Where the good jobs are going

[ramapo]

Here's another article on one of my favorite subjects. This issue seems to be geeting some notice as this is the third story I've found today on it. This is high profile, Time Magazine.

"Forget sweatshops. U.S. companies are now shifting high-wage work overseas, especially to India"

<http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101030804-471198,00.html?cnn=yes>

[yolatengo]

1. yeah, well

maybe when Joe Suburbanite, who votes Bush because he's
a 'straight shooter' loses HIS high paying, high tech
job, sees his 401(k) (filled during the 'bubble') reduced
to nothing, sees himself having to take care of his
elderly parents in a few years when SS is DEAD, sees
his own healthcare costs skyrocket, sees crime increase
in his neighborhood because the poor/desperate/screwed by
Bush tax policy/screwed by Welfare Disform have already
had THEIR jobs shipped overseas and have little hope and
sees his taxes skyrocket to pay for the Bush Deficit AND
the Bush War On The Earth THEN he'll finally see the light.

Naw, he'll just keep voting Bush because he's a f*cking
Moron-American.

I tell people this all the time, and I'm IN the high
tech field. They all think they are 'islands'. Highly
skilled and immune. They like Bush's taxcuts because
why should THEY pay for moochers and freeloaders? Their
property taxes are already too high ('course they don't
balance the 40+% their property VALUES have risen in the
last 3 yrs against that). Basically, until the cold, cold
fist of reality clocks them square on the jaw, when the
New York Times and Fox News BOTH tell them that the last
high tech job is leaving on the next plane outta here,
they simply will Vote Bush. Amazing that science and
engineer geeks can be so tunnel visioned. They honestly
thought: "who cares if all the manufacturing jobs go
overseas? Everything I buy will be cheaper from China
and Pakistan. Those idiots in the Rust Belt can all go
back to school and earn EE degrees like me and get good,
high paying jobs".

If they are replaced at the peak of their earning years,
will we see lots of 'Falling Down' (starring Michael Douglas)
scenes all over the USA (except in "De-fens"; oh wait!
Even THEY are shipping tech jobs overseas while their
INVESTORS, like Chumpy and Chinny cash in)?


Bigby

[nolat]

2. Can we recall Bush?

I am mad as hell about this. I too, went from making 150k a year down to less than 40k. My wife is disabled and can't work. Lots of medical costs. I don't see any sunshine, anytime soon. :argh:

[ramapo]

4. You said it

I'm in IT and surrounded by Rethug corporate lovers. I've talked about this problem for years. Now I tell people that there are only so many retail jobs, then what? Just makes me sick.

[German-Lefty]

8. You speak the truth

I'm IT, I took a job here in Germany. If it goes bad here I'll go to India, that might be kind of neat, at least for a guy like me that can stuff all his crap in a backpack and just go.

We do like to think of ourselves as "oh so smart" and islands. A little dose of reality will sink in soon. Maybe once they realise they need society they'll understand why you need a social responsible government.

Yeah, it seems like Engineers should be able to understand Economics, but there's all that paid for supply side research that supports faith based economics, and it's just so nice to believe. :-(

[HungryLoser]

14. And reality rears it's ugly head..

I bartend 16 hours a week (My only job!), had one of those Republican computer geeks stiff me on my tip because he overheard me critisize DUHbya. He actually believes he can walk on water and maybe even part the Persian Gulf.

[nedlogg]

3. It'll never cease to amaze me!

How seemingly intelligent white collar workers buy into that conservative bullshit!

Repugs work for the rich and I don't mean the guy making 100Gs a year who thinks he rich. I mean the super rich who control everything with their dollars and throw us a few crumbs.

[Virginian]

5. My job was taken by H-1B workers because client needed people on site.

It would have otherwise gone to India.

Toward the end of the TIME piece there was a comment about stopping the visas so that the jobs that are still here might employ some of the unemployed Americans.

[Virginian]

6. TIME mentioned how many hundreds of thousands of jobs,

but not how much in American wages is no longer supporting our economy.

And still, no one "gets" it. Big business is bleading the economy by avoiding paying minimum wages much less a living wage. They open a PO box in Nassau to avoid paying taxes. Then they win Govt contracts by underbidding American companies.

Sure the lowest bidder may cost less, but look at the giant cost to the country when all the knowledge and experience is elsewhere. Why would anyone in the US even study IT if there aren't going to be any jobs.

Who is sponsoring the bill to "Put American companies first", to hire American companies that pay taxes and hire the people who are already here?

[ramapo]

7. So much for the bright future of IT

Students majoring in IT related fields already have a tough time. They have to compete against the visa holders with equal or even better educational backgrounds plus some experience.

It will get worse.

The H1B visa program was to be temporary while we trained our own peope. It's too late now. Visa holders are leaving on their own to take a job in India working on an offshore project!

Remember all the projections for the good future jobs? These projections are heavy on the IT side.

[pbeal]

9. Decline Of Empire

One of the reasons that the roman empire fell that gets overlooked is that the roman wealthy elite stopped paying taxes. And the Empire outsourced its defense.

[ikojo]

10. Amazing fact on Rome

Wow, I didn't realize that one of the factors contributing to the fall of Rome was the outsourcing of jobs and lower taxes. Is there a source for that (such as the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire?)

I have a friend who works for an insurance company. At the beginning of this year they laid off the entire IT department (approx. 100 employees) and sent those jobs to India.

I would hate to see this thread turned into an "I hate India" thread because the workers in India are not the ones making the decision to move over there. They are only taking advantage of an opportunity offered to them.

What I would like to see is a world wide living wage. Maybe if corporations realized that there was nowhere in the world they could turn for cheap labor then they would be less likely to leave higher wage countries.

