Posted on 09/08/2004 3:36:00 PM PDT by Destro
Posted on Sun, Aug. 22, 2004
Business books: 'Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas'
"Exporting America: Why Corporate Greed Is Shipping American Jobs Overseas," by Lou Dobbs (Warner Business Books, 208 pages, $19.95)
Look out, Silicon Valley! Bangalore, India, is gaining on you. Some folks in India even believe that their country's version of Silicon Valley has already surpassed its California counterpart as a center for high-tech employment.
In his new book, "Exporting America," CNN's Lou Dobbs shows how strongly that belief is held in India with a headline from the Jan. 6, 2004, issue of The Times of India: "Silicon Valley Falls to Bangalore."
The story under that headline, Dobbs writes, bragged that Bangalore has 150,000 information-technology engineers compared with 130,000 in Silicon Valley. Dobbs believes that that story can't be written off as merely nationalistic exaggeration.
"India is only one of the many countries benefiting from the exporting of American jobs. But it has also been one of the most aggressive in pursuing professional-level jobs, from medical technicians to software programs. American companies have been all too happy to answer India's siren call of educated English-speakers willing to work at some of the world's lowest wages," Dobbs writes.
General Electric's Capital International Services, Dobbs points out, was one of the pioneers of outsourcing domestic operations to India. The company, Dobbs writes, employs 1,300 at its four centers in India and says it saves about $400million annually by not having Americans do those jobs.
"The people there write software; they review invoices and insurance claims; they do market analysis. CIS also offers its services to other American companies looking for outsourced resources," Dobbs writes.
Although India lags behind other Asian countries in manufacturing, it has a leg up, according to Dobbs, in the service sector and is a magnet for some of America's highest-paying jobs.
"There are programmers all over the world, but the Indian Institutes of Technology (known as IITs) are turning out thousands of these programmers a year. They are men and women who are well-educated, speak impeccable English, and are thrilled to make $10,000 a year," Dobbs writes.
GE, as Dobbs makes clear in abundant detail, is only one of many companies outsourcing high-tech and professional jobs to India and other parts of the world where wage expectations are lower. Among the others spotlighted by Dobbs for outsourcing jobs to India, the Philippines, Romania, Ireland, Poland and other countries are IBM, SAS Institute, Intel, Microsoft, Perot Systems, Apple, Computer Associates, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and Sun Microsystems.
Early in the book Dobbs delivers a broadside against the general trend of shipping jobs offshore. He says it is undermining the American middle class, putting Americans out of work, forcing Americans to work harder and longer for less pay, devastating some communities and depriving governments at all levels of the tax revenue for upgrading public education and providing other essential goods and services.
Dobbs, whose views on shipping jobs offshore have been under continual attack by advocacy groups and consultants for multinational corporations, takes the view that corporations who send jobs offshore are firing their own customers, because American workers will eventually find themselves unable to purchase the goods and services being exported back to America by American companies.
"India can provide our software; China can provide our toys; Sri Lanka can make our clothes; Japan make our cars. But at some point we have to ask, what will we export? At what will Americans work? And for what kind of wages? No one I've asked in government, business or academia has been able to answer those questions," Dobbs writes.
- Cecil Johnson,
Knight Ridder Tribune
That reminds me: I switched to plain cabonated water--seltzer--instead of soda. I am very happy I did.
Beg to differ my friend; let me explain...automotive and everything around it is in high demand. With the sophistication and complexity of the today's automobiles, one needs a highly qualified technician to "be allowed" to work on.(all, but all, car manufacturers demand a highly skilled/trained technician to diagnose/repair that particular vehicle)
I should know, I am a 25+ Years Chrysler/Jeep/Dodge Technician and I can tell you that, we can not find a decent technician to do the job right. Plenty of wanna be's ("carniceros", "boomerang tech", "butchers") no shortage (they last less than 3 weeks) but nothing of a reliable and honest, old school technicians!
The old "shade tree", "DIY", kinda of Saturday Morning type of "let me fix this ol' jalopy" is all but gone. We are talking about super sophisticated hard/software operating systems taking care of your wheels. On average any of todays cars has at least 9+ computers on board, controlling misc. functions.
In my daily routine, computer related, reprogramming, updating and set up's are the routine, instead of mechanical wrenching like in the past.
The thing am trying to emphasize is that life/jobs is an ever changing medium/society where by, we all have to adapt soon or later. So, be flexible,...everything will work out, provide you are not stuck in the 50th's panacea.
A lot of people don't realize soda (even diet) can contribute to diabetes, hypertension, digestive problems, weight gain, etc...
