployed people to update their technical skills...
So, spare me your snide remarks. Don't agree with the President's policies (he being a free trader and all)... but don't accuse me of trotting out the old stand-by excuse.
Pretty likely.
a new party will form and will be the dominant party then
Not bloody likely.
- and it will probably be center-left.
Oh, HELL naw...
The outsourcing will only become a problem if the rate of job export increases. Otherwise, most Americans won't give a sh*t. On the contrary - they'll laugh at us (those of us in the tech sector) and tell us to go find a job where we have to work with our hands (which is pretty much what they're telling us now).
The visas and immigration issue (they go hand-in-hand), on the other hand WILL be the primary issue for 2004 and 2008; I've got to agree with you on one point - whoever creates a solid solution will definitely be in the catbird seat come 2008.
And which it seems that dirt is jumping with the demos on the straw boogieman.
I have thousands of questions I think Bush should answer, but for me to get mad because he didn't answer a question that WASN'T EVEN ASKED during a press conference is ridiculous.
Perhaps, rather than being completely F***ing stupid and lying about the answer Bush gave, the IEEE should have created a forum by which this very important question WOULD be answered by Bush. Instead, they wasted important time and credibility by creating a response for a question that was never asked, and an answer that was never given...
I don't want to stop you from hiring and firing who you want. I would like you to follow the laws when you hire peole. Some companies don't and save money that way. I would like to see government at all levels become much, much smaller so that the tax burden on American workers is not 40-50% of their pay, which pretty much places them as far more expensive than an Indian. I do not see anything wrong with wanting immigration laws enforced and government made smaller.
Protectionism predates Marxism by at least 50 years see Alexander Hamilton and the First Congress of the USA.
See Ayn Rand
Sacrificing my standard of living in order to subsidize inefficient domestic employees is un-American.
Sacrificing americas standard of living to conform to your Marxist philosphy (despite your ciotation of Ayn Rand) is insane. You are mixing up a free market which your defense of teh H1b and L1 visa guest workers implies you oppose.
Collectivism is the premise of your protectionism: In hiring employees, we are expected to view employers and the employees not as individuals, but as units of a nation.
Where did you get this garbage. This is absolutely without any relationship in describing a reasonable tariff policy which balances foreign tariffs with american tariffs in response and uses the Constitutionally authorized means of tariffs to protect the american economy.
We are expected to accept lower quality or more expensive goods in the name of alleged benefits to the national collective.If you call paying a tax in order support an enemy of the USA being expected to accept lower quality or more expensive goods a tehn this is your mioscharacterization of tariffs. If the entire planet consisted of economic and politicaql systems which allowed property rights and free markets there would be no need for tariffs but we do not live in that utopis we live in w world where tariffs are necessary tools for both teh raising of revenue and for the equalization of foreign government policies whgich harm our nation. the fact that you do consider yourself not a part of the American nation has little to do with reality.
Collectivism reflects the notion that life is "a zero sum game," that we live in a dog-eat-dog world, where one man’s gain is another man’s loss. On this premise, everyone has to cling to his own herd and fight all the other herds for a share of a fixed, static, supply of goods and jobs.
Since you are supporting the current trade envirornment which is by definition pro collectivist you really should read your own words. The false premise that tariffs support collectivism is where you are wrong. The current tarde envirornment is decidely pro collectivist and you had better deal with reality not either a fantasy world or a a Marxist paradise ytou seem to believe in. Collectivism reflects the notion that life is "a zero sum game," that we live in a dog-eat-dog world, where one man’s gain is another man’s loss. On this premise, everyone has to cling to his own herd and fight all the other herds for a share of a fixed, static, supply of goods and jobs. But individualism recognizes that wealth is produced, not merely appropriated, and that man’s rise from the cave to the skyscraper demonstrates that life is not a zero-sum game — not where men are free to seek progress.
Gee, Southack, you're in such a bush-battle-bot mode that you're attributing something to me that I never said. I said that government was putting pressure on middle-class taxpayers - government is both singular and plural, in the sense that government can refer to ALL levels of government. I never claimed that Bush was responsible, just that any federal tax rebates to the middle class will, in most cases, be promptly consumed by rapacious state and local governments.
Are there downward pressures on the middle class? Of course. And there always will be, but the middle class hasn't shrunk as you've claimed, and in fact national salaries have INCREASED over the last five years.
I notice the lack of the qualifier "Middle-Class" in your statement. I'm talking about folks making a working wage, not those who are executives. I make better than a working wage, but when I was unemployed I saw what limited job options those folks faced - folks who used to be able to afford a home and a car on two jobs, but now can't do that.
What we've got around on this thread are probably just some laid-off techies who are upset that the glory days of the dot com boom aren't coming back,
I was a tech worker long before those days - I was working on microcomputers before the IBM PC came out. And the folks being laid off now aren't dot-comm nitwits - they're nuts and bolts techies from programmers to operators to customer support positions.
however, hence the readiness, no, hence the EAGERNESS to criticize our President for merely rephrasing a reporter's question...
Southack, what part of "I fully understand what you're saying..." do YOU not understand? Bush is still stuck on last decade's big governmental solution when this decade has different problems. The problem is not a lack of training - we have millions of fully qualified techies out of work. The problem is that jobs are going overseas by the millions - and all you can do is belittle those who believe that destroying our middle class is NOT a good thing.
Here comes Dane again, jumping into the debate like an epileptic chihuahua. School must have just let out.
Yes, IT was "gouging". And CEOs of companies that were losing money with $Million+ salaries and multi-million-dollar bonuses WEREN'T gouging ?
Let's see, I've worked 20 years at my profession to get where I am (a security-and-firewalls man and a general network engineer as a side-specialty). These yahoos make VP at 35, and have yet to put in a productive day of work. . . .
Twenty years from now, my job will be gone. It will be overtaken by the technical revolution. And it will be overtaken by younger workers who will do it for less...
Do I sit and cry my beer and wail for the President of the United States to come and deliver me from the reality of the work place.
No, I bust my butt in learning another skill...
http://www.capsweb.org/newsroom/newsletters/nlwinter00.pdf#page=4
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.