I came across this article which discusses this subject. There is a link to a report entitled "Choose to Compete: How Innovation, Investment and Productivity Can Grow U.S. Jobs and Ensure American Competitiveness in the 21st Century". This report addresses a lot of the issues raised in this thread. The article link is http://www.computerworld.com/govern...licy/story/0,10801,88840,00.html?nas=PM-88840 The report link is: http://www.cspp.org/reports/ChooseToCompete.pdf A few interesting excerpts from the report: U.S. economic strength lies in orchestrating the best combination of domestic and foreign resources to produce and deliver innovative, high-quality, lowcost products and services all day, every day â and doing it better than foreign competitors. This competitive advantage can be nurtured with American creativity, ingenuity, invention and entrepreneurship â and with the right public policies and business priorities in place. Worldwide operations benefit the U.S. economy, American workers and consumers as well. Much of the substantial revenue earned abroad cycles back to Americans in the form of jobs and wages for workers, investment in research and development, pro fits for shareholders and taxes for the U.S. economy. âBuy Americanâ policies may seem patriotic, but they are, in fact, impractical and even counterproductive. We are better off playing to our strengths â innovation, high skills and high value-added goods and services that we can export to great advantage â than trying to produce everything in the United States. By nature, Americans are opportunistic, competitive and resilient â qualities that serve people well in times of change. The landscape is different now that economic forces are global rather than national or local, but American companies and workers can rely on the same can-do attitudes, entrepreneurial qualities and willingness to embrace innovation and change to prosper in this new environment as they have in the past.
I'd like to believe these bromides, but I don't. The world is going to get really competitive and we aren't going to have what it takes. "American creativity, ingenuity, invention and entrepreneurship â and with the right public policies and business priorities in place." We are losing that and others are gaining. m
http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/30/pf/offshorejob/index.htm Well...after they offshore all the tax accountants, maybe then we can finally pass a FLAT TAX without the tax preparer lobby in the way peace axeman
that 60% of new college graduates in Japan graduate with a degree in Engineering. In the United States, the number of Engineering graduates is only 6%.
I was hoping when I read the above report that they would have made some specific recommendations about alternative careers for the people whose jobs have been exported, but they did not. The best analogy for what they are saying is that, they are throwing these people into a deep pit, but because of certain qualities they believe these people may have, they "should" manage to find a way out of the pit, but if they don't, then they deserve to be in the pit. Since it is impossible to tell the future, I don't think these people are certain of the ramifications of what they are proposing, but they are hoping for the best. Interestingly though, people seem to always somehow manage to find a way to overcome in survival type situations.
Well, you may be right about surviving but I naively believed that the objective of the economic policy of any country should be to make its citizens better off as opposed to puting them in survival type situations. Sure it's possible to survive on minimum wage. Between job outsourcing and new immigration/"guest worker" policy proposal, this is exactly where we as a country are heading.
CEOs Of Intel, HP Call Overseas Rivals Threat To U.S. IT Leadership Thursday January 8, 10:24 am ET By Brian Deagon A think tank of tech executives warned Wednesday that the U.S. is losing ground to foreign nations in areas of innovation and education. If not fixed, they said, it will hurt America's competitiveness. The Computer Systems Policy Project presented its warning - and solutions - in a report titled "Choose To Compete." Its members plan to meet with government policy makers and industry trade groups to promote an agenda it says will boost innovation, encourage public and private sector investment and improve education and training for American workers. CSPP is an advocacy group of eight chief executives at U.S. tech firms. Its current chairman is Craig Barrett, chief executive of Intel. http://biz.yahoo.com/ibd/040108/feature_1.html The other CEO members come from Dell, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, EMC, Unisys and NCR. Barrett unveiled the platform at a press conference in New York, along with HP CEO Carly Fiorina. They said U.S. competitiveness in the field of information technology is increasingly threatened by an emerging group of nations that are investing aggressively in education, innovation and technology.
dddooo, I agree with you. These people somehow believe that their proposal "should" somehow benefit the USA after a "painfull" period of change. The problem is that they have not said anything specific about how they envision this coming about. They are basically just speculating as to the outcome of the results of their proposal, and "hoping" that things work out for the better. They have not said anything specific that would be reassuring. By survival I meant that they are thinking that if a person is thrown into the deep end, somehow their ingenuity will kick in and they will find new ways to excel in a changed environment (it was not meant in the context of someone surviving on minimum wage). They're betting that people will rise to the knew challenge. The problem is that all these are words with no specifics.
These CEOs and their organization are obviously extremely biased as they stand to profit significantly from hiring cheaper foreign labor. Second their argument about education is total BS. While the education in some countries may be comparable in quality with education in USA, companies are not even trying to hide that they hire people in India or a Russia not because they're better educated, but because they're willing to work for a fraction of american pay. This thread started with an article about IBM moving 5K high-paid jobs to India. It has absolutely nothing to do with education of these peple, quite a few of them may well be Ivy-Leagers. And last they are not specific, just like people on this forum are not specific about alternative careers for one simple reason - they have nothing to offer. It's next to impossible to come up with suggestion of high paying white-collar jobs or professions which cannot be outsourced overseas. Unfortunately they are the ones with the money, they are going to be lobbing in Washington and their compaign contributions will undoubtedly "prove" their point of view, regardless of whether they are talking to a republican or a democrat.