What is our economic future?

[davidinalameda]

http://dailymail.com/news/Dave+Peyton-20030728/

Unaccustomed as I am to taking anything in the New York Times (and now Reuters) at face value, I have some proof that a recent Times story about white-collar high-tech jobs leaving the U.S. is true.
Before he changed jobs recently, my son worked for a computer security firm based in Virginia. For two of the three shifts the company maintained, personnel at its Virginia headquarters manned the machines that kept a constant check on clients' computers.

But between midnight and 8 a.m. EST, the American company's entire security operation was turned over to techies in India who monitored client computers via the Internet for eight hours a day.

[johan]

1. i wonder the same thing

there are just too many jobs going overseas, We have to stop the bleeding..

[Boreas]

2. Cost of labor

In the business equation the cost of labor is the only one that can reliably be manipulated. Somewhere, someone will do the work for less. Ergo, more profit for investors, etc.

This is why, for example, Nike closed it's US factories and went to South Korea. It closed operations there when workers organized and wanted $2.40 per hour for their labor. Non-union workers in China make the same shoes for $.25 an hour.

Pick up any tool in your local hardware store and then pick up another. See that label, "Made in China?"

[sam sarrha]

3. wife and i made over $80,000 last year, in the last 4 months we both..

lost our jobs, insurance..our jobs are Globalized, arent comming back. we will probably be losing our house and be moving into the Ford Escort with 2 dogs and the cat soon.

[leftyandproud]

4. we're screwed

the greenspam/dubya combo bankrupted us.

[Vitruvius]

5. American technology was invented & developed by Americans,

and much of it was funded by the Federal Gov't, and/or stemmed from research funded by the gov't.

It would be entirely appropriate for us, through our gov't, to prohibit the export of either mf'g or high-tech or engineering jobs.

We did it, we paid for much of it, it should stay right here.

Vitruvius

P.S: As for the minority of technology that did not involve gov't funding, much of it was stolen by big business from independent inventors and entrepreneurs. Again -- it is not for big business to decide to ruin America by exporting this technology.

[roxdog]

6. Peak Oil

Check out info on Peak oil (www.copvcia.com, for one)...
Since everything we do relies on energy from petroleum, once we run out, we're done.....(bet you Bush and Co. got a nice, plush underground bunker for the day....

[Vitruvius]

7. We should be inventing our way out of this problem right now --

but Big Oil has helped delay, stymie, block such work. And now that we'll be looting Iraq's oil, there's no way that the technology for a post-oil world will be developed in this country. Not before we're in deep trouble, as you say.

But the technology for a post-oil world is being developed in Europe and Japan.

By stealing Iraq's oil, Bu$h & co is using the power of the gov't to sabotage the transition we must make to a post-oil technology. And insuring that Europe and Japan will beat us.

Add this to big business exporting American technology (with the connivance of the Bu$h administration), and the American lead in technology is done.

Unless the Democrats get back in power AND do the right thing. Which will take a lot more courage than much of the Dem leadership has exhibited in the last 20 years.

Vitruvius

[dfong63]

8. ross perot, where are you now that we need you?

so-called "free trade" was a con job.

we need a government of the US that represents the interests of american workers first and foremost - not some abstract ideology of free trade or capitalism.