The publishing industry is very weird, in no small part because it is HIGHLY regulated by the FTC. A lot of people don't know this, but many dimensions of the pricing model are fixed by the Federal government. As odd as it may sound, the FTC considers all the major publishers a de facto monopoly and regulates them as such, even though that charge is pretty ludicrous upon casual inspection. If they do not follow certain pricing guidelines, they get hit with an anti-trust suit.
The primary reason prices are so high is that the publishers are required to show pricing parity across all wholesale transactions regardless of size. What this means is that they are not allowed to price books based on amortizing the overhead of acquiring the sale, whether they are selling one book or ten thousand in the deal. The net result is that the largest book distributors in the US (e.g. Barnes & Noble, Amazon, et al) must be sold books at a base discount no better than what they give to Joe's Book Shack who orders five books a year. In essence, the entire market must be priced at the level of the most expensive transaction they do. Otherwise the Feds jump all over them.
The big distributors do get some indirect and creative comps (essentially payola) for their volume, but it isn't tied to the actual price they get invoiced for a given book. In essence, the FTC has outlawed volume discounts for books, asserting that it is an anti-competitive practice to do so. Such idiotic laws do not apply to other countries, hence why their books are cheaper and why you are not allowed to import "unregulated" books.
Apparently a better living than anywhere else on the planet doesn't qualify as a "decent living"? Aren't you setting the bar a little high? Did no one in the 19th century make a decent living since none of them had a television?
Most "average" people in the US do very well by any reasonable standards, and that hasn't been changing. What has changed is that people want to live well without any of the effort and creativity that got us here in the first place. Average people with discipline and good sense can retire well before they collect Social Security in this country. The only thing you can argue has changed is that we are losing our discipline and good sense.
That is nuts!!! Inventors don't draw up plans for what they invent?????
You are saying the 12.4% of the workforce in America has control over the economy???
And what is the solution? Force American corporations to hire someone in the US at 10 times what they can pay for the same quality work somewhere else? Once a worker knows he is protected by law from losing his job, the entire country will be run like the Department of Motor Vehicles.
"what did they think"? Hey, at that time USA will be closer to Latin America, and in Latin America they have tradition of dealing promptly with the unruly voters, unions etc... :)
Maybe. I'll also wager that they didn't spend much time on FR whining that they cannot find a job, and telling others not to go to engineering school.
Good question!
Let me guess, you were out of job and then you found a new one. Am I right?
Simple solution - remove the clearance/citizenship requirement and Chinese will be glad to help, so will be the Iranians, even engineers from Western Europe! And many will be willing to work for FREE! :) A solution freetraders would love.
Only one thing keeps Reagan Democrats and Evangelical Protestants from voting against Republicans - it is strange infatuation of liberals with pederasty, abortion and secularism. Once Dems discover what handicaps them and moderate their stand, they will stay in power for generations!
There are lies, bigger lies and statistics. "Unemployment rate" is a very misleading measure.
He, he. Did you have your coffee yet?
How the outsourcing CEO fared? Did he bailed out before the collapse with a fat profit? Did he jump to another company to do the same scooping trick?
A non-unionised employee in a state with "at will" employment has no protection whatsoever from losing his job, unless he or she is part of a protected class, such as Black, female, or homosexual, and has enough $$$ to get an attorney to to take the case.
Under absolutely no circumstances (at least none that I've heard of) does an employee have even a ghost of a chance of suing if his entire function or department has been shut down.
I have reason to know this. After ten years as "management" in the same company, I was morally compelled to resign because I was threatened with reprisals if I refused to participate in an unethical scheme to defraud the union.
But here's the fun part, which most people don't know: if you are fired for refusing to do something unethical or illegal you have no recourse except in rare instances covered by specific laws.
For example, you work as a cashier and your boss tells you to short change the customers. You refuse and he fires you. Tough luck, Charlie. Maybe you shouldn't have been paying so much attention at church when you were a kid. But, no problem for the employer -- he'll just keep cycling through the labour pool until he finds someone willing to lie, cheat, and steal for him.
And, under such circumstances, don't expect to collect unemployment either, because unless you have amassed whole file cabinets of corroborating documentation, the state D-o-L is going to believe the employer rather than the ex-employee.
The idea of the pampered American worker is a myth used to justify the economic treason of American business.
Wages can only go up in one of two ways. A labor shortage which happens when population growth stabilizes somewhat and employers are competing for workers. The other way is when the government creates labor abundance through uncontrolled immigration or outsourcing and that is with unions. Right now countries like China which are Communist have a tight rope on their labor so labor will stay very cheap there but that could destabilize.
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