Posted on 09/21/2003 7:49:30 PM PDT by 11th_VA
There is another bill which will REQUIRE CA businesses with 20+ employees to pay 80% of all employee health care costs and those with 200+ emplyees, to pay this amount for all employees and their family members.
With regs like these, there is no salary level at which Americans can compete, and Indians will be making $50k/yr. before those jobs could ever come home.
There is an old adage that says that business is like war except that there is no bloodshed. Following that same logic, American industry was not prepared to fight either WW-II or the Korean Wars. But after an initial phase of catching up to the demands of the battleground, American tactics, ingenuity, and herculean efforts were able to overcome all comers.
American pilots were forced to face the Japanese over China and Burma in aircraft that were not considered world-class in any sort of description. But by playing to superior tactics and utilizing the tools at hand, the American Volunteer Group (AVG, the "Flying Tigers") soundly defeated the very best pilots and aircraft that Japan could offer.
Even after the start of WW-II, the American forces were faced with superior equipment and battle-tested foes from the Pacific to North Africa and England. But we eventually overcame and percevered by our superiority of spirit, will and production capability. But there were unavoidable losses in this learning curve. And the same thing happened again in Korea.
We are in not just an economic war with the rest of the world, but also an ideological one as well. We, as Americans, can overcome because we will not flinch from a collective and individual commitment to the job of doing whatever it takes to win any battle that we are faced with.
Rather than focusing on why we cannot compete with the rest of the world because of any sorts of factors, why not get started winning our battles where we have them now, in the workplace?
Old Patriot
The individuals in the Chinese military are not paid by the government in any way, they are required to do extra jobs in state run factories to earn money for their own support. Also, the individual's family is expected to assist with the military person's upkeep too.
Military service is likened to one's duty to one's family and is considered an honor, not a job. Though it must be said that all Chinese companies are in some ways are also connected to the government in Beijing, even the outlaw ones.
Also, all Chinese public work projects are being built with penal battalions as they are in any communist country. We here in America are more enlightened than that, we sell prison labor out to contractors so that they do not have to pay as much to good hard-working American workers. So where is the protection of American jobs being respected over here? And there is always the illegals we can use if need be.
Old Patriot.
Fix these problems and we will have factories here that are cheap enough to run that China will complain that we are too efficient to fairly compete against. China has enormous costs due to corruption, poor education, and poor infrastructure. They can be beaten even if the Chinese work for free.
That sure seems right to me. We can best prosper at what we do best - individual freedom and enterprise.
You are entirely right in your statement about IT, that is why I got completely out of it. This was a house of cards all the time.
Old Patriot
Won't work. You would immediately create a huge business in "data smuggling." Then we would have the Data Enforcement Administration doing no-knock raids on small IT outsourcing shops suspected of data smuggling.
That's what I love about debate on the Internet. Every issue is reduced to two options -- all or nothing. No need to bother with the complexities of finding a functional middle ground.
Why is it that with laws against theft, rape, and murder, we accept less than 100% perfect enforcment? Why is it that we don't have a "total surveillance state" to stop theft, rape, and murder to bring enforcement up to 100%? And why is it that few call for an end to laws against theft, rape, and murder on the grounds that those laws are not 100% effective or that better enforcement of these laws may lead to a "total surveillance state"? Could it be that the real world is more complex than simplistic excluded middle arguments allow for?
That $60K job helped keep the economy out of recessionary waters, by helping it expand. That engineer, software writer, or network analyst who's job went to Bombay used to take his salary to the grocery store, to the gas station, the dry cleaners, to the barber shop, to FedEx, to the sporting goods store, etc. Each dollar he spent went into someone else's pocket, who in turn took it to the grocery store, the gas station, etc., and so on. That demand for more food, gas, cars, computers, rollerblade wheels, etc. meant more jobs would be needed to produce, sell, transport, stock and retail those goods and services. From there, more people would be employed to keep those new cars running, to fill out insurance paperwork when those cars are involved in traffic accidents, make new tires to go on the car, keep the XM satellites up and running so the driver could listen to XM radio when he drove, etc. I was once told in Econ 150 in college that each dollar earned in the private sector is respent seven times. So when that $60K is removed from the American economy, it's actually $420K. Multiply that thousands of times, and is it any wonder the economy has been so bad for so long?
Each of those 60K dollars were also taxed, which provided the government funds for defending the nation, building new roads, keeping CommieLib NPR on the air, and keeping Social Security flowing. If you don't understand the economic impact of losing well-paying jobs in any other way, this last example should hit home with you.
Scouts Out! Cavalry Ho!
Sure there would be. If a customer service center in India asks you for your SSN when processing a claim, you've got your probable cause. Certain industries simply cannot operate customer service centers abroad without SSN and other personal information. No large company would be able to do this. Would it catch every small infringement? No. But it would catch the biggies. And making it a national security issue could help encourage people to turn in their own employers.
Whereas, in most murder cases, you have a dead body, a weapon, a motive, etc. If I go to the police and say "Question_Assumptions is a murderer!" they will, of course, ask me where to find the corpse, or if I can corroborate my statements in any way.
And if you tell me that Insurance Company X has sent my personal information overseas, I simply need to perform a customer service call to them and demonstrate that the call center is overseas to prove it.
Standards of probable cause are eroded by bad laws that cannot be enforced without a system of domestic spying.
Using your criteria, plenty of laws could not be enforced without a "system of domestic spying". How do you think they capture organized crime figures through surveillance without putting every US citizen under surveillance?
A data transfer law would be disasterous in this regard. For example, if I picked up the phone and told the police "Question_Assumptions is growing pot in his closet!" they would have to reply on my dubious assertion and break down your door with machineguns at the ready in order to find out.
This always comes back to drugs, doesn't it? There is a thing called "probable cause" and a "warrant". Most warrants are not issued with broken down doors and machine guns. And, ideally, you'd need to sign a complaint and could be held liable if they didn't find any evidence of pot.
You should note that this problem doesn't exist simply for drugs and information. Suppose I found out that you were holding a woman as a sex slave in your house against her will and told the police. Rather than question me about my evidence and attempt to get a warrant should they simply ignore the complaint? Should we not make it illegal to keep a person against their will in your home as a sex slave simply because there is no way to inforce it except through tips, warrants, and searches?
And you also don't need to export the computers to do coding and operate call centers overseas. Most CRM systems are now Web-based, and many are run by ASPs in off-site facilities anyway, and many of those are geographically distributed for disaster-recovery reasons. Servers, call center agents, etc. can all be anywhere on the planet at any moment in time.
By your plan, you would be making access to a Web-based extranet from outside the U.S. a crime.
Exempt people from viewing their own data. I can think of a handful of other exemptions. Not too difficult to add. My point was largely that the only way they will stop outsourcing to India and elsewhere it to make it a national security issue. To a degree, I think it is. A firm in India with access to names, addresses, and social security numbers could trivially select out a set of US citizens with Indian names and use that as the basis for fake passports. Similarly, they could select out Indians with valid US visas and forge Indian passports, expecially if they have sufficient real-time human resources information to figure out when they are taking their three weeks of vacation to visit family in India.
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