Posted on 03/08/2004 11:25:30 AM PST by Born Conservative
Edited on 03/09/2004 11:58:05 AM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
BANGALORE, India -- I've been in India for only a few days and I am already thinking about reincarnation. In my next life, I want to be a demagogue.
Yes, I want to be able to huff and puff about complex issues -- like outsourcing of jobs to India -- without any reference to reality. Unfortunately, in this life, I'm stuck in the body of a reporter/columnist. So when I came to the 24/7 Customer call center in Bangalore to observe hundreds of Indian young people doing service jobs via long distance -- answering the phones for U.S. firms, providing technical support for U.S. computer giants or selling credit cards for global banks -- I was prepared to denounce the whole thing. "How can it be good for America to have all these Indians doing our white-collar jobs?" I asked 24/7's founder, S. Nagarajan.
Well, he answered patiently, "look around this office." All the computers are from Compaq. The basic software is from Microsoft. The phones are from Lucent. The air-conditioning is by Carrier, and even the bottled water is by Coke, because when it comes to drinking water in India, people want a trusted brand. On top of all this, says Nagarajan, 90 percent of the shares in 24/7 are owned by U.S. investors. This explains why, although the United States has lost some service jobs to India, total exports from U.S. companies to India have grown from $2.5 billion in 1990 to $4.1 billion in 2002. What goes around comes around, and also benefits Americans.
Consider one of the newest products to be outsourced to India: animation. Yes, a lot of your Saturday morning cartoons are drawn by Indian animators like JadooWorks, founded three years ago here in Bangalore. India, though, did not take these basic animation jobs from Americans. For 20 years they had been outsourced by U.S. movie companies, first to Japan and then to the Philippines, Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The sophisticated, and more lucrative, pre-production, finishing and marketing of the animated films, though, always remained in America. Indian animation companies took the business away from the other Asians by proving to be more adept at both the hand-drawing of characters and the digital painting of each frame by computer -- at a lower price.
Indian artists had two advantages, explained Ashish Kulkarni, COO of JadooWorks. "They spoke English, so they could take instruction from the American directors easily, and they were comfortable doing coloring digitally." India has an abundance of traditional artists, who were able to make the transition easily to computerized digital painting.
Explained Kulkarni: "We train them to transform their traditional skills to animation in a digital format." In short, thanks to globalization, a whole new generation of Indian traditional artists can keep up their craft rather than drive taxis to earn a living.
But here's where the story really gets interesting. JadooWorks has decided to produce its own animated epic of the life of Krishna. To write the script, though, it wanted the best storyteller it could find and ended up outsourcing the project to an Emmy Award-winning U.S. animation writer, Jeffrey Scott -- for an Indian epic!
"We are also doing all the voices with American actors in Los Angeles," Kulkarni says. "And the music is being written in London. JadooWorks also creates computer games for the global market but outsources all the design concepts to U.S. and British game designers. All the computers and animation software at JadooWorks have also been imported from America [H.P. and IBM] or Canada, and half the staff walk around in American-branded clo- thing."
"It's unfair that you want all your products marketed globally," Kulkarni argues, "but you don't want any jobs to go."
He's right. Which is why we must design the right public policies to keep America competitive in an increasingly networked world, where every company -- Indian or American -- will seek to assemble the best skills from around the globe. And we must cushion those Americans hurt by the outsourcing of their jobs. But let's not be stupid and just start throwing up protectionist walls, in reaction to what seems to be happening on the surface. Because beneath the surface, what's going around is also coming around. Even an Indian cartoon company isn't just taking American jobs, it's also making them.
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New York Times News Service
There's plenty of hamburgers to flip and toilets to clean; no need to bring these jobs back...
According to the WSJ (Daniel Henninger) Hillary defended outsourcing against Lou Dobbs' criticism of Tata Consultancy in Buffalo by saying, "I know they outsource jobs," the senator replied with the patience of Job, "but they've brought jobs to Buffalo. You know, outsourcing does work both ways."
"I'm not in favor of putting up fences around the country," said the Senator.
So, free traders have new champions? That's good.
Free traders, please ask your champions the following. If American corporations must outsource to stay competitive and/or to find competent workers how do companies like Tata, European companies, and Japanese companies make it here when they "outsource" to us? Like, that's good. Almost everone agrees that even the lowly "disgusting" factory jobs outsourced here are good. No one can answer that question without becoming a whirling dervish, I bet.
Any large organization, whether a corporation, government or Free Republic, is going to have a certain percentage of dead wood. Unfortunately, some of the really bad dead wood is also very good at keeping their heads down and avoiding scrutiny, especially in a large corporation.
If someone is able to work, but chooses not to work, they shouldn't be paid by the government, by charities, or by businesses.
You'll get no argument from me on this one. I was just trying to make the point that, if we're going to have the dole anyway, it's actually more economically efficient to keep certain people out of the workplace altogether.
Yes you did. You removed the paragraphs.
Not everyone can or should have a "job". But most people find "work" whether it is considered "productive" or "unproductive".
One of my favorite examples is Vincent Van Gogh. He was relatively impoverished throughout his life, but produced "work product" which has high contemporary value from which neither he nor his estate ever profited.
Best regards,
This seems to be a tin foil hat moment for you, but rest assured, I'm not out to make your life miserable by posting without paragraph formatting; that's just the way it happened.
They made the rules they play by.
But how many Indian's are getting layed off to make them...that's what's getting lost in the (phony) rhetoric.
STRAW MAN ARGUMENT! We are bleeding the best jobs now not the "crap" jobs that were vital to blue collar Americans survival. Those jobs were sold down the river last decade. While promises were made they would be replaced by hi tech jobs of the future.
Meanwhile the trade deficits yawn wider each year. That's what happens when you ship jobs abroad.
Yes, of course. Because that makes the things they write false.
Well, that's an interesting point but USUALLY when I hear complaints of this type, the person IS complaining about loss of "Manufacturing Jobs".
One could spend an entire day just reading the articles on FR which come up when you search for the word "manufacturing".
I'm glad that you, personally, are not as fixated on "Manufacturing Jobs" as so many others seem to be. That's great!
Those jobs were sold down the river last decade. While promises were made they would be replaced by hi tech jobs of the future.
??
I'm getting confused as to exactly which jobs you're talking about exactly. I know from your post that they are "the best jobs", whatever they are, but that they're not "Manufacturing Jobs" (otherwise my post wouldn't have been a STRAW MAN ARGUMENT). But then "those jobs" (the "best" ones, which aren't Manufacturing) were outsourced. And then (someone - who??) "promised" (promised?? there's no "promise" in economics) that "those jobs" (whatever they are..) would be "replaced" by "hi tech jobs of the future".
So "the best jobs", whatever they are/were, weren't "hi tech jobs" OR "Manufacturing Jobs"? What kind of jobs were they?
Telemarketing/telephone call centers?
Meanwhile the trade deficits yawn wider each year. That's what happens when you ship jobs abroad.
Yup those trade deficits keep me up at night. I just hate all the ways they affect my life negatively.
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