from Cringely the PBS prediction guy. IBM is the biggest Dow component. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070504_002027.html The over 400+ reader comments, many obviously from among the 350,000 employees, are must reads if you are interested in the company or outsourcing debate. .
Short term, if people thought that would increase their earnings significantly over the next few year, it would make the stock go up, I'd expect. Longer term, its real bad for their business because customers will despise it, and the people they fire could become local competition. If you happen to be one of those to get axed, though, you are better off giving up and changing careers entirely like I did, or retiring, than even attempting to compete with labor from India or China. Its basically a hopeless downward spiral because their pay rates are *SO* low.
More future daytraders and Ebay merchants will be spawn from this. Why should someone in America study computer science or engineering anymore ?
There ya' go. A little truth for all the new world order lovers. A new world order means the U.S. devolving into a middle class-less, service sector, Britain like economy - more rich, more poor, fewer if the middle. Now is the time to work in law, finance, medicine (for the time being, at least - until universal health care comes along) and anything having to do with government contracting of entitlement programs. Everything else will outsourced.
Clearly companies/CEOs don't give a shit (or are too stupid) about the long term socioeconomic and political effects of of such decisions - and why should they. One of the first things taught in any corporate finance course is that their function is to maximise the value of the firm (and implicitly the payoff of their stock options - but lets not get into agency risks here). Does the government give a shit to do something about it? It would appear not.
It is sad. Just wait until this arrangement with Mexico and Canada goes through. There will be another 20 million Mexicans up here overnight. Our standard of living will go through the floor.
Exactly right. And we hear the usual blather from politicians about improving education and about how important it is to get an education...It's all horseshit. The Dems and the Republicans are both insanely corrupted and self-dealing to a degree that we haven't seen in at least 100 years. If the Chinese gave any one of those whores ten thousand dollars to move Boeing to Shanghai, they'd start proposing legislation in 5 seconds.
People in this country, especially top executives, are selfish and greedy. They don't have to worry about what happens to America since they'll retire rich and spend their remaining days in the French Riviera.