It isn't only IT work that is being outsourced to India. Many comanies have an Employee Assistance Program of some sort and more of those jobs are being done in India. Credit card, mortgage and other loan processing is being done there as well. I believe I read that some tax preparation work was being done in India. That customer service rep you speak to may also be outside the US.

Why can't we outsource executive jobs to lower wage countries?

Until American workers stop seeing things from the corporate point of view (like it's good for the company to not have to pay high salaries, blah, blah, blah) then nothing will change.

At one insurance company I worked we were told they were going to close the office. After the announcement people went back to their units and some people gathered and clapped their hands together and said "praise Jesus, he sent me here and will send me wherever he needs me. Praise him." Oy vey! I cannot understand that attitude. Talk about taking the fight out of people!

[PROGRESSIVE1]

11. Jim Kramer on Hardball with Tweety...

Jim says that unemployment will be UNDER 5 PERCENT in August 2004 and that Bush will be in a very strong position for
"re-election"!!! If all of these jobs, now including the IT jobs are being sent overseas then how can the REAL UNEMPLOYMENT number come down. If the rich are making money we are NOT better off.

This issue of exporting job after job after job must be addressed by the Democratic nomminee next year!

[ramapo]

12. Chronic unemployed & the underemployed don't count

After your unemployment benefits run out, then you're not counted as unemployed! There are getting to be many ITers in this category.

Underemployed isn;'t counted.

But I don't doubt that the media propaganda machine can make things look good for our "President".

[phgnome]

15. Banning Job Exports Against Market Pressures

If you claim to still uphold democracy, freedom, and other components of capitalism, you cannot just order companies to keep their jobs here. Something about that just reeks of authoritarian and totalitarian.

Doing so will make corporations move their entire operations overseas. Then, you will not only lose the IT jobs, but you'll also lose all the 30K/year administrative jobs (and this will be economic devastation beyond words).

State-funded re-training for IT professionals to pursue other careers seems the most sane short-term solution for unemployment.

ON EDIT: You want to contain the unemployment problem to the IT industry only before it spreads to other industries. Containing the industry under which the trends fall is a more realistic approach. "Fixing the problem" in industries that are not suffering from the job shift overseas could worsen the problem a lot more for everyone else in the economy.

[ramapo]

16. Already beyond IT

IT is following a trend. Customer service and telemarketing have both gone offshore and have been there for a year or two at least.

No you cannot order companies to keep jobs here. But right now corporations are given EVERY accomodation and we ask little in return (except please keep the jobs here). There are even calls to have corporate taxes abolished. Yet corporations get the benefit of "personhood". Clearly corporations benefit from infrastructure, et. al. and should help support what keeps the country running.

State-funded retraining is fine but what would you retrain for? Part of the problem is we did a crappy job of training for the IT boom of the 90s. This started the H1B-visa fiasco (was suppossed to be a short-term fix for the IT shortage while we trained/retrained? our own).

[phgnome]

18. That's bad...

That's not a good sign.

As for what people should retrain for: the trades. Due to the surge of attendance in colleges in the past few years, there is a gap in the market for trades (like plumbers, electricians, woodworkers, water treatment, mechanics, technicians, etc. that cannot be exported but were deemed "blue collar" class jobs). This way, they could have their own businesses.

It might be advantageous for the government to play a coordinating role or provide business-operating assistance to independent contractors. The trick is to keep the retraining effort diversified. Let's learn from the mistakes we made during the IT retraining initiative in the 90s. Let's diversify the skills that we are retraining for. Have a series of shorter campaigns until you get to the training recruitment levels that meet the market demand for these trades and then move recruitment focus onto another trade. When the first group of recruits graduate, help them start their own businesses -- and since the interest rate is at nearly 0%, give them a loan to start their own business.

It would be better if the recruitment efforts were executed on a federal level, as opposed to a state level. You could minimize the cost of retraining by using economies of scale at the federal level (buy national media at a discount rate, onsite computer hardware technicians, etc.).

Slowly, as the first three sets of recruits become stabilized over 3 to 4 years, begin raising taxes slowly. As well, you will need to employ more people as the program progresses in order to administer the infrastructure that's growing.

I agree that this is not the only solution nor am I saying that this is the best way. But it might serve as a starting point to economic recovery. The US might not have total dominance in all markets but development efforts will begin again once a small but real sign of economic recovery starts (signs that are not reliant solely on how much stock was traded). Morale is down right now and we need to stop the plummeting morale before we can inspire confidence in our markets again.

It may also wean a lot of people off the capital market. There's nothing more secure than concrete skills. There's no guarantee that they won't have to retrain some years down the line in the future -- but there are no guarantees in economics.

[Boreas]

13. Dismantling US security

Piece by piece the structure of the US is being taken apart and shipped overseas. Kind of like the London Bridge being taken apart stone by stone and shipped to Arizona. The process is gaining momentum as businesses save a few percent of costs. What does it cost the country?

A case can be made that the strength of the US is it's economy, upon which the strength ot the military rests.

[JPace]

17. I remember....

reading the prediction of an economist years ago that said
that by the middle of the 21st century America would
basically be a big farmland with not much else going on.

Even if that is true it will probably all be owned by
big business and we will all be hired as fruit pickers
or vegeatable pickers.

So much for free trade!

[SyracuseDemocrat]

19. I read the article when the magazine

came two days ago. I feel so bad for these workers.

[fortyfeetunder]

20. This is only good if Pakistan and India don't get it on

If the conflict between Pakistan and India ever heats up to a full fledged war, American commerce will be SOL. They had to help intervene the last time to keep the peace. The next time they may not be so lucky.