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
I didn't say tech jobs are unionized. But the wages that unions demand do have a ripple effect thru the entire economy. Just as minimum wages drive up wages for higher level jobs, union wages drive up wages for jobs higher up the ladder (such as tech jobs).
Funny how they have no problem exporting jobs to socialist utopias then, eh?
so you solution is that everyone should make lower wages, is that it? except CEOs and the executive class and the elites on Wall Street and elsewhere, they are exempt from globalism's effect on wages, in fact, their wages go in the oppsite direction - UP.
Obviously we just need to get used to a third world standard of living. But hey, don't forget to keep voting for the "right" guy at election time.
there is no one to vote for on this issue - from either party. but the natural progression of things tends toward the Dems, as workers who can no longer earn the wages to maintain their standard of living, health care, etc - look to government programs to replace what they cannot afford. And the Dems will always win there. Similar to Europe.
So why are software developers with 30+ years experience and current skillsets not being hired either? It's not education, but the fact you can put someone to work in India for $10,000 a year. No American can compete with that. The only way out is to write down the value of our lifestyle by devaluing the dollar, bringing the cost of an American in line with the cost of an Indian.
The process has started already, but will have to go a lot further before the labor market comes back into balance once more.
If every American was the most literate, educationally brilliant person the world had ever seen, corporate America would still be outsourcing. Do you really think that India has a first-class educational system? They have illiteracy on a scale we could not imagine. They also have major problems with ethnic strife, sectarian violence, and organized crime. But outsourcing gives C.E.O.'s something they can't get in America: something for nothing. The simple fact is that these huge corporate executives are greedy and unpatriotic.
The outsourcers are girlie-men! They don't realize that the market for all the 70-cents-an-hour assembly work is here, and we can't buy their widgets if we don't bring home the pay! I'll be back.
Did the survey say which country this working age population is from?
Since when does the socialist utopia of China (I presume you refer to the PRC) provide more benefits than the benefits in the US?
Scary when you think about it...
we're going to have to simplify our lifestyles and learn to get along with the reduced infrastructure that goes with such an existence. I envision trailer-park towns surrounding old city cores and squatter colonies in the ruins of foreclosed suburbs. These people would scrape along by doing non-outsourceable service work when they can get it: upgrading disk drives, removing spyware, editing offshore-produced documentation to improve the English, cleaning gutters for CEOs. It would be feudalism with cellphones.
If you hate socialism and regulations now, just wait untill the votes of distressted working class Americans combined with the votes of the very easily minipulated and mostly poor immigrants join up and elect a ultra liberal congressional majority along with a liberal president in 2008.
Its sad that so many of the "investor class" are unable to think a quarter ahead. All they are doing is alienating enough people and importing many people who grew up thinking socialism is the way to go that we will end up with a full on European style welfare state.
what exactly is your position? you say unions have increased the american wage scale. they also pioneered worksplace safety rules so that we didn't have more garment factory fires and child labor.
what are you for or against? the higher wage scale? the unions? offshoring of jobs? globalism and free trade?
I don't see how you can ever get the dollar devalued enough. China and India effectively have infinite workforces available when you look at the numbers.
and what's oil going to cost after the devaluation is complete, $200 a barrel?
The CEOs will regret their decsions in a few years, and so will any American who values the notion of a Free Republic, because the wreckless decsions of these many CEOs will lead to a socialist America. As for the CEOs, unless they can jump ship to another nation, they can expect their taxes on their earnings and assests to go up dramatically to pay for the new social programs put in place by the Democratic admin and congress in 2010. Ah, what did they think, there is a free lunch?
And I'd gladly work for $35-40K, if that would buy me a decent lifestyle in America.
Outsource CEO's.
exactly right.
and that nucleus may gel in time for - you guessed it - HILLARY 2008.
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.