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To: TopQuark

I know about IT because I work in the field. There may be other abuses. I do know that Mirant fired their accounting staff and hired Indian workers. This happened while Mirant was in bankruptcy. Also, the top brass voted themselves raises, had special lunches, expensive bottled water and all kinds of perks during this time while their stockholders were taken to the cleaners.


176 posted on 07/08/2007 6:11:05 AM PDT by nyconse
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To: nyconse
I do know that Mirant fired their accounting staff and hired Indian workers.

I have a question, please: would you feel better if they closed up the shop and moved it to India? You would not have to face the change, but would this be better?

Probably not.

And yet, this is precisely what American business was doing for almost as long as America exists. Were the workers of oil companies American? Mostly not: it was management that was American. IBM had divisions in Switzerland, Ireland, Israel and other countries for years. It's a myth that "outsourcing" is a new phenomenon.

Conversely, when BP comes to America and hires American workers, is it doing outsourcing? Of course it does. Should the British accuse the company of betraying the U.K.?

The sole explanation is that all of us must be worth our keep. When we progress individually and as a nation, our wages and standard of living rise. When we stagnate in our development, our wages drop. This is particularly pronounced in IT, where wages were high due to shortage of labor. But all this happened before: companies analyzed the cost of operations domestically and abroad, adjusted for risk, and chose the least costless route.

Socialists in our schools and the media taught you to think about management as if they were royalty that does what it wants ("voting" themselves raises, drinking expensive water, etc.). As any management course will tell you, they are hired hands just as you are, but more expensive. Just because you cannot see fully the benefits of their work, it does not mean that they are not worth every penny of their salaries.

Corporations are merely legal notions. In real economic life there are people --- owners, employees, customers of a corporation. It is the owners that pay your salary and that of your CEO. In the present-day America, unlike in XIX century, large corporations are owned by common folk, especially the retirees. These are teachers, nurses, plumbers --- and you, too, if you have a savings account or at least one share of a mutual fund. Why should these people pay you or me more that they already do? How is a programmer more deserved of income than they are?

188 posted on 07/08/2007 8:20:04 AM PDT by TopQuark
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